Kathleen Raine - Böcker

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.

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.

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.

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 and accessible 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.

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

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.

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.

This volume makes available to the modern reader selected writings of Thomas Taylor, the eighteenth-century English Platonist. TO Taylor we are indebted for the first full translation into English of Plato and Aristotle. Platonism, as Taylor saw it, was an informing principle, transmitted through a "golden chain of philosophers," a doctrine received by Socrates and Plato from the Orphic and Pythagorean past and transmitted to the future. It emerged again and again, enriched in the School of Alexandria, in Renaissance art, in the works of Spenser, Shelley, Yeats. Kathleen Raine is well known as a poet. GEorge Mills Harper is Professor of English, University of Florida. Bollingen Series LXXXVIII.Originally published in 1969.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume makes available to the modern reader selected writings of Thomas Taylor, the eighteenth-century English Platonist. TO Taylor we are indebted for the first full translation into English of Plato and Aristotle. Platonism, as Taylor saw it, was an informing principle, transmitted through a "golden chain of philosophers," a doctrine received by Socrates and Plato from the Orphic and Pythagorean past and transmitted to the future. It emerged again and again, enriched in the School of Alexandria, in Renaissance art, in the works of Spenser, Shelley, Yeats. Kathleen Raine is well known as a poet. GEorge Mills Harper is Professor of English, University of Florida. Bollingen Series LXXXVIII.Originally published in 1969.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.