The poet Kathleen Raine was born on this day,
June 14th, in 1908. To mark the occasion, here is another article
inspired by her autobiographical books.
One thing I noticed immediately is that,
unlike many other victims of the creative spirit, Kathleen Raine made attempts
to understand the occult forces and unseen influences at work in her life.
She learned from experience and took some
responsibility for what happened to her:
“Because I suffered I supposed that he had
hurt me… an instinctive reaction, stupid and unjust for most often we hurt
ourselves whether by imagining non-existent wrongs or in persistence in some
mistake we cannot or will not see…”
She thought about the effect that she had on
the people around her and realised that, while she had suffered immensely, she
had also caused much suffering to others. She knew that she had treated her parents
cruelly – in return for what they had
done to her – and she also realised that obsessively concentrating on someone
can have a damaging effect:
“Perhaps he felt the longing dragging at
him…the sense of another’s unwanted thoughts flowing towards one constantly…”
She came to understand that what happens to
people in the outer world is often a reflection of what is happening in their
inner world:
“… the world continually reflects back to us
our inner states…”
“Everything that befalls us has its cause
within ourselves… another of those seeming miracles by which a change of inner
disposition is followed by a corresponding change in the outward course of events…”
“Our being responds only to that to which it
is attuned…”
Much of what she says is independent
confirmation of the validity of conclusions that I had already come to and the
truth of insights that had come to me.
