SIR, —May I say a word in defence of Kathleen
Raine's study of four of Blake's poems, which met with such severe strictures from your reviewer? There is really no question of Miss Raine's trying to 'kidnap' Blake! His work does not belong exclusively to the literal-minded and historical critics. The purpose of her exposition of the mythological content of the Lyca poems and the two introductory Songs of Experience is to reveal, even in these slight poems, 'those hard symbolic bones under the skin' (as Yeats expressed it in a brilliant phrase quoted by Miss Raine elsewhere). Without knowledge of the rich vein of mythological imagery and its metaphysical interpretation which was current coin with Plotinus, Porphyry and other neo-Platonists, and which Miss Raine has shown was accessible to Blake through the translations and commentaries of Thomas Taylor, it is easy to mistake the vital core of meaning which Blake's poetry contains, even his simplest songs.
'In his poetry Blake was concerned entirely with the expression of meaning,' Stephen Spender has written in a recent review, and he has pointed out the great importance for our times of the tradition to which Blake belonged, `the Biblical and esoteric tradi-
tion, which owed so little to the ruling Englis of his time.' If this is true, as I believe it it Raine's studies of one aspect of this unfamiliar tion is of real value. She is perfectly correct in of the poems in question : `Blake's story is imp and simple,' and in proceeding to elucidate th reference to traditional mythological material.
Your learned reviewer made some sound an ful criticisms in detail, but how can one ere gist of his attack on Kathleen Raine's interpre when he himself admits to so partial and so 1 an understanding of Blake? He speaks of 1 'pathetic failures in communication,' and of the tragic disasters of the Prophetic Books,' of `carelessness . . . impatience, the ellipses, the 5 rigmaroles.' If this is how Blake's greatest wor: appear to certain literary critics, who are appi unfamiliar with the perennial philosophy whit Blake's inspiration, then surely Miss Raine's are indeed on the right track.—Yours faithfully,
GEORGE WINGFIELD
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