The infinite Woman

Press, 21 April 1984, Page 20

The infinite Woman

Seven Days in Now Crete. By Robert Graves. Oxford, 1983. 281 pp. $9.75 (paperback.) (Reviewed by Tom Weston) To the literary cognoscente Graves is primarily a poet. In the popular mind he is now tarred by the brush of the “Claudius” series. His own preference is for the title of poet rather than novelist Critics have labelled him a first rate poet but a first rate secondary prose writer. He would (modesty aside) probably agree: by his own admission many of his novels are merely potboilers. To him is accorded talent not genius. Graves has a personal vision: the ideal would be a matriachal society governed by what he knows as the White Goddess. She, the archetypal woman, might appear in other less perfect guises — Athene or Mary — but her community is still a better Elace having had her leadership, faturally this belief can be dismissed as mere Romantic tosh. Not because it is pro-feminist (which it is not), but rather, because it is an adoration as practised by so many of the Romantics. Rilke’s “Duino Elegies” is a case in point. “Seven Days in New Crete” is a celebration of these beliefs. First published in 1949 (the war years are apparent), it is an eccentric, humorous and often magical story: a modern fairy tale. Martin Seymour-Smith in his introduction (introductions always lend such a serious note to literature!) argues the case for it being a Utopian Masterpiece in the mould of “Brave New World” or “Erewhon.” Certainly there are common themes. Such a category, however, underestimates the

sheer inventiveness of the tale, its exuberant sparkle. The novel is unmistakably autobiographical. The hero, a poet, is whisked forward in time; into a State where the Goddess rules an ordered world, where women are superior, where poets are important. It is a carefully contrived world which Graves goes to some lengths to explicate. The final effect is a glorious potpourri of past civilisation topped off with liberal lashings of the Graves philosophy. Our hero fulfils his tasks with considerable aplomb, just in time to be whisked back home before the book ends. And back in the present world, all live happily ever after. More or less.