Autobigraphies
Today I finished the last volume of Kathleen Raine's autobiographies 'In the Lion's Mouth'. It is an extraordinary volume, telling of her relationship with Gavin Maxwell. It was an asymmetrical relationship - on her side an intensity of self-offering that slipped dangerously into possessiveness, on his an unacknowldeged need to be seen, recognised, that Kathleen offered, but ultimately failed to achieve. It is a story that is both ennobling and sad.
It speaks of love as a reality in which we indwell and whose obligations go beyond the exchange of mutual feeling; and, which yet is bound to the frailties of feeling. A force that we do not control and which we so want to control. The book is one of the most sustained meditations on both the possibilities and failings of love that I know.
It speaks of love as a reality in which we indwell and whose obligations go beyond the exchange of mutual feeling; and, which yet is bound to the frailties of feeling. A force that we do not control and which we so want to control. The book is one of the most sustained meditations on both the possibilities and failings of love that I know.