If you are choosing between several editions of the -Opium Eater-, this one is the one you want.

True, it does not have Alethea Hayter's introduction, like the Penguin edition has; that being a point in that one's favour. But here you -also- get the entire -Suspiria de Profundis-, which is in many ways more beautiful and interesting than the Opium Eater itself. -Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow- must surely be the single greatest prose poem ever written in English.

The -Suspiria- was intended as a sequel to the -Opium Eater-, and those who enjoy the one will want them both.

This masterpiece of literature is a fascinating account of the pains and pleasures of opium as well as an autobiographical account of his youth. This books illustrates that sometimes moral or other world issues are not always in black and white. A sensitive and beautiful man, de Quincy's great book is a treasure!!!!

Robert Graves believed that all "true" poetry was inspired by, and dedicated to, the White Goddess (or to a woman embodying her attributes)--a "Belle Dame sans Merci"--who brought ecstasy, madness, and death to her chosen lovers. In this vein, he wrote this book, which has become the basis of much neo-pagan philosophy. The Maiden/Mother/Crone triplicity can be traced to _The White Goddess_, as can the Oak and Holly Kings, and the meanings usually ascribed to the letters of the Gaelic Ogham alphabet. TWG cannot be underestimated as a source for pagan theology; it has been the inspiration for a lot of wonderful material. The most puzzling thing, though, is how anyone managed to make enough sense of TWG to glean meaning from it. This book confused the living daylights out of me, and I was glad, paradoxically, that I had read many of the later books that draw upon TWG before I actually read TWG. Otherwise, I might have been hopelessly lost in these pages. Now, there are those who will call me unintellectual for this admission. But for pete's sake, I can follow Carl Kerenyi's mythological meanderings, and he doesn't use smaller words than Graves. What he does do, though, is use segues when moving from one subject to another, and distinguish clearly between known fact, conjecture, and sheer flight of fancy. And includes, for crying out loud, a bibliography!

Graves's basic premise is that the "Tuatha De Danaan" of the British Isles were really displaced Greeks, who encoded within their mystical alphabet secret lore from Greek and Hebrew mythology. The code in its entirety supposedly adds up to a poem about the Goddess. But as interesting as I find Graves's ideas, his text is sometimes impossible to fathom. He has a bad case of literary ADD. He'll start examining something in Welsh myth, for example, and if he can't find the evidence he wants in Welsh material, he'll fire up his warp drive and zoom off to Greece or Phoenicia or Israel, often leaving the reader behind in a cloud of dust and wondering what on earth just happened. Or, if he can't find a source for his ideas _anywhere_, he'll look at an existing source and say it must be corrupted by the patriarchy and _should_ say something else entirely. And he tends to state wild guesses with the same certainty accorded to historical facts. Since he doesn't have a bibliography, I can't look and see which of his statements came from his source material and which from his imagination. I don't think I have a hope of truly grokking this book until, at some point in the nebulous and improbable future, I become as well-read as the author himself.

I am glad I read this book, especially since it showed me where many modern pagan authors got their ideas. (For example, now I know why neo-pagan writers talk of Badb's cauldron, though it never seems to be mentioned in primary sources...it's because Graves translates "Badb" as "boiling" and conjectures that the name refers to the cauldron of Cerridwen and/or Bran. I also know now how Cerridwen's cauldron first became conflated with Bran's.) But it still fried my brain. I don't see myself throwing this book out or anything--what is more likely is that it'll become the "annotated edition", and that I'll stuff notes between the pages every time I read something that makes more sense out of Graves's ramblings. Worth reading, but don't feel dumb if you have trouble following it.

I am a great fan of Robert Graves. I find him to be an outstanding poet, an excellent novelist, and a compelling writer of non-fiction. Probably the best known, if not the best, example of the last mentioned genre is "The White Goddess."

When "Goddess" first appeared in the late 1940's it was a groundbreaking work; for lack of a better definition it is a book on cultural anthropolgy written by a poet, who felt that as a a poet and a man who understood the inner motivation of the poet he would give his views on the Muse and her invocation. The book covers a lot of territory, sprawling across civilization from the Greeks to the Celts, and from the three forms of the Muse to the Fisher King to the Ogham alphabet. It wanders so far that it's hard to keep up with Mr. Graves as he gallops across centuries and over distances. For those of us used to Mr. Graves' usual tight control of his material and its presentation, it's difficult to deal with how he jumps from subject to subject with little or no notice.

I'm almost tempted to say that this is Mr. Graves' version of "Finnegan's Wake", only in a non-fictional form. It certainly is his encomium to the White Goddess, whom he identifies as the original Muse of all poets, including himself. There's enough to think about for years in this book, and neo-pagan movements may be described as having largely started based on the thoughts provoked by this book.

But Graves was a poet, not a social scientist, and in the last fifty years many of his observations have been proven to be wrong. This in itself is not so surprising, nor is it really such a bad thing; the real problem is the amount of emotional residue that those ideas left in their wake. Graves makes some observations that some would find offensive now, such as his allegation that women can't be real poets - they have no Muse to appeal to, the White Goddess only wants the worship of males. He makes a possible exception of Sappho, for what it's worth.

In short, "Goddess" still deserves to be read - it's a good, albeit exhausting read, and Graves is always worth reading - but it would be a mistake to pick up his ideas and run with them.

I'm not an historician, nor a poet, just a casual reader who ever loved the works by R. Graves. Moreover, I think this book is not for scientific historicians, not even for profesionalized poets. I got surprised by the many long chains of deductions Graves makes, and I suspect some of them are quite inexact or biased. Graves starts the book by stating a couple of basic questions, and they are answered along the book. I wasn't able to check if all the explanations are right, but I'm certain the book has a value by its own, even when all these assertions were pure lies -which is not the case-. I loved this book because the high variety of views on the question of dealing with religious poetry, and the absence of orthodoxia in doing so. I think "Greek Myths", and Frazier's "The Golden Bough" could be of help, or reinforcement to deal with the many ellaborations Graves left appart in this book. Not for straight-minded people, certainly.