Kathleen Raine

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"Neo-Platonism may be compared to an underground river that flows through European history, sending up, from time to time, springs and fountains; and wherever its fertilizing stream emerges, there imaginative thought revives, and we have a period of great art and poetry."

This, my friends, should go without saying, though I wouldn't call it Neo-Platonism, nor would I limit this river's course to European history and art. And while civilizations await the next imaginative genius, let us be reminded that while materialist science flourishes, great art must in turn, fall fallow. The continuum, or river as it were, is hardly broken, however, nor is it shallow.

A nod, then, to we ordinary practitioners, who unwittingly or otherwise, spend the hours keeping the underground river perhaps sluggish, but in motion -- for the new Blake, Shake, or Michelangelo to come bursting up through the earth.



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