Kathleen Raine - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism

Platonism

Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism...

and Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...

, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy

Temenos Academy

Temenos Academy is a teaching organisation in London dedicated to creative spirituality.Its origin was in 1980, when the Temenos Review was launched by Kathleen Raine, Keith Critchlow, Brian Keeble and Philip Sherrard to publish creative work which acknowledged spirituality as a prime need for...

Life

Raine was born in Ilford

Ilford

Ilford is a large cosmopolitan town in East London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Redbridge. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It forms a significant commercial and retail...

, Essex. Her mother was from Scotland and her father was born in Wingate, County Durham

Wingate, County Durham

Wingate is a village in County Durham, EnglandWingate is a former pit village with a mixture of 19th-century, post-war, and more recent housing developments, it was originally enhabited by around 30 farmers before 1839 when coal was discovered. It is located in the East of County Durham, three...

. The couple had met as students at Armstrong College in Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

. Raine spent part of World War I, 'a few short years', with her Aunty Peggy Black at the Manse in Great Bavington Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

. She commented, "I loved everything about it." For her it was an idyllic world and is the declared foundation of all her poetry. Raine always remembered Northumberland as Eden: "In Northumberland I knew myself in my own place; and I never 'adjusted' myself to any other or forgot what I had so briefly but clearly seen and understood and experienced." This period is described in the first book of her autobiography, Farewell Happy Fields (1973). Couzyn, Jeni (1985) Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p57

Raine noted that poetry was deeply ingrained in the daily lives of her maternal ancestors: "On my mother's side I inherited Scotland's songs and ballads…sung or recited by my mother, aunts and grandmothers, who had learnt it from their mothers and grandmothers… Poetry was the very essence of life." Raine heard and read the bible daily at home and at school, coming to know much of it by heart. Her father was an English master at County High School in Ilford. He had studied the poetry Wordsworth for his M.Litt thesis and had a passion for Shakespeare and Raine saw many Shakespearean plays as a child. From her father she gained a love of etymology and the literary aspect of poetry, the counterpart to her immersion the poetic oral traditions. She wrote that for her poetry was "not something invented but given…Brought up as I was in a household where poets were so regarded it naturally became my ambition to be a poet". She confided her ambition to her father who was sceptical of the plan. "To my father" she wrote "poets belonged to a higher world, to another plane; to say one wished to become a poet was to him something like saying one wished to write the fifth gospel". Couzyn, Jeni (1985) Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p58 Her mother encouraged Raine's poetry from babyhood.

Raine was educated at County High School, Ilford, and then read natural sciences, including botany and zoology, on an Exhibition at Girton College, Cambridge

Girton College, Cambridge

Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. It was England's first residential women's college, established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. The full college status was only received in 1948 and marked the official admittance of women to the...

, receiving her master's degree in 1929. While in Cambridge she met Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski was a Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor...

, William Empson

William Empson

Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.He was known as "燕卜荪" in Chinese.He was widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics...

, Humphrey Jennings

Humphrey Jennings

Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organization...

and Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry

Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...

. In later life she was a friend and colleague of the kabbalist author and teacher, Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi

Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi

Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi is an author of books on the Toledano Tradition of Kabbalah, a teacher of the discipline, with a worldwide following, and a founder member of the Kabbalah Society.-Early life:...

.

Raine was married to Hugh Sykes Davies

Hugh Sykes Davies

Hugh Sykes Davies was an English poet, novelist and communist who was one of a small group of 1930s British surrealists.Davies was born in Yorkshire to a Methodist minister and his wife. He went to Kingswood School, Bath and studied at Cambridge, where he co-edited a student magazine called...

. She left him for Charles Madge

Charles Madge

Charles Madge , was an English poet, journalist and sociologist, now most remembered as a founder of Mass-Observation.As a sociologist, he co-founded Mass-Observation with Tom Harrisson in 1937, an endeavour which would occupy more of his time than literature...

, they had two children together, however their marriage also broke up. She also held an unrequited passion for Gavin Maxwell

Gavin Maxwell

Gavin Maxwell FRSL, FIAL, FZS , FRGS was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters. He wrote the book Ring of Bright Water about how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland...

. The title of Maxwell's most famous book Ring of Bright Water, subsequently made into a film of the same name starring Virginia McKenna

Virginia McKenna

Virginia A. McKenna OBE is a British stage and screen actress, author and wildlife campaigner.-Early career:McKenna trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama then worked on stage in London's West End theatres before making her motion picture debut in 1952...

, was taken from a line in Raine's poem "The Marriage of Psyche". The relationship with Maxwell ended in 1956 when Raine lost his pet otter, Mijbil, indirectly causing the animal's death. Raine held herself responsible, not only for losing Mijbil but for a curse she had uttered shortly beforehand, frustrated by Maxwell's homosexuality: "Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now." Raine blamed herself thereafter for all Maxwell's misfortunes, beginning with Mijbil's death and ending with the cancer that took his life in 1969. From 1939 to 1941, Raine and her children shared a house at 49a Wordsworth Street in Penrith

Penrith, Cumbria

Penrith was an urban district between 1894 and 1974, when it was merged into Eden District.The authority's area was coterminous with the civil parish of Penrith although when the council was abolished Penrith became an unparished area....

with Janet Adam Smith and Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts (writer)

Michael Roberts , originally named William Edward Roberts, was an English poet, writer, critic and broadcaster, who made his living as a teacher.-Life:...

and later lived in Martindale. She was a friend of Winifred Nicholson

Winifred Nicholson

Winifred Nicholson was an English painter, a colourist who developed a personalized impressionistic style that concentrated on domestic subjects and landscapes. In her work, the two motifs are often combined in a view out of a window, featuring flowers in a vase or a jug.Nicholson was born in...

.

Raine's two children were Anna Madge (born 1934) and James Wolf Madge (1936-2006). In 1959, James married Jennifer Alliston, the daughter of Raine's friend, architect and town planner Jane Drew

Jane Drew

Dame Jane Drew, DBE, FRIBA was an English modernist architect and town planner. She qualified at the AA School in London, and prior to World War II became one of the leading exponents of the Modern Movement in London....

. Drew was a direct descendant of the neoplatonist Thomas Taylor whom Raine studied and wrote about. Thus a link was made between Raine and Taylor by the two children of James' marriage.

At the time of her death, following an accident, Raine resided in London.

Works

Her first book of poetry, Stone And Flower (1943), was published by Tambimuttu, and illustrated by Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...

. In 1946 the collection, Living in Time, was released, followed by The Pythoness in 1949. Her Collected Poems (2000) drew from eleven previous volumes of poetry. Her classics include Who Are We? There were many subsequent prose and poetry works, including Blake and Tradition, published in 1968.

The story of her life is told in a three-volume autobiography that is notable for the author's attempts to read (or impose) a structure on her memories that is quasi mythical, thus relating her own life to a larger pattern. This reflects patterns that can be detected in her poetry, in which she was clearly influenced by W. B. Yeats. The three books were originally published separately and later brought together in a single volume, entitled Autobiographies (the title itself is in conscious imitation of Yeats), edited by Lucien Jenkins.

Raine made translations of Honoré de Balzac's Cousine Bette (Cousin Bette, 1948) and Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions, 1951).

She was a frequent contributor to the quarterly journal, Studies in Comparative Religion

Studies in Comparative Religion

Studies in Comparative Religion was a quarterly academic journal published from 1963–1987 that contained essays on the spiritual practices and religious symbolism of the world's religions. The journal was notable for the number of prominent Perennialists who contributed to it...

, which dealt with religious symbolism

Religious symbolism

Religious symbolism is the use of symbols, including archetypes, acts, artwork, events, or natural phenomena, by a religion. Religions view religious texts, rituals, and works of art as symbols of compelling ideas or ideals...

and the Traditionalist perspective. With Keith Critchlow, Brian Keeble and Philip Sherrard she co-founded, in 1981, Temenos, a periodical, and later, in 1990, the Temenos Academy

Temenos Academy

of Integral Studies, a teaching academy that stressed a multistranded universalist philosophy, and in support of her generally Platonist and Neoplatonist

Neoplatonism

views on poetry and culture. She studied the 18th-century English Platonist Thomas Taylor (1758–1835), and published a selection of his works.

Raine was a research fellow at Girton College from 1955 to 1961, and in 1962 she was the Andrew Mellon Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. She taught at Harvard for at least one course about Myth and Literature offered to teachers and professors in the summer. She also spoke on Yeats and Blake and other topics at the Yeats School in Sligo, Ireland in the summer of 1974. A professor at Cambridge and the author of a number of scholarly books, she was an expert on Coleridge, Blake, and Yeats.

Honours

She received honorary doctorates from universities in the United Kingdom, France and the United States and won numerous awards and honors, including the Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize from the American Poetry Society (date unknown), and also:

1952 Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize
1953 Arts Council
Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...

Award
1961 Oscar Blumenthal Prize
1970 Cholmondeley Award
Cholmondeley Award
The Cholmondeley Award is an annual award for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the late Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966...
1972 Smith Literary Award
1992 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone in any of the Commonwealth realms. Originally the award was open only to British subjects living in the United Kingdom, but in 1985 the scope was extended to include people from the rest of the Commonwealth realms...
2000 Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

, Commander
2000 L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Commandeur.

Poetry collections

Stone And Flower, (p.u.), 1943
Living in Time, (p.u.) 1946
The Pythoness. (p.u.), 1949.
The Year One: Poems, H. Hamilton, 1952
The Hollow Hill: and other poems 1960-1964, H Hamilton, 1965
Six Dreams: and other poems, Enitharmon, 1968
Penguin Modern Poets 17, Penguin, 1970
Lost Country, H. Hamilton, 1971
On a Deserted Shore, H. Hamilton, 1973
The Oracle in the Heart, and other poems, 1975–1978, Dolmen Press/G. Allen & Unwin, 1980
Collected poems, 1935–1980, Allen & Unwin, 1981
The Presence: Poems, 1984–87, Golgonooza Press, 1987
Selected Poems, Golgonooza Press 1988
Living with Mystery: Poems 1987-91, Golgonooza Press, 1992
The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine, ed. Brian Keeble
Brian Keeble
Brian Keeble is an author and editor. He is the founder of Golgonooza Press and a co-founder of the Temenos Review and Temenos Academy.-Biography:...

, Golgonooza Press, 2000

Prose

Blake and Tradition, 2 volumes, Routledge, 1968
Thomas Taylor the Platonist. Selected Writings, Raine, K. and Harper, G.M., eds., Bollingen Series 88, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969 (also pub. Princeton University, USA).
William Blake, The World of Art Library - Artists, Arts Book Society, Thames and Hudson, London, 1970 (216 pp, 156 illustrations),
Yeats, the Tarot and the Golden Dawn, Dolmen Press, 1973
The Inner Journey of the Poet, Golgonooza Press, 1976
From Blake to a Vision, (p.u.), 1979
Blake and The New Age, George Allen and Unwin, 1979
Yeats the Initiate, George Allen & Unwin, 1987
W. B. Yeats and the Learning of the Imagination, Golgonooza Press, 1999.
Blake and Tradition, 2 Volumes, Routledge, 2002
Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred (World Wisdom
World Wisdom
World Wisdom is an independent publishing company established in 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana. World Wisdom publishes religious and philosophical texts, including the work of authors such as Frithjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Ananda K...

, 2004) (contributed essay)
The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity (World Wisdom
World Wisdom
World Wisdom is an independent publishing company established in 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana. World Wisdom publishes religious and philosophical texts, including the work of authors such as Frithjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Ananda K...

, 2005) (contributed essay)

Autobiography

Farewell Happy Fields, Hamilton/G. Braziller, 1974
The Land Unknown, Hamilton/G. Braziller, 1975
The Lion's Mouth, Hamilton/G. Braziller, 1977. autob.
Autobiographies, ed. Lucien Jenkins, Skoob Books, 1991

External links

Profile and poems, written and audio at the Poetry Archive
Guardian Unlimited obituary
Telegraph obituary
Temenos Academy
Profile of Raine at Temenos Academy
Kathleen Raine archive at University of Victoria, Special Collections

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