Robert Ranke Graves (1895–1985) was an English poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. He is generally regarded as the best love poet of his generation, and he is known for his interest in classics and mythology.
Born in Wimbledon, Surrey, and educated at London’s Charterhouse School, Graves was a professor of English at Cairo and a professor of poetry at Oxford (1961–66.) His early poetry, such as Over the Brazier (1916) and Fairies and Fusiliers (1917,) was published during World War I, and his poems appeared in the popular anthology Georgian Poetry.
In 1925, Graves met the American poet Laura Riding, with whom he went into exile in Majorca on the proceeds of his autobiography, Goodbye to All That (1929.) He returned to England in 1939 for World War II but settled permanently in Majorca in 1946. His best-known novels of historical fiction are I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1934,) adapted for television in 1976.
Graves’s most significant non-fiction is The White Goddess (1948,) and his interest in myth prompted Greek Myths (1955) and Hebrew Myths (1963.) His controversial translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyàm, with Omar Ali-Shah, appeared in 1967.
The English literary critic Miranda Seymour wrote Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (1995.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Robert Ranke Graves
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it has been written, the world would end.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Topics: Perfection
There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Topics: Money
The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight
—Robert Ranke Graves
In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Topics: Sports
What we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Topics: Logic
A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Topics: Reputation
If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
—Robert Ranke Graves
Topics: Women, Girls
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