Robert Graves Interviewed By Malcom Muggeridge 1965

[Music] a poet is born not made a man is not a poet unless there is some peculiar event in his family history to account for him the poet liked his poetry is himself the result of the fusion of incongruous forces sir States Robert Graves the poet who lives high above the sea in Majorca in his youth the Welsh Mountains which he climbed with Mallory provided a similar natural release for he has always been a man to command large horizons one of the 1418 war poets and friend of siegfried sassoon graves wrote of his experiences in goodbye to all that it remains a classic statement for his generation patriotism in the trenches he wrote was too remote a sentiment and at once rejected as fit only for civilians primarily a poet Graves is also the author of a large variety of works covering over a hundred titles and including historical novels translations mythology children's books and biographies he has long made his home in the Mediterranean island of Majorca where he lives close to the small Spanish village of daya here in a house built on the proceeds of his Claudia's books he lives with his second wife and has helped to bring up four of his eight children he retires to a room at the back of his house to write using a paintbrush to in count his mistakes he claims in fact to enjoy rewriting and making it easy for his readers and here Graves continues to write situated appropriately between the mountains and the sea tonight he talks to Malcolm Muggeridge about those incongruous forces that have made him what he is your ancestor is extraordinary mixed isn't it I mean racially nationally who everybody's ancestry is mixed in fact I can trace my descent as the Queen does to the Prophet Mohammed well that's pretty good thing is but you have got this German Irish Danish and Welsh Angela no rules no Welsh I mean sorry Jo married worship with German Irish Danish envious scotch scotch scotch is that the most important of all it's what keeps me steady keeps me here in my seat the Scotch ends this yeah that's your sort of vague yes there's governor we know which of them do you think was the most important as far as influencing it was being concerned about shaping your life in concerned your German or your Dane oil Scottish or Irish or my Arabian or your this going back this moment yes well I think what happens is that the Scotch and the German and the Danish keeps the Irish in check for a long time and eventually the Irish break through and that takes over that's right Ike except that absolutely because I detected you by seem to detect me or a mixture of a tremendously learning slightly eccentric German professor and a rather amusing irresponsible Irishman that's fair the Germans have my German NCOs extremely distinguished I know and and and a very very solid and very the father of modern history was my grand uncle little fern Rankin yeah but but listen let's forget about ancestry all right what a tremendous love words you've written I was looking through a list of your book men the same cause well yes but still a lot even just to write them if you repeat yourself a bit who doesn't but I suppose that it's your picture that you care about most well when I'm writing it yes well I don't care what happens to drafters really you never read it or look at it well I have revised our poems every few years but that's the part of your work that you attach importance to famous that's my job what about all the others I Claudius is again well I wrote I Claudius because I was I've been let down the land deal why I was there I had to find 4000 pounds and I'd mortgaged my house and I made a note some a couple of years before they have something very wrong with Victoria's story and that historians been telling the truth and that I'd it might be a good thing to write whoever needs the money and I didn't need the money so I wrote it and I made eight thousand pounds in six months and they saved my heart and it was purely a practical job and therefore now you disregard that something that you did to earn money as distinct from pate tray which is you where it is me yes why do you write poems how does it come about well what happens is sort of cloud descends on you and you don't know what's happening then you suddenly realized there's having some problem extreme importance it's gotta be salt and then you realize there's a perm around and then suddenly two words or three words come to your mind and that gives us start and and then you write to pay and it's as though the perm has already been written but you're trying to reconstitute it you regard the payment as something already there you've got to get back to the original your original view of it what about until you worked hard and hard and finally get it back to something near what it really is was would be could that be compared to what's got a mystical experience of course it's miss Celia I'm sort of thing yeah same sort of thing there it's something that some some some reality that you're trying to grasp something that's there as you say and it's always about well there's you see there's there's the right hand and the left hand the left hand is is a is a satiric hand and the right hand is a is a creative hand and you write a certain amount of satiric poems and and they're left-handers they're all left-handers but that's normal to keep it even balance but the important thing is the right hand do you feel that you've succeeded times at interest in doing this in getting this this thing out I'm in the jewel well well when when you find a poem you can't do anything more to it then it's then you put it away but you keep on revising them well it's easy to teach yourself you see and very often you think that you've written a poem that's alright and then after time you realized it in some slight wave cheated I mean they are chess together would you say that religion had played much part in your life I mean in a general sense white goddess or what that's really is that religion there's a difference between religion and Ecclesiastes ISM trend as a for was the makings called a 4-bit word and I'm not an ecclesiastic do i I know my Bible better than most priests I can say say without bursting there's most recent a little bit a little about it what about Christianity - careful at all listen we're living in in Moscow the Christian age is not it's a transitional age and there's a lot of if you want to know really yes I do whatever quests or I ever put that I don't want to know really I was thinking about the other day and I decided that what I've been trying to do really is to find out what Christianity really is and to separate the Jewish side of it from the he's inside and if you in called the Nazarene gospel restored with Joshua Padre which is not a printer or remain out of print because of the unofficial religious boycott apart of it but which is used in certain theological faculty is in certain universities as an subarrays a textbook because there's no other book on the subject that has that separates all the Jewish side of Christianity from the Chris from the I when I say the Christian side I can use literally because Christianity wasn't invented until that new side came in where it becomes a mystery religion of the Greek type with with Paloma Carlos and Simon Magus and other characters and I've tried in these two books to fight goddess and and and the Nazarene gospel entirely unlike to separate the two which is the good which is the bad it's not a question of good and bad it's the question of two in two different sides of Christianity which people have tried to make go together and which in which then go together and that's why all them there's all this model therefore but if you're gonna separate them out do discard one now I don't discard one that is a belief that's we're thinking no it's not a question which is better but what's happening now is people say worried about religions they are leave trying to leave out God they want to keep Jesus Christ as something apart from God doesn't work Jesus is so rooted in the idea of gods you can't get rid of it you better have God or nothing that's what it comes to your mother was a very past woman said right what's yours man was yes yes she was wrong he's a loser she was going to be a missionary and and she married my father instead yes and begat you my mother women don't forget right your father begat you with another corporation my brother put a mother boy and I never bought me no but I do think that her party and it sort of disaster be good played a part in your life she was very loving woman and she had she married at 35 and after 35 you didn't expect children and she had a girl that was all right to try on another go to get all the way that she had me you see when she's about 40 and so that was terrific for her the end and I think she loved me paid dearly you know and I think that was that's that had a great have been a great help to me all my life grant feels that in your book accident in goodbye she was he was very cross to me because I did the wrong things I broke all the social conventions but it was you know but she didn't feel ultimately cross yeah what about Charterhouse had that affect you going to public school you went I read about shot house the other day and in these evening papers somebody writing about it and saying very much what I'd said any rather more severely so it must be the same now well I didn't send any my children there but taking it really you weren't too happy that way you see all schools are bad you mean education every school is bad education spare education but every school is well I'm terrific Talmadge the only trouble is it trouble is you've got to get the children out of the parents hair so you got extend them to school boarding school must be boarding school I don't know now what about homosexuality at public schools do you think you write a bit about that I mentioned homosexuality but if you'll keep boys away from girls and you get helmets yes do you think this is a bad thing to happen I think schools are bad just then it doesn't happen in in in other places where you keep them where you have boys and girls nature together you don't get homosexuality do you think the fact that you went through a homosexual phase at Charterhouse infants too much wasn't homosexual phase it was named awesome listen a pearl Shakespeare you see here at the Sheikh he wrote those sonic desert solids and he was he was a he was a playwright and you know what the stage is like and in those days all the women's parts were paid by boys and so he naturally got rather sensitive and boys can take it on over women characteristics and plays a woman in extraordinary way and it was the woman that was a che Spears was in love with this part and then of course suddenly became a man and the whole thing ended in tears exactly and but you've got to distinguish between between homosexuality of one source and homosexuality in which the boy is playing the woman right I quite understand that distinction the only thing I wonder is whether not having been to school that kind myself whether the fact that there you go through this phase I've been looking back on it whether you think the inference of it is bad or good or large or small everything is interesting in it so to speak yeah I mean you don't look back on it to something that was lighting or anything like that no no I'm not I take it myself no thank you yeah I do a full full credit for that well now this anyway the thing is that the phase past is everything past isn't it because you're always writing about love and with us car passes everything passed everything passes thank god you're always writing about love and women in your poems now I'm sure that's what purchase mr. burden I suppose it is but I was just wondering whether that is I mean whether whether that's based on particular people all sort of general emotions when you write a poem about women or disappoint it no ask you for telephone numbers and I can do give you anything that's too old man make any use your holy number 62 boy well mere boy never die I couldn't make any use of your telephone numbers I couldn't hope to I couldn't hope to appear in your in your place the thing is dude what do you making me say exactly I'm just exploring the influences which have made your paycheck what it is now that we come to another great influence in your life the war the 1418 war that was a terrific influence wasn't it yes you know what dr. Thompson said I can't even get words but oh what puzzles had they were it wasn't nobody who's not served in the war isn't it sense of self-respect which makes me believe the stories of dr. Johnson fought with the British troops against the Scots in thee because you wouldn't say that you wouldn't say that if you hadn't been in the war or did I took out somehow sort of me do you feel that therefore you look back on this harrowing experience really with that there's a good deal in it that was positive rather than negative oh yes you're all quite crazy in a very positive way completely crazy but it was a terrific experience and not altogether a lost one as it were never rather not know it was it was them was marvelous because you had but you had in any six weeks you had one chance of being killed one chance of being wounded and one chance of being slightly wound of severely wounded if you were happen to be an officer the privates had longer life the hill it's very simple business all to do with horses because then you see everybody shops had where these George Lovett witches n parties and made it quite a different silhouette and so the German troops were taught to fire at the officers but they were shared the silhouettes of English private English officers they shot at us because in the Second World War we knew about that jolly good cow the distinguishable yes fine and what's more in the Second World War when you had ten percent of casualties they took you back and to give you sedatives and gave you a rest with us we wind up to 90 percent casual list but brought back and recharge and Britain again do a terrific gang of neurotics afterwards the ones of you who got through it is I've been in dance poison yes yes what about that well you can't stop then you have to surrender to your glands you want to match thing is anyway the warp is terrific played critic part and is well it you learn to certain extremism from war and you learn to leave go of NZ and you also learnt well you see I once compromised and this been on my conscience ever since let us say at a certain time in 1917 I was only 20 at the time but everybody else being killed how's it captain in fact last week I still celebrated about 50th years of Captain your calls break at 50 as a captain well I was required to attend a court-martial on the deserter and with the with the notice came instruction from the Corps as a man had to be shot well now in order to support morale well now this is vague way of saying because you can't direct justice in that way a court has the same responsibilities and if I'd attended the court-martial and had said look here I refused to objectively dictates of the Corps about influencing my my verdict to this thing I've been cashier I could have gone sick that'll been hardly I could have gone and since this man to death and that's been destroyed me you see so I got out of it by there was one other captain who was taking a spill in the trenches and I took over his command and he went to the corner she had a nice time he didn't mind but I always felt today that I'd or there's only 20 and the judgment was wrong and from then out was I decided never to be anybody's stooge never take any instruction from anybody else in other words never to take a job which I was responsible to anybody above me like if that ever since yes I think you have nothing it's played in but you're right it's it's it's it's no sorry it all started start that one incident is very interesting in this war thing cause after the war you met T Lawrence and wrote about him and all that interesting what do you feel about him now do you feel the same as you did then oh yes I know more about him but he was my friend and three times who knows nearly versus no that's marvelous but the thing is that he was a real man but does it worry you the things that have come out about him does it does it alter your judgment in any way what things but I take a simple thing I can never believe and I know that you I know that you've got this terrific feeling about people telling the truth I can never believe that a person who is a sort of fantasies about himself is any good well obviously Lance was that wasn't he no not a fantasies about himself he was he was very truthful about himself only as a woman tells lies in order to protect us protect a secret not for self-glorification after the war and all that then came marriage what about during the war during the war just the end of the war what about that for children yes I know I knew one of them well and the thing is what but but what do you feel about that I mean do you think matrimony is a good idea I think a mesh should be restricted the very few people capable of being made about 10% and what about the others and they should not be allowed to be married in this day jolly well can be made and a suitable fort and the others the hell the hell the trend is against marriage now and it's going back to the original position in Europe and in and in Arabia and in everywhere before patriarchal marriage came in which the woman was completely free to take her husband choose him and this card and when she wanted to and she kept the children you had no responsibility for it but doesn't all your white goddess business and so I mean that you rather climbed the view of the feminine as the dominant principle in life that's what's happening now and we can't stop it the the only thing is that that patriarchy dies very hard and what's really happened is I've got it lecture about this oxen quite soon it's a very good sighting it's about how we first of all no matter what happen first visit come here then you had a matriarchy then you had a patriarch you now we have a meeting out here that's the rule of the Machine and matriarch and patriarch your best destroyed by meteorology and it's nothing else has got to happen I see I must going to happen is one of the most exciting things what do you think will happen you wait no but give us some idea now while people looking at you simulation I think somehow that the the principle of magic when I say see you say magic and you didn't intend addition to magic and sorcery even but anyhow the principle magic will reestablish itself so save us and save a few the rest and good help we'll get him it'll save a few there's always there's always an air assault you know well begging for crash we know that yes what form of the crash takes we'll be all dead by that time it's not gonna happen to another how long both when the population expression time for things 2036 is doesn't affect us then does it well I don't know because they may discover something to make us go on living you know their god forbid would you like that incidentally well you know it's happened on three occasions I would have been dead if something hadn't just been discovered and they've really continue this existence you mean that's true illness or something yes and therefore you think that if if some somebody produced some you to enable you to go on living indefinitely you take it would you I doubt it if you would really you don't want to go on living really it depends who else is about I see what about being a professor of course you were a professor before they weren't you well I'm professor portrayed Oxford but that's the only I think I can say it's the only elective professorship in the in the United Kingdom but you were professor in Cairo forget that that was a job given me by three friends of mine Colonel Lawrence Arnold Bennett and Don boxing you know I wouldn't as a lecturer mid-shaft you so that poverty we don't make it I took the job because my wifeís was ordered to go to a hot climate and see any way I could get there and so it's now the reason I took the this javadocs with an entirely personal reason was it I will not tell you our interesting entry but you won't tell no have you ever told anybody yes but only privately yeah you've never written anything no all right we just have to accept the fact that it's something we don't know that you took it for private reasons nothing to do was being professor first read Oxford I did I I think Robert this applies where was everything i doing anybody I think everybody takes things for private reasons yes I do yeah yes it's all pretence they're not not about tents it's it's it's a what is its convention ritual no it's doing the right thing for the right reasons not and but not the apparent reasons yes that's what I mean every success I've had a great funder isn't that a pretense right now take out the word president if it's if it's if it's you're seeming to do it for one reason and ready doing it flat isn't that a pretense no is it very strenuous yeah base genius you don't get much dough for I do don't know it costs me about twice as much as I get just for the glossy times as much as are you what about money doing money's the thing with effects one's life matter need for Molly you joking no I'm not well the other day I got ruined what you mean you lost all your money yeah how'd you do that a fraudulent chap who owned all my copyrights went away was ten thousand pounds good hey laughs ty hell you databases well I mean I don't think it's a particularly pleasant thing to happen it's very very funny Oh everything's funny in a way you tell me it doesn't dummy a lot of good has it hmm why because you're gonna now write a lot of other things yeah I can't even write anything because of is a chap who's owns all my cough right is in prison in Switzerland and I can't write in it can't sign any more contract Seashore a free man yeah he's liberated you laughing yeah so that's good that's an interesting point there not a thing of course connected with that I like very much new is your humor Agron a sense of humor you haven't got a sense of humor I quite agree with that but you've got a hell of humor humor being a sense of the ridiculous a sense of the inappropriateness of things of the absurdity of life you were here yes I quite agree if you hadn't got that you'd have died of melancholia you've got a melancholic temperament and some of the black Irish in me that's it yeah you've got a real deep melancholic temperament and that's been you've been saved from that by this humor do you know you with that no I'm lecturing instead of asking yes yes yeah instead of asking yes yes they do go together in the meeting especially yes they do go together do you have a good way Island no I've been there twice Osito it's exactly like I always remembered it I come with you once you did like it it frightens me it's like going back into the womb you know I see that are you going to go on writing poetry forever to the end of your life nobody knows I don't even know if I have written poems how do you mean you don't know I'm said as as Robert rusted but pages of praise word and you front you know they write poems create some quotes you send it and and they go on and and the only thing I'm really interested in in in my work this has been your life in a way yes I said somewhere that I read I write poems I write prose as a man reads dogs nor to feed his cat but you write poems because that's the thing because I damn well must [Music]

Channel: Bryan Helton

Views: 46,249

Keywords: robert graves, poet, writers, malcom muggeridge, world war 1, great war, i claudius, goodbye to all that, interview

Id: qzLuG3tM84I

Length: 29min 48sec (1788 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019