Some of the books I have written about are
guaranteed to drive the dark clouds away every time I read them, Rudyard
Kipling’s Stalky stories and the Molesworth books for example. They are old
friends who never fail to amuse and make me feel better.
Other books have the opposite effect. I
sometimes wish that I had never read Kathleen Raine’s three-volume autobiography.
Some of the things that she writes come very close to home; they are extremely
depressing and almost too painful to read.
I have described elsewhere the fatal curse that she
believes she put on her friend Gavin Maxwell. The books Farewell Happy Fields,
The Land Unknown and The Lion’s Mouth contain much more material of interest,
not all of it distressing to read.
Here are a few random extracts from the notes
I made when reading the three books, which are now back in the public library.
I have changed the sequence in which her words appear, and just included some
quotations that might inspire people and provide confirmation for their ideas.
Some words of wisdom from Kathleen Raine, and a few comments from me:
“Imagination loves nobility and splendour,
tragedy, beauty and kingship; loves all great things …of equality it knows
nothing…”
“… poetry alone answers to the unsatisfied
longing for beauty and wonder…”
“Poets keep alive the pearls and not the
acorns, food of natural mankind…”
Is she suggesting that the majority of people
are swine!
“…I rejected socialism and the greatest good of the greatest number for those values which few can reach…high and beautiful things are the true ends of life …”
Yes. It is good that some people are elitists and keep the flame alive.
“The barbarians so outnumber the people of
culture that they themselves set the standards.”
Very true.
“…winged souls are more often dragged down by
the commonplace herd, who, ignorant of the use of wings, clip them and forbid
their flight, than the wingless injured by the escape of the winged ones…who,
among the vulgar, heeds the misery of imagination hampered and thwarted?…talent
cannot best ‘serve humanity’ by abandoning its vocation…to evade a high task by
taking refuge in a low one is not humility but despair, spiritual sloth and
even a kind of inverted pride…”
This is the bucket of crabs scenario.
“The self-assurance and equilibrium of those
who live on the physical plane do not exist in those whom nature designs for
another kind of love.”
People who can live only in this world will of course do better in it than people who can also live in other worlds. John Buchan made much the same point.
“Affirming one’s destiny is more important
than claims of family and society.”
Not everyone will agree with this, and there
is always the danger of falling between two stools or being tricked out of one’s
life and led to disaster by an evil pied piper.
“Poets are always blamed for the same thing –
they are ruthless, or that which drives and possesses them is. Ideals are not
beacons on a mountain peak, they are task-masters and gaolers…”
So, very creative people are slaves to their ideals and their daimon then.
“Psychiatrists waste much effort in trying to
adjust unhappy people to some bed of Procrustes when all they need to do is get
away and find their right place and right work.”
She has nailed it perfectly here. They may need to find their tribe too.
“…those
who choose the vision of perfection choose to experience the pain of
deprivation as the lesser evil, or perhaps there is no choice: “you are one of
those who are not allowed to forget”…ultimately the many are sustained by those
images of a lost perfection held before them by the rememberers…the sole
purpose of the arts and the justification of those who refuse to accept as the
norm those unrealities the world calls real.”
Yes, poets find life unbearable because they
see very clearly how things might be and are supposed to be.
