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Graves, Robert

Lars Porsena or the Future of Swearing, [45] 90; Goodbye to All That, [51] 52; I, Claudius; Claudius the God, [70] 25

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When in Rome . . .

Robin Blake on Robert Graves, I, Claudius & Claudius the God

The two books take the form of the intimate memoirs of Claudius himself, telling of his unlikely ascent to the imperial throne, and his surprisingly successful thirteen-year reign. Previously he had been known around Rome as Claudius the Idiot, or Clau-Clau-Claudius the Stammerer, and regarded as being in general an axe short of the full fasces. After his death the younger Seneca wrote a satire on Claudius’s death, The Pumpkinification of Claudius, in which the Emperor dies giving a noisy fart and saying, ‘Oh, good heavens, I believe I’ve made a mess of myself.’ ‘Whether this is actually so I can’t say,’ writes Seneca, ‘but all agree that he always made a mess of things.’
20160901121257 J. Weston Lewis. Victoria Neumark on Robert Graves

Goodbye to All What?

Victoria Neumark on Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That

Now I found myself asking: what was Robert Graves saying ‘goodbye’ to? When he published Goodbye to All That (1929), his startling memoir of his youth and his experiences on the Western Front in the First World War, he was 34. Most of the book recalls events that had ended a decade earlier. He says: ‘I had by the age of 23, been born, initiated into a formal religion, travelled, learned to lie, loved unhappily, been married, gone to the war, taken life, procreated my kind, rejected formal religion, won fame and been killed.’ Are these life events to which one can bid adieu?
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Fishcakes!

Anthony Wells on Robert Graves, Lars Porsena or the Future of Swearing

The future of swearing, what a wonderful subject. I looked forward to learning more: since the book was blessedly short, at 94 pages, 22 lines a page and only 6 words a line, finishing it wouldn’t require many train journeys. And not only to learning but also to an hour or possibly two of literary pleasure. I had read Goodbye to All That, Graves’s great memoir of his service in the First World War, and knew how well he could write. I recalled, too, from that other book a passage on the ordinary soldiers’ wearisome use of a four-letter expletive still so current today. Graves should certainly have interesting things to say on the subject.

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