54
PARTISAN REVIEW
What Graves restores to the figure of the poet is the image of
a man who does not choose to lose himself in crowds, one whose
particular genius is impatient of mediocrity. One should say that he
has scored a victory even in the presence of his White Goddess; she
has served his purpose well, and her cult has not compromised the
essential value of his poems. Writers today are in natural fear of an
all-engulfing mediocrity of taste and talent, and when they look into
the future, the gray prospect of a totalitarian order in the arts is
anything but cheerful.
In
that futurity, a poet of Robert Graves's
temperament is not likely to be wholly lost; even a totalitarian state
frequently feels the need of window dressing; and for that purpose,
the poet, because he often seems to write nonsense, because he is
careless of the rewards of wealth or political preference, becomes the
state's proof of its tolerance toward art.
In
those brief moments in
a possible future when the state relaxes its controls, the example of
a Robert Graves should be of salutary influence- and for the pres–
ent his survival is one that proves the virtues of courage as well as
those of art.
(Footnote
3
continued. )
properly married to Cupid and in due time she bore him her child, a daughter
whose name was Pleasure."
The quotation from Pater has the initial advantages of employing fewer
words and weaving them into the rhythm of a prose that approaches a condi–
tion of music, but even at best, Apuleius' story is oversweet, and little Pan
prattling on his reeds makes the sweetness of the scene unbearable to contem–
porary taste; nausea follows a reading of the passage. Graves's comparatively
extroverted version of the scene with Venus performing a lively step-dance
purges the story of some of its excessive sweetness-a strain of thoroughly mas–
culine coarseness enters it, making it more acceptable to contemporary readers.
