Kathleen Raine (1908–2003)

It is evident both from the poets she examines and by her own admission that Kathleen Raine has an old-fashioned, even ancient view of verse and its place in culture. “I am one of those who hold the unfashionable belief that talent cannot make a poet, and that the what of art is more important than the how; and also that ‘technique’ does not exist in itself but only as a means to an end, an idea that is to be realized.” [15] Those without interest in the sacred or esoteric show more traditions, or focused on modern poetry, probably won't be interested in the works and poets Raine is concerned with in Defending Ancient Springs. But, at her best, Raine provides the best sort of criticism: an unapologetic accolade for the poet or work she examines, with concrete examples and close reasoning to support her high regard. Even when you disagree, you'll know precisely why, and still probably learn something you find useful, if only to clarify your own opinion.

The essays are of two varieties. The one variety focuses on an individual poet, some familiar to me if only by reputation: Yeats, Blake, Coleridge. Others I’d never heard of (Gascoyne, Watkins, Perse), but it soon came clear they spoke a similar language, no matter how different their poetic style. Raine’s contribution in these essays is to link the separate poets first by saying something of each in their historical situation, and then by linking them to the tradition. In effect she takes a common approach, ending each essay by exploring a little way into the esoteric tradition, something each poet seems to have addressed consciously and deliberately but which is not always evident to modern readers. It goes by many names: Platonism, sacred tradition, esotericism, perennial philosophy. Raine refers to it as the tradition of imagination. “[T]he entire European tradition of imaginative poetry, with all the rich variety of image in which ancient and enduring themes have been dressed, in various places and at different times, proves to be strung upon a single thread. To find this thread in one poet is to hold a clue to all; Yeats and Shelley, Blake and Milton, Dante, Virgil, Ovid, Spenser, and Coleridge all speak with the same symbolic language and discourse of the immemorial world of the imagination.” [94]

The other variety of essay considers the tradition itself, providing in effect an introduction by reviewing specific themes such as the role of symbols and ideas, from mythology to the beautiful. Her weakest essay is one of these, "The Use of the Beautiful", and amounts to a rant against modernism. But, her strongest are here, too, and serve as the keystone to the anthology: the essay “On the Symbol”, followed closely by its companion piece “On the Mythological”, are works I shall return to repeatedly.

Raine cites throughout the influence of Jakob Boehme and Thomas Taylor; it seems worth following up on these, as well as Edgar Wind’s Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance. show less

This is a collection of essays from the 1960s. We hear a lot about some famous poets, from Spenser to Yeats. I learned some new names too, such as Edwin Muir and Vernon Watkins. Raine has a very consistent and passionate Traditionalist perspective in her writing. The last essay on St. John Perse was especially interesting to me, because it started to open up a wider space of genuine confrontation with reality. It made me think of the contrast between Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism. Zen tends to show more be more direct, while Vajrayana is more mythologically mediated.

I love the idea of art as transformational, purposeful, leading us toward some kind of perfection. This is Raine's steady theme, so I found this book very inspiring! show less

This slender monograph was developed from a paper presented in scholarly sessions on Yeats in 1968, published in 1972, and revised in 1976. In its closing passage, it refers to itself as "this most superficial study of Yeats's use of the symbolism of magic acquired through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" (74). Author Kathleen Raine appears to have been in the vanguard of academic research on the esoteric interests and activities of Yeats. She is the dedicatee ("to whom else ...?") of show more George Mills Harper's much lengthier 1975 Yeats's Golden Dawn.

Raine's preliminary remarks on the historical sources and general applications of Tarot symbolism are sensible and well-informed. She follows these with a history of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, citing reliable sources from among those available in the 1960s and 70s, but here she makes a few odd blunders. For example, she takes the "Roseae Rubeae" and "Aureae Crucis" to have been the "two higher degrees" of the Inner Order (5), when the Inner Order in fact had three grades and "The Ruby Rose and Cross of Gold" was the name of the Order itself.

The 1976 second edition is very amply illustrated in black and white with images of Tarot cards and drawings from Golden Dawn ritual manuscripts. These are all fascinating and well chosen to support the text. I was especially intrigued by the inclusion of cards from the Tarot packs actually owned and used by Yeats and his wife, even though his was a quite conventional Italian deck and hers was the familiar Marseilles design.

At the outset of the second of the text's two sections, Raine demonstrates that the Stella Matutina ritual for the Zelator grade includes conscious paraphrasing from William Blake (42-3). Her suggestion that pioneering Blake editor Yeats was then necessarily involved in the original composition of the ritual depends crucially on the rather dubious "if the passage belongs to the original text and is not a later addition." As a general matter, her analyses are weakened by taking the Regardie exposures of the later Stella Matutina rituals as authentic texts of the Golden Dawn order in which Yeats had been initiated. She would have been better served, in fact, to work from Aleister Crowley's exposures published in The Equinox as Book II of "The Temple of Solomon the King."

Although Raine consistently disparages Yeats's esoteric antagonist Crowley as an author of "bad verse" (46), she did find it worthwhile to include reproductions of many Frieda Harris Tarot cards with long captions quoting Crowley on the cards' symbolism. She even surprised me by suggesting that Yeats's The Resurrection (1931) may have had a debt to Crowley (47-8). However, I think she erred in pointing to Liber Legis III:34 as the influential text, when Yeats was quite evidently riffing on the Hellas chorus by Shelley ("The world's great age begins anew")--a text familiar and dear to Crowley, who used it for the solar benediction at the end of his theatrical ceremony "The Rite of Mars." (A corollary question: Was Liber Legis influenced by Shelley?)

The most important element of Raine's study, and one with which I take no exception, is her explanation of the relationship of Yeats's magical training to his literary production. I am now perhaps sufficiently motivated to read Yeats's A Vision, which has been on my shelf for decades. show less

I think Keats spoiled me for lesser romantic poets. Shakespeare and Donne often leaven their romantic flights of fancy with twists and twitting of conventions. Keats to me seemed to embrace them but with such freshness of expression and sheer beauty I forgave him. Almost all of the poems by Coleridge in this volume (according to the editor in the introduction all by him that is worthy of attention by a general reader) felt like exercises in poetic cliches. There are three poems cited as his show more greatest included here, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" and each certainly does have resonant lines.

There are certainly many famous lines in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of Coleridge's longer works:

“Water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”

I can't quite savor this poem though--probably bad associations from it being forced upon me in school, but it doesn't sing to me.

"Christabel," which was never finished was... interesting--because it seemed to have such an obvious erotic subtext between two women--and I'm not the kind that usually reads that sort of thing into literature:

"Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropped to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom and half her side-
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!”

That hasn't been lost on critics and looking it up I've seen "Christabel" described as a "Lesbian Vampire" tale. However, there's a quality of WTF to that given what I read of Coleridge's literary criticism. There's a lot in his prose works that made Coleridge sound like a rather priggish moralist to me. Two-thirds of this volume consists of prose writings by Coleridge, largely on the subject of poetry and drama, particularly Shakespeare. And Milton--of whom Coleridge said that in his Eve in Paradise Lost Milton had written the epitome of female characterizations. I read Paradise Lost a few months ago--and it was among the most misogynist works I've ever read. Coleridge's comments on Shakespeare's female characters also often made me think he was the opposite of a feminist. I find it impossible to believe Coleridge meant a lesbian or feminist context in "Christabel." And when you feel a poet is truly clueless about the meanings in his own poem, it's hard to respect him.

Then there's "Kubla Khan" and I do have to admit I find it resonant and enchanting--my favorite poem in the book despite that, like "Christabel," it's essentially a uncompleted fragment:

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."

That poem for me was the best of it. Unlike with Donne, Shakespeare and Keats, I didn't discover here new and unfamiliar poems that delighted me. In fact, I might have rated this book even lower, were it not that I did find a lot of Coleridge's Shakespeare criticism of interest. show less