The White Goddess

In Graves and the Goddess (a book I bought in hardback when it was published, actually; but which I thought rather disappointing) Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop write:

Neglected by most academic scholars of modern poetry, alternately celebrated and reviled by feminists, banished from the syllabus in departments of classics, Celtic studies, and anthropology, The White Goddess has nonetheless exercised a persistent influence in these and many other fields for more than half a century, and has continued, above all, to be a central source of inspiration for poets, the more potent for remaining hidden.

There's something in this. The White Goddess is one of my holy books; I read it as a teenager and was alternately baffled and thrilled by it -- often both at the same time, for some of its most incomprehensible passages were the ground of much of its most overwhelming poetic effectiveness, or so I thought. I have re-read it several times. I still read it. I also, now, have studied the Classics to degree and PhD level, and can see why so many Classicists dismiss Graves' idiosyncratic, largely autodidact and spotty classical 'scholarship'. But that is to miss an important point. To condemn the book because it does not approach the standards expected in modern-day departments of classics, Celtic studies, and anthropology makes about as much sense as condemning Yeats's A Vision because it has nothing practical to say about ophthalmology.