June 4th 2016

A society whose values are material…asks not what we ‘are’ but what we ‘do.’ Worse, the phrase ‘What is he worth?’ has come to mean, ‘How much money has he?’ How sad and what a betrayal! What we are ‘worth’ is not what we have, or even what we have done, but what we are.

                                                Kathleen Raine (British poet and scholar, 1903 – 2003)

Many years ago, in 1967 to be precise, I attended the annual Yeats Summer School, in Sligo. This beautiful Irish town, surrounded by majestic hills, was Yeats’s birthplace. I was a passionate lover of his poetry and therefore it was bliss to have a whole week to learn about it with fellow devotees. One of the lectures was given by a slight woman with a soft voice and an other-wordly air. This was Kathleen Raine. I had never heard of her at the time, but subsequently bought her poetry and read her criticism. Can I remember the subject of her lecture? No, not any more, but it was probably about Blake and Yeats. But what remains with me is her manner. This, I felt, was a woman who was in touch with the finest aspects of the human soul.

So I decided to find something from her for this week’s top quotation on my Daily Mail column. To be honest, sometimes it entertains me to put the most unlikely people into this country’s most powerful middle-market tabloid! I don’t see it as a game, mind, just another way of pushing out tiny boundaries – even if nobody notices. (There’s another one pushes this week, because for the first time since I started writing an advice column for The Times in 2005, I have featured two letters from men. Two letters from woman is usual, and of course, I often run a letter from a man. But never before two men. Why not? Advice columns are not just for women, are they?)

Back to Kathleen Raine – there is nothing complex about this quotation. It states an obvious truth – which needs to be repeated again and again. People are valued according to their worldly success, not their moral or spiritual qualities. Even if we think ourselves immune to the trap, I bet we all fall into it from time to time.

So listen to Kathleen Raine, look her up, find out about her beliefs….and feel a gentle wind of goodness blowing through you as a result.