Seven Days in New Crete

Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 23:00:15 +0000
Subject: Re: "Seven days in New Crete"

>I am an Italian university student. I am specializing in English
>literature at the University of Pescara, Italy and, for my thesis, I am
>preparing a study on Robert Graves' fiction... I have found this archive and I have
>thought to call for help. In a chapter of my thesis I have to tell about a Graves'
>novel, called "Seven days in New Crete", but in my country I was not able to
>find any news about it. It would be great to have some critical comments
>on this novel and any link it could have with another novel, called
>"1984" by George Orwell about the utopian thematic. I would be very happy
>if somebody paid attention to my help request. Thanks a lot, Alessandra.

Alessandra,

'Seven days in New Crete' is one of several works in which Graves explored his thesis that the original theological and social structures of the human race were matriarchal. In other words,that the principal divinity - in fact the only original divinity - was once 'The Goddess', and that, formerly, social organization had feminine characteristics, as contrasted with the 'masculine' social structures of the modern world.

The principal discussion of this thesis can be found in 'The White Goddess', first published in 1948. The idea first surfaced in 'The Golden Fleece'. It quickly dominated Graves thoughts, and 'The Golden Fleece' was put aside while Graves wrote the first draft of 'The White Goddess' (originally titled 'The Roebuck in the Thicket'). The matriarchial idea also plays a significant role in the novel 'King Jesus'. Graves translated Apuleius' 'Golden Ass' in the same decade, and Apuleius' work seems to have confirmed Graves in the belief that he was on the right track. The 'Goddess' is a key figure in Apuleius's novel, though in his work it is a specific goddess who is referred to (Isis), rather than 'The Goddess' of Graves' thesis.

The novel fits broadly into the category of science fiction, and explores a utopian future. Graves began planning a utopian novel in the summer of 1940 [see: Richard Perceval Graves' 'Robert Graves and the White Goddess': 'Work in Hand', p18] whose ideas of social and political organisation were founded chiefly upon former ideas of Laura Riding which he hoped would eventually inspire a 'practical organization of decent people'. He told his son David of his idea for the novel: David was however not impressed, and said that 'any practical organization of decent people would be suppressed at once by the government' and that he thought it 'time this Western industrial civilization was ended'. Possbily because of this criticism, the novel was laid aside for nearly seven years.

New Crete is divided into kingdoms, but powers of the kings are 'entrusted to them by their queens'. The governing principle is a custom based 'not on a code of laws, but for the most part on the inspired utterances of poets' who receive the guidance of the Muse (the Goddess). The system is run by women who 'act directly on behalf of the Goddess'. Thus women are 'naturally' treated by men as the superior sex. RPG comments that:

'This is a society living in harmony with the natural world; and each individual is allocated to one of the 'five estates' not by birth but by capacity. Money has been abolished; different villages have different social customs, so that one may live in a monogamous, polygamous, or even polyandrous society and yet be perfectly virtuous; there are even 'bagnios', brothels which it is no disgrace to visit, and 'where one goes when one isn't in love with anyone in particular but feels unhappily lecherous'; while war has become ritulalized into a kind of moderately violent rugger, so that the only deaths, apart from those by natural causes, occur as part of the ritual of goddess-worship.' [Richard Perceval Graves' 'Robert Graves and the White Goddess' p143-4].

'Seven Days in New Crete' is not in fact a serious utopia: its inhabitants are unhappy with its complacency and indifference: the New Cretans do not possess 'the quality that we prize as character: the look of indomitability which comes from dire experiences nobly faced and overcome'. Therefore the rulers have deliberately introduced 'a seed of trouble... since true love and wisdom spring only from calamity'. Graves novel is therefore anti-utopian.

On the face of it, there isn't much to connect Orwell's '1984' and Graves' utopian novel. They were both composed in the late 1940's, and both result from an anxiety about evident tendencies in the modern world. Orwell's literary sources included Wells, London, Huxley and Zamyatin (principally Zamyatin): I do not know whether or not Orwell read Graves' book. However both works are responses to the political and social dislocations of the early twentieth century. Both men wished for the creation of a new social order, but were rather pessimistic about the practicalities of this. Graves was particularly influenced by Laura Riding's ideas on politics and society during their time together, though afterwards he reacted against them: it is therefore interesting to speculate on the nature of 'Seven Days in New Crete' had Graves written it while still under the spell of Riding. It might have been whole-heartedly utopian in outlook.

Are there significant parallels between the novels? In both novels society is split up into different areas and levels, which have different rules of behaviour, as if they were autonomous societies: in Orwell's novel these are the 'zones of influence'; and in Graves' future society different areas of New Crete have different customs and mores. War has been ritualised in both societies: in '1984' it serves to underpin inequality and to soak up overproduction. Also, in both Orwell's and Graves' novels there is a social hierarchy: in '1984' membership of the oligarchy (the party) is presented as essentially non-hereditary - this is because the oligarchy's purpose is to preserve itself, rather than the families of its members; in 'Seven Days in New Crete' status is acquired on the basis of 'capacity'. Both societies continue because the ruling elite has the power to nominate its successors. Thus in both cases the society is totalitarian, in that all the reins of power are in the hands of a small oligarchic group, whatever the outward appearances of difference and diversity.

Both these novels owe a great deal to the circumstances of their creation, and looking at the context of their creation is probably the best way to make useful comparisons.