Robert Graves writing total bollix - with superb conviction

No poet can hope to understand the nature of poetry unless he has had a vision of the Naked King crucified to the lopped oak, and watched the dancers, red-eyed from the acrid smoke of the sacrificial fires, stamping out the measure of the dance, their bodies bent uncouthly forward, with a monotonous chant of "Kill! kill! kill!" and "Blood! blood! blood!

From The White Goddess by Robert Graves

**

The above is a prime example of what I mean by Graves's "superb" (i.e. impressively splendid) prose style; so strong, self-confident and vivid that it is easy to be convinced. 

And thereby fail to notice that what he is actually describing as the basis for Mankind's ideal and proper religion is not only completely-made-up factual nonsense, but also horribly, invertedly, wrong; grossly  undesirable, and an actively evil state of affairs.  

Just in case the reader is doubtful of having understood him aright as proposing this kind of society as A Good Thing; then Graves provided us with an illustrative a novel of this supposed "utopia": Seven Days in New Crete. 

   

Yet, while actually reading the passage... Well, it's hard not to believe him, for a moment or two!