A lover’s dictionary of Kathleen Raine

The expression “lover’s dictionary” refers to a collection of works in the form of ABCs created in 2000 by Jean-Claude Simoën for the French publisher Plon, and called “dictionnaires amoureux”. More precisely, the books published in this collection offer a form of writing on a given subject – wine, rugby, Venice, Marcel Proust, etc. – that is both expert and non-academic. Indeed, the term ‘amoureux’ refers to a subjective genre of literary criticism that transitions from the academic norm to the expression of feelings and intimacy (Assouline [2016]). This lover’s dictionary is devoted to the works of Kathleen Raine (1908-2003), the twentieth-century British poet, autobiographer and essayist. Indeed, Raine’s three-dimensional body of work invites us to compile a lexicon of her most significant words, charged with intellect and affect, memory and imagination, and produce a kaleidoscopic portrait of the author. The dictionary adopts a certain stylistic unity (Bakhtine [2004 [1935]]) in that the same pattern is to be found for each entry composed polyphonically as follows: The first part provides a brief definition of the word in the first-person pronoun as if Raine herself were talking to us in a confidential tone; the second one is a real quote by Raine borrowed from one of her works; and the third one is a comment made by the author of this Lover’s dictionary of Kathleen Raine.