Kathleen Raine

The classic book on William Blake as prophet of the New AgeWilliam Blake (1757–1827) inhabited a remarkable inner world, one that he brought vividly to life in his poetry, painting, and printmaking. Blake and Antiquity situates this brilliant and enigmatic artist within the Western esoteric canon, revealing his indebtedness to Neoplatonism, the Gnostics, alchemy, and astrology. In this book, Kathleen Raine demonstrates how Blake rejected conventional orthodoxy and went in search among the occult traditions of antiquity for symbols that might expand the mind’s awareness into a spiritual state where space, time, and even death are transcended.

Prophet, poet, painter, engraver – William Blake (1757–1827) was an artist of uniquely powerful imagination and far-reaching creative gifts. His work expresses the spiritual drama of the English national being, integrating poetry and visual art in a sustained work of visionary creativity unparalleled in English art history. Revealing Blake to be far more than a revolutionary social radical, this classic study reshapes our understanding of the artist’s achievement. Kathleen Raine details the enriching effect of mystical, alchemical and gnostic philosophy on Blake’s art. She unravels the complex, deeply felt symbolism expressed in his paintings and prints, and describes the powerful impact of his reading of Dante, Milton and the Bible. Raine’s compelling text guides the reader through the life and thought of this extraordinary artist. Fully alive to the uniqueness of Blake’s art – which has ‘a reality, a coherence, a climate’ all its own – she introduces famous work such as Jerusalem, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Four Zoas and The Book of Job, relating them to Blake’s world view and explaining their prophetic qualities, their fierce energy, and their central place in British Romantic art.With 185 illustrations in colour

First published in 1979, this is a very welcome reissue of Kathleen Raine's seminal study of William Blake - England’s only prophet. He challenged with extraordinary vigour the premises which now underline much of Western civilization, hitting hard at the ideas of a naive materialist philosophy which, even in his own day, was already eating at the roots of English national life. In his insistence that ‘mental things are alone real’, Blake was ahead of his time. Materialist views are now challenged from various quarters; the depth psychologies of Freud and Jung, the study of Far Easter religion and philosophy, the reappraisal of myth and folk lore, the wealth of psychical research have all prepared the way for an understanding of Blake’s thought. We are ready to acknowledge that in attacking ‘the sickness of Albion’ Blake penetrated to the inner worlds of man and explored them in a way that is quite unique.Dr Raine, who has made a long study of Blake’s sources, presents him as a lonely powerful genius who stands within the spiritual tradition of Sophia Perennis, ‘the Everlasting Gospel’. From the standpoint of this great human Norm, our immediate past described by W.B. Yeats as ‘the three provincial centuries’, is a tragic deviation; catastrophic, as Blake believed, in its spiritual and material consequences. Only now do we possess the necessary knowledge to understand William Blake and the ever-growing number of people who turn to him surely justifies his faith in the eternal truths he strove to communicate.

Blake was a visionary like no other. To some, like William Wordsworth, the only explanation for the remarkable spiritual world Blake witnessed and brought to life in his books was 'insane genius'. Although such a view persisted well into the twentieth century, this is the pivotal work which challenged that perspective and changed forever our understanding of William Blake's genius, placing him in the esoteric tradition. For many this book will be a revelation; for lovers of Blake it is indispensable.

Blake was a visionary like no other. To some, like William Wordsworth, the only explanation for the remarkable spiritual world Blake witnessed and brought to life in his books was 'insane genius'. Although such a view persisted well into the twentieth century, this is the pivotal work which challenged that perspective and changed forever our understanding of William Blake's genius, placing him in the esoteric tradition. For many this book will be a revelation; for lovers of Blake it is indispensable.

The story of the life and work of the visionary poet and artist, William Blake.

In compiling her Collected Poems, Kathleen Raine was uniquely placed to look back on more than six decades of her poetry and to decide the canon by which she wished to be judged and remembered. From its first appearance her poetry has been recognised as possessing a rare imaginative integrity, remaining faithful to a formal purity of voice, as well as to an imagery whose resonances are at once her own voice yet speak as if from the heart of the human condition itself. These are poems of wonder, of distillation and, ultimately, of affirmation. This definitive collection demonstrates a lifetime's commitment to the learning of the imagination, and, since original publication in 2000, has confirmed Raine's reputation as a poet who has unfailingly given voice to a vision of life in which the temporal, in all its modes and places, is imbued with the numinous and the eternal.

Kathleen Raine was one of the greatest British poets of the last century. Raised in a deeply literary and spiritual household, she went on to study at Cambridge where she met Jacob Bronowski, William Empson, and Malcolm Lowry. A dedicated Neoplatonist, she studied and presented the works of Thomas Taylor, and wrote seminal books on William Blake, including the monumental Blake and Tradition, and several highly praised books about W. B. Yeats. She was a co-founder of The Temenos Academy of Integral Studies, and its journal, Temenos, dedicated to "the sacred springs of life, which are the imagination and the heart". For our new selection, That Wondrous Pattern: Essays on Poetry and Poets, Raine's colleague and friend Brian Keeble offers sixteen essays that range from "The Inner Journey of the Poet" and "What is Man?" to essays on Blake, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, and several others. The centerpiece, "What is the Use of Poetry?" is a rigorous defense of the great art. Keeble himself contributes a fascinating introduction to Raine's work, and Wendell Berry, himself a colleague and friend of Kathleen Raine, offers a preface.All who spend time in the presence of this wonderful writer will leave newly entranced with the art and use of the beautiful, and convinced that "it is only in moments when we transcend ourselves that we can know anything of value."

First published in 1979, this is a very welcome reissue of Kathleen Raine's seminal study of William Blake - England’s only prophet. He challenged with extraordinary vigour the premises which now underline much of Western civilization, hitting hard at the ideas of a naive materialist philosophy which, even in his own day, was already eating at the roots of English national life. In his insistence that ‘mental things are alone real’, Blake was ahead of his time. Materialist views are now challenged from various quarters; the depth psychologies of Freud and Jung, the study of Far Easter religion and philosophy, the reappraisal of myth and folk lore, the wealth of psychical research have all prepared the way for an understanding of Blake’s thought. We are ready to acknowledge that in attacking ‘the sickness of Albion’ Blake penetrated to the inner worlds of man and explored them in a way that is quite unique.Dr Raine, who has made a long study of Blake’s sources, presents him as a lonely powerful genius who stands within the spiritual tradition of Sophia Perennis, ‘the Everlasting Gospel’. From the standpoint of this great human Norm, our immediate past described by W.B. Yeats as ‘the three provincial centuries’, is a tragic deviation; catastrophic, as Blake believed, in its spiritual and material consequences. Only now do we possess the necessary knowledge to understand William Blake and the ever-growing number of people who turn to him surely justifies his faith in the eternal truths he strove to communicate.

Essays by the distinguished poet and scholar, Kathleen Raine, examine poetic symbolism, William Blake's philosophy, the paintings of Cecil Collins, and other literary and artistic subjects

This classic on the subject is dedicated to two people who greatly influenced the author W.B. Yeats and AE, perhaps the greatest mystic and visionary of this century.