India Seen Afar [Hardcover]

Kathleen Raine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1991

In this concluding volume of autobiography, Kathleen Raine reflects on the profound significance of Indian philosophy and wisdom, the 'India of the imagination'. When she visited India for the first time at the age of seventy-four, she brought with her the eye of a poet and the mind of a scholar-philosopher long steeped in the spiritual vision of both East and West. In this vivid and engaging narrative of her travels the poet speaks of those human depths that are beyond all superficial divisions, invoking the timeless order that is the culture of India, and which holds an urgent message for the spiritual renewal of humankind.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A poet and a Blake and Yeats scholar, Raine set out to find the "India of the imagination" in the 1980s at the age of 74. Her odyssey around the subcontinent revealed an India permeated by "a universal sense that 'everything that lives is holy' " and a simultaneous awareness of the multiple levels of experience. While she does not ignore India's "boundless poverty" or the spreading "wound" of Westernization, Raine believes that "India has not lost her soul at the price of technology--yet." Woven throughout are kaleidoscopic impressions of faces and sacred spaces, of sculpture-filled caves, the healing flow of the Ganges and the disquieting works of India's modern painters. Her narrative--rhapsodic, digressive, at times effusive--contains a deep pool of wisdom, refreshingly free of stereotyped images, in touch with the eternal India.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In the fourth volume of her autobiography, written when she was 74 years old, English poet and critic Raine makes a pilgrimage to that kingdom of the imagination, India. Here she describes inner dimensions of ancient Hindu "multiform arts of life." Foe of a "consumerist, permissive, money-ridden, secular, materialist society" (and author of scholarly volumes on Blake and Yeats and many volumes of mystical poetry), Raine time-voyages to sacred sites where holy men and women, writers, and philosophers reveal the failure of the supersophisticated West to reach the repose of true spirituality. ("All lives, in India, are the one Life, interconnected, interwoven, unbroken, immortal.") In the tradition of late autobiographies like John Ruskin's Praeterita , this reflective, life-affirming work consecrates "the soul's deepest dreams."-- Frank Allen, SUNY at Cobleskill
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: George Braziller (August 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807612685
• ISBN-13: 978-0807612682
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,682,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important work! The truth about values is spoken!, May 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: India Seen Afar (Hardcover)

In India, elders and respected and revered, duty is more important than personal gain, and family and friendships are everything. I've seen the differences first-hand throughout my life, but have never put words to those impressions, first formed as a child and then re-discovered as an adult, as Ms. Raine has done. What a gift her book has been for me!