Good Deal

I finally returned today my introductory stack of reference books the Folio Society sent me, keeping the gratis copy of Robert Graves The Greek Myths--which they said had an $80 value or so.

I had wanted a copy of this two-volume set since reading my brother's, and writing numerous narrative poems out of it.

Right now I'm penning one on Bellerophon, a mythical figure I had never heard of prior to. Not making too much progress on it.

Who knows. Maybe it's my last poem . .

Wrong Turn

Socrates

Robert Graves, author of The Greek Myths--the book that single-handedly raised Greek mythology out of kiddiedom and restored it to its rightful place as the granddaddy of it all--believes there was a point when it all went wrong. That point, he says, was Socrates.

Socrates had a way of trivializing the myths on his way to introducing us to rationalism. He was the beginning of Western civilization, the progenitor of Western thought as we know it.

So Mr. Graves, in seeking to right the wrong Socrates did, is also telling us that when we made the right turn into Western thought, we made a very wrong turn indeed.

SEE: In Search of Genius by William Fifield for more on this.