Once again Graves uses scholarship to provide twentieth century readers with access to the most important spiritual documents of their tradition, thus freeing them to learn personally from their key texts, rather than being at the intellectual mercy of institutions and authorities of all kinds. If Graves is one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, it is because he understands in unparalleled fashion the importance and uses of human freedom. Graves teaches us that freedom is freedom to read without, as he often calls it, the gloss of stifling authority. In order to express the essential characteristic of human life, Graves consults holy Sufic texts and meditates on the word baraka. He believed that this word, and by implication the culture from which it comes, possessed a unified understanding of something that had been lost in the West.
Graves is admirably accessible in a way that has been almost lost in the late twentieth century.
No academic jargon or tiring allusions obscure either his line of reasoning or poetic intensity. Thus, we become aware in an almost unmediated way of Graves' sense of life. Moreover, Graves' unrivaled versatility, embracing almost every type of writing, allows him to reach out to and communicate with people of greatly differing sensibilities and cultural backgrounds. We needn't agree with these answers to see that his effort, personal dignity, and psychological penetration point the way to a more positive future for every person on this earth. We need to read Robert Graves.