Белая Богиня: Историческая грамматика поэтического мифа

1948 book by Robert Graves

The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book length essay on the nature of poetic myth making by the English writer Robert Graves. First published in 1948, the book is based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine; corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961. The White Goddess represents an approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly creative and idiosyncratic perspective. Graves proposes the existence of a European deity, the "White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death", much similar to the Mother Goddess, inspired and represented by the phases of the Moon, who lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European and pagan mythologies. Graves argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with the ancient cult ritual of his proposed White Goddess and of her son.

Graves first wrote the book under the title of The Roebuck in the Thicket in a three week period during January 1944, only a month after he had finished The Golden Fleece. He then left the book to focus on King Jesus, a historical novel about the life of Jesus. Returning to The Roebuck in the Thicket, he renamed it The Three Fold Muse, before finishing it and retitling it as The White Goddess. In January 1946 he sent it to the publishers, and in May 1948 it was published in the UK, and in June 1948 in the US, as The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. Graves believed that one could be in the true presence of the White Goddess when reading a poem, but in his view, this could be achieved only by a true poet of the wild, and not a classical poet, or even a Romantic poet, of whom he spoke critically: "The typical poet of the 19th century was physically degenerate, or ailing, addicted to drugs and melancholia, critically unbalanced and a true poet only in his fatalistic regard for the Goddess as the mistress who commanded his destiny".

Graves also argues that the names of the Ogham letters in the alphabet used in parts of Gaelic Ireland and Britain contained a calendar that contained the key to an ancient liturgy involving the human sacrifice of a sacred king, and, further, that these letter names concealed lines of Ancient Greek hexameter describing the goddess. Graves' "Tree Calendar" has no relation to any historical Celtic calendar. His interpretations rather rely on the book Ogygia by the 17th century bard Roderick O'Flaherty.

In The White Goddess, Graves proposed a hypothetical Gallic tree goddess, Druantia, who has become somewhat popular with contemporary Neopagans. Druantia is an archetype of the eternal mother as seen in the evergreen boughs. Her name is believed to be derived from the Celtic word for oak trees, *drus or *deru. She is known as "Queen of the Druids". She is a goddess of fertility for both plants & humans, ruling over sexual activities & passion. She also rules protection of trees, knowledge, creativity.

The White Goddess has been seen as a poetic work where Graves gives his notion of man's subjection to women in love an "anthropological grandeur" and further mythologises all women in general (and several of Graves's lovers in particular) into a three faced moon goddess model. Graves's value as a poet aside, flaws in his scholarship such as poor philology, use of inadequate texts and outdated archaeology have been criticised. Some scholars, particularly archaeologists, historians and folklorists have rejected the work – which T. S. Eliot called "A prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book" – and Graves himself was disappointed that his work was "loudly ignored" by many Celtic scholars. However, The White Goddess was accepted as history by many non scholarly readers. According to Ronald Hutton, the book "remains a major source of confusion about the ancient Celts and influences many un scholarly views of Celtic paganism". Hilda Ellis Davidson criticised Graves as having "misled many innocent readers with his eloquent but deceptive statements about a nebulous goddess in early Celtic literature", and stated that he was "no authority" on the subject matter he presented. While Graves made the association between Goddesses and the moon appear "natural", it was not so to the Celts or some other ancient peoples. or too concerned with maintaining their perquisites to go against the majority view. Some Neopagans have been bemused and upset by the scholarly criticism that The White Goddess has received in recent years, while others have appreciated its poetic insight but never accepted it as a work of historical veracity. Likewise, a few scholars find some value in Graves's ideas; Michael W. Pharand, though quoting earlier criticisms, states that "Graves's theories and conclusions, outlandish as they seemed to his contemporaries (or may appear to us), were the result of careful observation." According to Graves's biographer Richard Perceval Graves, Laura Riding played a crucial role in the development of Graves's thoughts when writing The White Goddess, despite the fact the two were estranged at that point. On reviewing the book, Riding was furious, saying "Where once I reigned, now a whorish abomination has sprung to life, a Frankenstein pieced together from the shards of my life and thoughts."

The book was a major influence on the thinking of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, with the latter identifying to some extent with the goddess figure herself. Arguably, however, what Jacqueline Rose called "the cliché behind the myth – woman as inspiration, woman as drudge" – ultimately had a negative impact on Plath's life and work.