GEORGE
WILLIAM RUSSELL - AE. April 10, 1867-July 17,
1935. Wisdom is
justified of her children, and if there be no more than one sole
begotten in this war-dreary age of ours, George William Russell has
justified the Theosophical Movement, and borne the banner
aloft, that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky handed on to him.
Out of the Dublin Group of which he was
the chief light, and without disparagement of his friends Charles
Johnston or Daniel Nicol Dunlop or others of that little band who
contributed out of their own measure to the establishment of new ideals
and new principles and new methods of life in our time, it is to his
credit that he led the way in many
paths of action, and as a literary man, a poet, a journalist, an
artist, and finally as an economist and a statesman, he built up the
model of a national
life in which the national spirit could embody itself without
debasement, bringing all its varied resources into play, giving liberty
to those who lived under it to evolve their own soul-structure, and
attain outwardly the
spiritual stature of their own inner Selves; enabling all to
live in
that concordant harmony which so enriches social life;
encouraging those less mature mentally, yet allowing them an
independence of development which is the basis of true manhood.
In many respects the Irish people would
have more warrant to sing they "never, never shall be slaves," than
their compatriots across the Irish Seas. The English have
never quite understood this, and continue to pray Britannia to rule the
waves, while Irishmen would be content to rule their own
land. A certain deference to authority, if
not servility, makes government in Britain easy. In Ireland
there is much civility, but no servility, and as it has been said only
a Kelt can understand a Kelt, so George Russell had an advantage in
understanding his own people that made it less difficult for him to
approach them as a reformer. His innovations were in the
tradition of the ancient life of Ireland under pre-Christian forms, and
they appealed as they would appeal anywhere to the natural instincts of
the people, yet in no way hindering the highest and noblest emotions of
religion, charity, and sacrifice.
It has been a taunt flung against Theosophists (that their
views were not practical, meaning that they did not provide for the
life that men must live in physical bodies. George Russell
removed that taunt or the occasion for it, and showed that Theosophy
when properly understood can be applied to all kinds of life socially
and politically,
promoting a nobler sense of right living, while recognizing that the
life
of the flesh is but a transit experience. It has been the
deep marasmus
that entered Adyar and still obtains there that they chose to follow a
Leadbeater
rather than Russell, and worshiped mirages which inflated the
importance
of personality instead of devoting themselves to the common life of
humanity
for which Madame Blavatsky labored, and to which Russell gave his
service.
Nor was his an
ordinary service, but one which entailed the cultivation and happy
surrender of the highest gifts and talents which a man may
command. Russell toiled unremittingly with body, mind and
spirit, to carry on his self appointed task and if ever a god labored
with men and for their benefit, Russell's body was the cross on which
it was lifted up. Yet he was the humblest, the most modest of
men. He
looked for no leadership, no elevation, no homage. He did his
work and has gone to his peace. He has evoked the passionate
love of all who knew and understood him. He is a monument to
Theosophy, and his name should be honored in the annals of the Movement
while it continues to
inspire the world.
We have
gathered together in such time and space
as was available some tributes from those who knew him, men and women
who met him intimately, and also from this press, anonymously, from
those who only knew him by reading his books, seeing his pictures,
hearing his lectures, or even by the report of his doings, that came to
them through others. It may be evidence to those who know
little of him otherwise, of what influence he possessed, what mountains
he moved, what light he spread abroad in a world of darkness.
And beyond all, what a power of love of his fellow men flooded his
great heart, a heart loyal only to Eternal Law.
- A. E.
S. S.
"AE": Theosophist By
P. G. Bowen
"Dr. George W. Russell, the distinguished Irish poet and
Economist died at the Bournemouth nursing home where he had been
undergoing treatment, at midnight on Wednesday, July 17th."
(Daily Paper)
George William Russell, whom the world
knew better by his pen name "AE" has passed from this objective
plane. His friends and more especially for those who knew the
real man, and his real work, his going leaves a blank not
easy to fill. He had many friends (he had NO enemies) made
during the course of his worldly activities, who can speak of him
appreciatively as a writer, economist, or statesman; but he
had few, and these for the most part inarticulate, who knew the real
man, understood his aims, and were recognized by him not as
acquaintances of
the day, or the single life, but as souls linked with his in the
immortal life. Of these few, I who write, am the last who he
contacted and recognized
in this present life. We met but little over two years ago,
and "Ah,
a very old friend, I think", were the words with which he greeted
me. That these were no unconsidered words he gave me speedy
proof, for he pointed to links existing in what to me had hitherto been
the worlds of dream and imagination, but which to him were realms far
more real than this world
of sense.
Before all else, AE
was a Theosophist. With the crystal sincerity, and childlike
simplicity which at all times distinguished him, he revealed to me that
his aim in life overriding all else was to bring knowledge of the World
of Spirit "where all hearts and minds are one" into the clouded sphere
of human thought. He sought to bring it to Ireland, his own
country, first and foremost, not because he ever forgot the equal needs
of the rest of the world, but because he held, and held rightly,
as every true Theosophist will agree, that we should cultivate the
field
which lies nearest to hand with the tool which stands most
convenient. His literary pursuits were not followed as a way
leading to gain and fame, things to which he was supremely indifferent,
but because they furnished a ready channel created by "the instrument
built up by many lives," (his personal selfhood), through which might
flow "something of the rhythms of
the ONE Life", and with their touch "restore to some sort of tune the
jangled
strings of human consciousness". It is a dullspirit that can
read
his poems without feeling that they do just this.
So also with his purely worldly
work. To him it was an instrument which he used to
demonstrate in practical form that individual gain comes not through
each man working for self, but through each working for all.
Before I met him the following anecdote concerning his work for the
farmers' Co-operative Movement was related to me by a
country priest. One of AE's, innumerable addresses on
co-operation
to the peasant farmers happened to coincide with one of the lesser
known
Church festivals, and the result was that a large number "missed
Mass".
When chidden by the Curate for their lack of devotion, one of them
replied
in all seriousness, "Shure, an' wasn't we doin' just as good as to be
at
Mass, listenin' as we was, to Jarge's sermon down to Ballymascanlan?"
"And in the name of God, I think they
were", my informant commented. In preaching practical
co-operation, AE always spoke out of his own certain consciousness of
the unity of all things in spirit.
AE belonged to none of the great Theosophical
societies. In his early youth he had been a member of the
Dublin lodge of H.P.B.'s T.S. At the time of the "Judge
split", he and the whole lodge followed Judge, but after the death of
the latter he resigned, feeling that under the
new regime the spiritual light so evident in earlier times in the
society had become somewhat clouded. It is not so generally
known perhaps, that
from 1898 down to 1933 when he left Ireland, AE kept alive in Ireland a
nucleus
of genuine students under the name of the Hermetic Society.
As he himself put it to me, he held it a sacred duty as one who had
become conscious of the truth of the Message brought by H.P.B. to keep,
as she herself had adjured her followers, "the link unbroken".
The Hermetic Society was founded by
Charles Johnston in 1886, and is therefore the oldest Theosophical body
in Ireland. AE joined it on resigning from the Point Loma
Universal Brotherhood in 1898, and
[[photo here
of AE]]
led it from that time until he finally
handed over his charge to myself in 1933. The society had no
formulated objects, and was in character rather a free and easy club
than an organized society. In an early letter to me
concerning it AE says: -
"Sometimes it (The Hermetic Society) had a big membership,
sometimes a small. It waxed and waned, and waxed again,
people coming and going here and there; and I felt inwardly
satisfied that they all more or less passed through a bath of
Theosophical ideas.
"I had no
private doctrine: nothing but H.P.B. eked out for beginners by
W.Q.J.; the Bhagavad Gita; Upanishads;
Patanjali; and one or two other classics. I did
what I could to keep always in line with the Message of H.P.B., and to
preserve it from admixture with the ideas of imitators who I found
could give me nothing.
"My own
writing is trivial, and what ever merit is to be found in it is due to
its having been written in a spiritual atmosphere generale by study of
H.P.B. and the sacred books of the East. If it has given some
temporary light to those that read it, I am happy . . .
. . . . . ."
There speaks the
real Theosophist which is equivalent to saying the real man.
No words which another could speak concerning AE could reveal his
quality half so surely as those brief unconsidered remarks of his
own. They show like a lightning flash the great, simple,
selfless spirit of the man which lives on, though the shape through
which it manifested to our dull senses goes back to the dust that it
was.
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL, POET OF THE
INNER LIFE By James Morgan Pryse
Announcement of the death of Russell, one of the dearest of my
companions in the good old days of the T.S., came to me over the
radio. By request of the editor of The Canadian Theosophist,
I now write of my personal acquaintance with that greatest of modern
mystical poets. Saddened by the loss of my friend, I cannot
write a glowing eulogy setting forth his genius and his unselfish
devotion to the cause of humanity, and so shall only record a few
reminiscences.
I first became
acquainted with Russell during his frequent visits to the London
Headquarters of the T.S. At one time, when on a walking tour
in Wales, while examining Druidic ruins on the Isle of Anglesea, I
noticed a small steamer, the Shamrock, that was about to cross over to
Dublin. I took passage on it and spent the rest of my
vacation with Russell and the other members of the Dublin
Lodge. In 1895 by advice of Mr. Judge and Dr. Keightley, I
shipped the original H.P.B. Press, which belonged, to Dr. Keightley, to
Dublin, joined the lodge there, and for over a year helped Russell and
the others to get out the Irish Theosophist. I would have
remained there for a longer period, but Mr. Judge, owing to his
illness, insisted that he needled me in New York.
When Russell began the study of
Theosophy he wrote several fine little poems; but when I
rejoined him in Dublin I found him much depressed because his Muse had
apparently deserted him.
His every attempt to write verse resulted in failure;
sorrowfully
he said, "My bogy is dead." Perceiving where his difficulty
lay,
I explained to him that when new to Theosophy he put into verse his own
ideas spontaneously; but that his study of the philosophy had
filled
his mind with new ideas, which he had not yet assimilated, and could
not
therefore, express naturally. When he had made these ideas
his own,
I assured him he would write better than ever, having widened his
mental
scope. To start him up, I proposed that we write poems,
alternately
for the magazine, an offer which he eagerly accepted. I had
quit
writing verse while still in my teens, and my only object in penning
poems
for the magazine was to get Russell going again. His, "bogy"
rose
from the death, and thereafter for many years literature was enriched
by
his many mystical poems. I put forward a favorite theory of
mine that
great poets, painters, etc., always are found in groups, as were the
Greek
dramatists, and those of Shakespere's time, as also the great Italian
painter's
and the Cremona violin-makers; they sustain one another like
electric
cells "coupled for intensity." Thus, ten cells, each of ten
volts,
when thus coupled have a current of a hundred volts. So we
formed a
little group of promising young Irish writers, who met weekly to
discuss
their work. I had to dropout when Mr. Judge recalled me to
New York,
but Russell carried on the work for years to a splendid consummation,
so
that a number of brilliant writers brought about the remarkable Irish
literary
renaissance.
Russell had the
faculty of clearly visualizing things psychically. Often when
we were together in the evening (as we were almost every evening) I
would say, "George, I saw something while meditating the other day"
without giving him any clue to what it was, but visualizing it
mentally. Closing his eyes, he would see exactly what I had
seen, and then with colored crayons he would reproduce it on
paper. I have had mesmeric subjects do the same;
but with Russell, owing to his natural lucidity, mesmerism was never
resorted to. Mrs. Lloyd, of the
Blavatsky Lodge, had the same faculty to an even more marked
degree. Both were artists. As Russell once wrote
me: "Painting is the only thing I have any real delight in
doing. Nature intended me to be a painter. I was
never taught. I went into an office and wrote
poetry. Then because I wrote good poetry I was taken from the
office
and sent out over the country to organize farmers. When I
wrote one
or two articles about farmers and their lives I was taken from
organizing and put to editing an agricultural paper. When I
had learned to do this I was dragged into politics, and now I edit a
weekly review dealing with politics, literature and
economics." This refers to his work with
Sir Horace Plunket, and the editing of the Irish Homestead, which was
later
incorporated in the Irish Statesman. These activities
interfered sadly
with his painting and poetry, but were of great benefit to
Ireland. A Theosophist to the last, though he quit the T.S.
when it became unendurably cantankerous, he held firmly to the
Blavatsky tradition.
For years
I kept in contact witch Russell by correspondence. He sent me
autographed a copy of each book he produced, and I sent him
mine. Happily we met again when he was on a lecturing tour in
the U.S.
Certain educators and wealthy citizens who were apprehensive of
revolutionary
disturbances in this country had him deliver lectures on economics and
his experience in organizing the agricultural population of
Ireland.
In a letter dated February 12, 1925, telling me that James Stephens was
then in America, he wrote, "Perhaps sometime I may find my way over the
Atlantic, but I see no chance of it now." But on January 27,
1928,
he wrote me from New York, "My dear James, I have already come to your
country
- landed two days ago - and one of the attractions which brought me to
America
was the hope that I might visit the Pacific Coast and look you in the
face
again." But it was not until 1930 that we met. On
the 1st of
November of that year he wrote me from Missoula, Montana: "I
expect
to be in Los Angeles on the 17th of this month. I have two
lectures
to deliver, one in the morning, and the other in the
afternoon. I
shall seek you out that evening about 8 o'clock, and I hope to sea you
again,
dear James, after so many years." He was in Los
Angeles three
days, and each evening I rejoiced in his company from 8 o'clock till
near
midnight.
Shortly after his
first volume of verse, "Homeward: Songs by the Way," was published
Russell told me how he came to take the pen-name AE. I used
that information in the dedication to him of my work on Prometheus
Bound. When I submitted the dedication for his consent and
approval before publication, he wrote me: "I am greatly
moved,
dear James, that you should remember our old friendship and honor me by
dedicating to me your translation of Prometheus. I accept it
with pleasure." I reproduce the dedication here as a feeble
tribute to my dear comrade whom I shall meet no more on earth in this
incarnation. After quoting a
line from Euripides, "We hold traditions of our forefathers which are
as
olds as time," it reads:
Recall with me the days,
old friend,
When, we in Eire
pondered o'er
The old traditions, and you penned
Your earliest poems, but forbore
To write your name, and sought to sign
The name of Man when
yet divine.
And from the ether of your heart,
Where yet the fire Prometheus brought
Inspires the ardent poet's art,
In meditation rapt you caught
A murmur, "AEon,"
naming thus,
Mankind, Gods-born and glorious.
A LETTER FROM AE
Dear Smythe, It was
most kind of you
to send me what you had written about "Vale". You are very
generous in your appreciation. No, it was not Lionel Johnson
or W.Q.J. I referred to. The handsome youth was Edmund King,
one of the Ely Place group whom I never met after the household broke
up. The grey visitor was James M. Pryse who first instructed
me in magic, conjuring up pictures in the astral light, and holding
them before my inner eyes so that I could see initiation scenes, the
evolution of the astral from the physical, the movement of cells and
forces in the body. A good deal of what he wrote in the
interpretation of the Apocalypse he showed me in the "glass".
He was one of the few members of the T.S. who knew things for himself
and had a good deal of occult power. He was really rather a
mysterious person
whose talk and writing had personal knowledge behind it. He,
Judge,
H.P.B., Subba Row, Damodar, and Jasper Niemand were the only members of
T.S.
who had their own sources of knowledge, as far as I can know.
Most
of the others wrote either out of intuition or retold what they had
read:
though Pryse said Archibald Keightley; who rarely wrote, knew a good
deal.
I am writing a second volume of Candle of Vision. It will be
quite
different, not dealing so much with dreams or visions as with ideas -
the
psychology of incarnation. I find it difficult to write as I
have no
predecessors in the line I am taking. After that is done I
will try
to complete a mystical tale, "The Avatars," which I began
seven years
ago, but my journalism did not leave me energy to continue
it. If I
can keep the remainder as good as the seven chapters I wrote, I think
it
should be readable. Everything in this island is
quiet. On the
whole we are better off than the English or Germans or Americans in the
matter of unemployment. But the decadence of British
industrialism is going to hit us hard and we shall have a bad time of
it if our statesmen can't formulate and apply a new policy, and it is
difficult to know exactly what they could do. I am dubious
about Tariffs and become more socialistic in my dreams of the
future. But I know no mechanism is going to solve the world's
problems. Nothing will, except the spiritual life.
With kind regards to any of my friends you may meet, Magee,
DeLury, Yours sincerely AE.
17 Rathgar Avenue, Dublin,
20 Sept., '31.
TO
"AE" Now you are gone you seem a visitor,
Something that haunted for a little time
The splendor of the evening, or astir
With bees in blooms of lime;
Or, at the hour when mothers tell old tales
To children, something passing through
the gleams
Of cottage windows; or, on western gales
Riding, a king of dreams;
Or, about hawthorns lingering to greet
The earliest may among the blazing green,
Or,
through the heather traveling to meet
Spirits we have not seen;
A lovely
radiance of a passing star
Upon a sudden journey through the gloaming,
Lighting, low Irish dills, and then afar
To its own regions
homing.
- Lord Dunsany, in the London Times.
DEAN
DeLURY PAYS TRIBUTE
Dean Alfred T. DeLury, LL.D., one of his few intimates in
Toronto, felt that in the death of AE the literary world would mourn
the passing of one of its greatest personalities. They had
known each other for many years.
"George W. Russell became known throughout the literary world
in the middle 90's through publication of two remarkable little volumes
of poems, Earthbreath and Homeward: Songs by the Way", Dean
DeLury recalled. "At once, they were republished in America
and students of poetry felt a new poet had come.
"In a reasonably long and very busy
life, he did
remain true to his gift of poetry, and each succeeding year would see
several little poems of outstanding merit in the journals devoted to
literature.
"A contemporary
and very close friend of W.B. Yeats and later of John Synge, he was
regarded everywhere as an outstanding figure in the very significant
movement known as the Irish literary revival".
AE was also distinguished as an artist,
being looked upon as one who brought something distinctive to the world
of art, he said.
Authority on Agriculture
Proof of his versatility in an
outstanding sense
was the fact that Sir Horace Plunkett had called on him to be his chief
aide when he was considering plans for the vital work of improving
Irish
agriculture.
"For many years,
he edited and wrote the leading
articles in the Irish Homestead, a journal quite new in that type of
periodical. Later, the Homestead, being discontinued, he
undertook the editing of the Irish Statesman. Through a long
period of years this was one of the brightest of literary periodicals,
which in addition to its literary side concerned itself with current
political and social questions".
Early in the 20's, AE was induced to come to
America on a lecture tour, on which he was received with warmth and
acclaim in the leading United States and Canadian cities. On
that tour he
lectured in Toronto on the personalities in the Irish literary
renaissance.
"On that occasion
here, he made an impression unequaled, perhaps, by any other man making
public appearances", said the dean. "I have never seen an
audience so completely spellbound". As a result, he was
invited to visit again three years later, during which he again
appeared in Toronto.
"About
that time, the American Government, feeling more attention should be
given to the development of interest in country life, invited him to
speak on the cooperative movement in Ireland, and
to make practical suggestions on which they might in time be able to
act".
So universally was he
appreciated, and such was the spell which he cast over those who met
him, that his house in Dublin became a centre for celebrities from all
parts of the world, said Dean DeLury. One evening each week
he set aside when famed personages would come to commune with him,
almost to worship him.
Dr.
DeLury also writes: "I am very glad to
know that you are devoting a number of your journal to the life and
work
(and their meaning) of AE. As you say, `he should, have died
hereafter', but the Fates would not have it so. In him all
the active nobilities met, and every one who met him caught a new
impulse from his thinking and doing".
"AE"
PASSES In the death
this week of George William Russell, "AE," as he was known in the
literary world, Ireland lost a great national mind and the world has
lost one of its most prolific pens.
George William Russell was the son of a middle-class Irish
family of County Armagh, and received only a public school
education. His quality as a writer were the inherent
imagination of his race, the unplumbed depths of the mystic, the
unbounded mind of the dreamer and an intense
national pride. Something of the power of those qualities
when combined
as "AE" combined them can be seen from the long life that has attended
his
works. His fist book of poems, "Homeward: Songs by the Way,"
published
in 1894, has never really disappeared from circulation.
It was Ireland more than the Irish that
Russell really loved. It was Ireland he painted - another
highly developed natural talent, which he used as a "recreation" when
words grew heavy and tedious to work with. And it was Ireland
he sought to unify in a great national scheme of cooperative
societies. For many years between two careers as an editor,
"AE" buried his hatred for travel and toured Ireland, educating the
farmers and the county folk along the lines of cooperatives effort,
forming in various communities cooperative grocery stores, cooperative
dairies and markets, and similar enterprises.
Among his outstanding literary
adventures, there
were terms of office as editor of the Irish Homestead, an agricultural
journal; the Theosophist, which he wrote to a great extent
all by
himself under various, pen-names. [[the Irish Theosophist may
be
meant here, but is inaccurate - dig. ed.]] Frequently, when
money
was scarce, he would use pseudonyms to engage himself in a vigorous
argument
for the benefit and enlightenment of unknowing readers. His
last
editorial chair was with the Irish Statesman after its merger with the
Irish
Homestead, and for seven years until 1930 he managed to keep it alive
despite
an intensely high intellectual outlook.
As was the case with many of his characteristics, his wit was
typically Irish, and he possessed a stinging tongue through which he
invariably voiced his criticism of his friends, without, it can be
said, losing any of them. A classical example still much
quoted was This comment to George Moore, the Irish novelist, during a
tea-hour discussion, of a new Moore novel. "You," "AE" told Moore, "are
like a porcupine rubbing yourself against the bare legs a child,
unconscious of what you do."
For "AE", in spite of the fact that he knew of the musical,
qualities of his deep voice, and was intensely proud of it, one of the
greatest ordeals was to read his own poetry. He disliked
America because of having to read his poetry when he got there, more
than because he had to travel to reach it. But it was through
reading his poems
that a great mass of his follower came to know him and to appreciate
more
fully what "AE" meant them to appreciate in all his praises of his one
great
love, his Ireland. - The
Toronto Globe, July 19,
1935.
"AE"
Its edges foamed with amethyst and rose,
Withers
once morse the old blue flower of day.
There where the ether
like a diamonds glows
Its
petals fade away.
These four lines, among the most beautiful in English
literature, are typical of the serenity with which so much of the work
of George Russell, who wrote under the name " AE", was
infused. His death removes from that galaxy of great Irish
writers the most unusual, if not the most eminent figure.
George Russell was closely identified with the revival of native Irish
literature which accompanied the growth of political nationalism and
which centred for many years around the Abbey Theatre in
Dublin. Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey; Russell and
others worked consciously toward a Gaelic Renaissance. Unlike
the brilliant Irish writers of an immediately previous generation, Shaw
and Wilde, they looked to the soil of Ireland and within the hearts of
their own people
for the material of their writings. - Hamilton Herald, July
18, 1935.
GEORGE RUSSELL
George William Russell was a
typical Hibernian, a man with a mind perfectly attuned to the poetic,
the mystical, the beautiful; but a man, too, with an
eminently practical side to his nature. Such rare beings make
an invaluable contribution to the spiritual and material progress of
the race, for while their minds are in the clouds, their feet are
planted firmly upon the solid earth. They make a universal
appeal in their writings. "Man does not live by bread alone;"
though the thoughts of society seem to be almost exclusively
preoccupied with the needs of the body, the dreamer and the seer is
sure of an audience if he has an authentic message to
deliver. And AE had an authentic message. His was
the voice of the inspired monitor, warning a world which was wantonly
over
-emphasizing the pursuit of luxury, and sinking into
the idolatry of mammonism.
His
love of the countryside, his real sympathy with the husbandman,
laboring at his ordained task, the cultivation of the soil, earning his
living "by the sweat of his face" - his determination that greater
justice should be done to the peasant and that they should not be
sacrificed to the insatiable demands of the cities - in these earnest
efforts the
Poet became the reformer, which true poets always are. For
poetry
is not merely a sweet acquiescence in things as they are, but a
Prophetic
determination to make them better.
"The decay of civilization comes from the neglect of
agriculture," he said; "there is need to create, consciously,
a rural civilization." His was not the ordinary
"back-to-the-land" mentality, which condemned civilization and all its
works; but he would bring the benefits of urban life to the
country; his land workers would
be instructed, cultured, people in a completely congenial environment,
with
no urge to forsake the farm for the city. It is an ideal
which is not
impossible of fulfilment.
The
results of planning and legislating for the development of cities,
instead of for the welfare of the farms, are only too painfully
manifest in these our modern times. Unless something
effective is done to promote the ideals voiced by this great Irish
poet, to whom like the poets of classical times, agriculture was of
such vital import, it is to be feared that the "decay of civilization,"
which he so greatly deplored, will be progressive. - A. J.
H., in Hamilton Spectator, Judy 19, 1935
FROM
DR. SALEM BLAND
It is only a slender right
that I have to pay a tribute to the variously gifted Irish poet and
public man who passed away a few days ago. I had merely heard
him lecture on his two visits to Toronto, and many years ago came under
the spell of the little volume of mystical poems he published in 1894,
but the impulse to express my obligations was too strong to be
resisted. . . . . . I have for many years been interested in all the
things in which my subconscious mind reveals itself as very much
nimbler and more accurate than I am, that is, in my conscious
mind. It was however to express my gratitude for the delight
given me long ago by his mystic poems, "Homeward: Songs by the Way",
that I was chiefly moved to pay my personal tribute to Mr.
Russell. I came under this spell some
forty years ago and was fond of turning to them, particularly on Sunday
evenings,
when the day's work was done. I was brought up in a mystical
atmosphere
and was for the first half of my life fascinated by the inward and
mystical
aspects of religion. Then the social aspects of religion
began to interest
me more and more absorbingly, and "Homeward: Songs by the Way", and
much
other mystical literature rather faded out of my life. I have
not,
I would fancy, opened the book for thirty years or more, nevertheless,
I
did not forget its beauty and the regretted passing of the poet aroused
in
me the desire to read it and perhaps introduce some readers of The Star
to
something unusual and worth knowing. - Toronto Star, July 27.
IN MEMORIAM
The following lines appeared
in The Toronto Daily Star of July 19 from the pen of Mr. Reade, one of
our most distinguished Canadian Rhodes. Scholars: -
Earth's wisdom is diminished',
Candle's vision is
extinguished,
But oh, I count it gain
That I
once saw AE plain,
Saw his genial smile, and heard
The deep music of his word!
Tumbling, like waters mountain
reared,
From the forest of his beard.
Lover of
beauty, wisdom, truth,
Sage who was always guide to youth,
Sweetest of Celtic singers, you
Lived years that were alas
too few,
But henceforth, in Song's Heaven, your star
Flames as your country's avatar.
- R. C. Reade.
THE PRESS
REPORTS
Bournemouth, England, July 18. - (CP) - One of the foremost
among the group of distinguished modern Irish literary men, George
William Russell, died yesterday in a Bournemouth nursing home, aged
68. A big, thick-set man with a patriarchal beard, Russell
was better known
by his curious pen-name of AE. He was first and foremost a
poet, but he was also an essayist, an editor, a painter and a prime
mover in the revival of Irish agriculture.
Love
of Country
He was born in the little town
of Lurgan, County
Armagh, April 10, 1867. All his life he retained his love of
the
country. For years he went through the countryside forming
cooperative
societies and explaining to farmers the importance of cooperative
creameries
and cooperative credit groceries.
His first volume of poems, Homeward: Songs by the Way, was
published in 1894. From then on there was a seldom
interrupted flow of works from his facile pen. Most recent
was The Avatars, in 1933.
Later he became active in the Irish Agricultural
Organization Society and in 1905 returned to the editor's chair to
direct
The Irish Homestead. In 1923 this was merged with The Irish
Statesman,
which AE continued do edit. until 1930. Its high intellectual
level,
however, proved its own undoing, and it collapsed in the latter years.
Gave Warning
New York, July 18. - (AP) -
George W. Russell, "AE", considered cities "an actual danger to life
itself," and United States
cities as sharing in that danger.
On several visits to the United States, he warned that city
life received too much emphasis and that American civilization was
threatened by its lack of "a satisfying village life."
Russell was not only poet, painter and
author, but for 25 years he was associated with the Irish Agricultural
Organization
Society, and it was chiefly on matters of this sort that he spoke when
in
the United States.
The
deep-voiced, bearded Russell - the "sage of Ireland" - spent two months
here early this year. He studied the "new deal" with special
reference to agriculture, and conferred with President Roosevelt and
Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, an old friend.
"The decay of civilization comes from
the neglect of agriculture;" he said last March 1, as he sailed for
home. "There is need to create, consciously, a rural
civilization.
"You simply
cannot aid the farmers in an economic way and neglect the cultural and
educational part of country life, or else the children will continue to
leave for the cities."
Had Many Interests
Although primarily noted as a
poet, he was an energetic jack of many trades - a painter, business
man, organizer, editor, and co-founder of the famous Abbey Theatre in
Dublin.
He made a lecture tour
in Canada about eight years ago.
Already ailing
when he returned from the United States a few months
ago, he suffered a setback in London during the first heat wave of
summer. At that time he told a friend: "I feel
cramped in London. I need the sea and mountains, and wide
views of the sky."
Published Early
Russell was in his late
twenties when, in 1894, he published his first book of poems,
"Homeward: Songs by the Way."
The Yeats, "Celtic Twilight" cult had just achieved world prominence,
and
Russell, with his spiritual mysticism, was immediately taken to the
hearts
of poetry lovers. His last book, "House of the
Titans, and
Other Poems," appeared in 1934.
Born at Lurgan, County Armagh, Ireland in 1867, Russell was
educated at Rathmines School, Dublin. He entered an
accountant's office, but soon grew interested in agricultural
cooperative associations, and in 1897 joined the Irish Agricultural
Organization Society.
Thenceforward, journalism, literature, painting and
agricultural organization divided his attention. He edited
the Irish Homestead farm journal from 1904 to 1923, becoming editor of
the Irish Statesman in that year. Critics have called the
review the most skillfully edited in all Ireland.
Among Russell's published work were:
"The Divine
Vision, 1904; The Mask of Apollo, 1904; New Poems,
1904;
By Still Waters, 1906; The Candle of Vision, 1919;
The Interpreters, 1922; Midsummer Eve, 1928; Vale
and' Other Poems, 1931; Song and Its Fountains,
1932; and The Avatars, 1933, most of them volumes
of poems or philosophic musings.
In addition he published several volumes of essays and a
three-act play, "Deirdre," besides pamphlets concerning cooperative
farming.
Word Picture
Halifax, July 18. - (CP) -
Here is a word portrait of George William Russell, Irish writer and
painter who died in Bournemouth, England last night, as he appeared on
his last visit to Canada and United States:
" 'AE's' eyes are like well-springs in a
wildwood of hair and beard. There is a brook-like hypnotism
in his voice. It runs on easily without beginning or
ending. Like the others of
that modern triumvirate of the spirit, Tagore anal Einstein, this Irish
giant is mossy, mossgrown if you will, but his smile refreshes, because
like
those other two he is acquainted with sorrow yet celebrates beauty."
It came from the pen of Kenneth Leslie,
Nova Scotian poet who spent a few hours with "AE" on a liner in Halifax
harbor last
Christmas and found him "as ready to talk of fat cattle and creamery
butter
as of Keats and Lady Gregory."
AN ANTE
MORTEM STATEMENT
Lord Castlerosse in the Sunday Express of July 21 quoted
Senator Gogarty who had come over from Ireland:
"I was very fortunate," said the
Senator, "in finding that Russell had a moment's consciousness a few
hours before his death. He recognized me and said, `How
delightful of you to come.' I asked him if he were in pain,
and if he were breathing easily. He said, `Yes, I am not in
pain.' I brought him messages of affection from friends in
Ireland. He said very calmly and slowly, `I have
realized
most of my ambitions. I have had an outstanding interest in
life.
I have got friend's. What more does a man want?'
Then his eyes
darkened suddenly and it seemed as if he was falling asleep.
Senator
Gogarty paused here, and continued: -
"An English poet said of Mr. Russell, `He stood apart and
stammered golden things.' But he did not stand
apart. His personality was rich enough to suffer no mirage
nor aloofness. He was the most amiable and magnanimous soul
that Ireland has ever had. His love of Ireland consisted of
more than the antithesis of a hatred of England, and therefore it may
be some time before he comes into his own".
James Stephens contributed an obituary
notice filling a column of the Observer, London, July 21.
Among other things, he said that AE had told him that he was not
originally robust physically or intellectually, nor of a fundamentally
decided character, nor of an especially psychic nature. That
he made himself over from very little by a gradual increasing interest
in and application of the thought and methods of the Vedanta.
He held that to meditate on the ideas of the Bhagavad Gita and to
practice the psychological disciplines systematized by Patanjali must
astonishingly energize any person, and that these ideas and this
discipline had transformed him from a shy, self-doubting youth to the
cheerful, courageous personage he certainly became.
Pamela Hinkson in the same journal
contributed half a column of reminiscence saying that the first thought
was that one could not imagine Ireland without AE. She
recalled her mother's long intimacy with him, remarking that she was a
devout Catholic, and he professed at one time to worship pagan
deities. Yet they met on a common mysticism, and she regarded
him a s a saint.
The
Manchester Guardian had a sympathetic article on July 18.
Robert Lynd, in the London
News-Chronicle described Russell as the practical mystic of his nation,
always a passionate believer that the future would make up for the
miserable present. "Magnanimity is the rarest of the virtues,
and AE contrived to distribute it to every one of the many
controversies in which he took part. He was a champion of
freedom, of freedom of mind no less than of political freedom, and a
champion of the poor and defenseless at all times.
FROM ERNEST A. BOYD
Those who wish to consult the
more permanent memorials, embodied in printed volumes may be referred
to Darrell Figgis's volume in the "Irishmen of Today" series entitled
"AE". This is less a biography than a biographical study and
deals especially with the economic work of which Russell was the
exponent in Ireland.
Ernest A.
Boyd, in his Appreciations and Depreciations, writes a most
appreciative criticism of his poetry, giving him due credit for his
influence as a Theosophist, as he does more particularly in his larger
book on the Irish Literary Renaissance, where he devotes a chapter to
the Dublin Theosophical group.
It is one of the curious things about our modern
journalism that in none of the official newspaper obituaries is there a
word about his Theosophy, though he himself attributed to Madame
Blavatsky
all he was and all he did.
Lloyd R. Morris in "The Celtic Dawn," regards Russell as most
closely related among all the English poets to Wordsworth.
But Wordsworth could never discern such an individualism of life in
Nature as Russell did. Russell was more devoted to the sea
than Wordsworth. One remembers in 1912, taking a journey with
some Tyrone friends to Port-na-blagh, in the north of County Donegal,
where he had and has been in the habit for the past twenty years or
more of spending his Summers. Here he painted, composed, and
meditated, communing with that Nature which was vital and
alive in all its aspects, as man is alive and vital in all his members.
Transportation was not so easy as motors
and buses have
made it since, and we had only an hour to spend with him, but it was
the
longest interview we had with him since 1898, and it was refreshing to
meet
and sense and know once more the largeness of his mind and outlook,
sweeping
like the sea breezes across the world, and continuing pure and lofty
above
all its experiences.
"AE",
says Mr. Boyd, "came forward primarily as an exponent of mysticism,
though in such an early pamphlet as Priest or Hero? one can discern the
later polemicist on behalf of intellectual freedom. With
`John Eglinton' (W.K. Magee), Charles Johnston, W.B. Yeats and Charles
Weekes, he was one of a group of young men who met together in Dublin
some 20 to 25 years ago (1917), for the discussion and reading of the
Vedas and Upanishads. These young enthusiasts created in time
a regular centre of intellectual activity, which was translated in part
into some of the
most interesting literature of the Irish Revival. Their
journals,
The Irish Theosophist, The Internationalist, and The International
Theosophist,
contained, a great deal of matter, which has since taken a high place
in
modern Anglo-Irish literature. It was in the pages of those
reviews
that the first poems of `AE' were published, and to them we owe a great
number of essays afterwards collected by John Eglinton under the title
Pebbles
from a Brook. Of all who contributed to that intellectual
awakening
few remain in the Hermetic Society, as it is now called. But
`AE'
is still the mystic teacher, the ardent seer, whose visions and
eloquence
continue to influence those about him. One no longer enjoys
the spectacle
described by Standish O'Grady, of the youthful `AE', his hair flying in
the
wind, perched on the hillside, preaching pantheism to the
idle crowd.
His friends Johnston and Weekes are elsewhere, the heroic days of
intellectual
and spiritual revolt have passed; but `AE' may yet be seen in
less
romantic surroundings, constantly preaching the gospel of freedom and
idealism".
From that Dublin
group which included W.B. Yeats, John Todhunter, T.W. Rolleston, as
well as those already mentioned, and also Fred J. Dick and his wife,
"the slender-lovely candle of the Lord" of
his poem, "How?", his own wife, Violet North, who died in 1932, Daniel
N.
Dunlop, Kenneth Morris, Arthur O'Dwyer, Paul Gregan, and subsequently
J.
M Synge, and Lady Gregory in their literary capacity, there came what
is
known as the Irish literary revival.
In 1898 I was in Dublin and had the opportunity on many
occasions of meeting most of these, both at the headquarters,
just then transferred to Eustace Street from Ely Place, and had also
the sad experience of seeing the last of those lovely and unique
creations of Russell's artistic genius and occult knowledge which
decorated the walls of the Ely Place rooms, which were being
dismantled, and in the hands of masons and plasterers who were busy
destroying these priceless tokens of a
new age. It was usual for some of this group of a Sunday to
go up into
the Dublin hills south of the city, and on one of these, Kilnashee, the
Church
of the Fairies, we would gather and commune with a Nature that was
purer
than it could be found in any structure of stone and mortar.
Alaya,
the Master-Soul, was the only leader recognized there, consequently
there
was no room for envy, jealousy, malice nor any of the uncharity that
disturbs
the councils of those who insist on following some earthly leader and
despot.
What transpired from
those talks and communings on Kilnashee is largely enshrined in The
Irish Theosophist, but the atmosphere and the memory of those days is a
hallowed memory for all who entered into their peace. Little
wonder then, that after his American tour early this year, on returning
to London, when the first heat wave of this summer fell upon the great
city, he told a friend: "I feel cramped after
a time in London. I need sea, mountains, and wide views of
sky". Kilnashee and Port-na-Vagh no
doubt were in his mind, the Ireland he was not to see again.
WHAT
GEORGE MOORE SAYS
In George Moore's three
volumes, Hail and Farewell, there are vivid pictures of Russell, and an
affectionate portrayal of him as no doubt Moore knew him in his
heart. He describes Russell's boyhood as he heard it from his
friends.
"Yeats had told me
how a child, while walking along a country road near Armagh, had
suddenly begun to think and
in a few minutes the child had
thought out the whole problem of the
injustice of a creed which tells that God will punish him for doing
things
which he never promised not to do. The day was a beautiful
summer's
day, the larks were singing in the sky, and in a moment of
extraordinary
joy AE realized that he had a mind capable of thinking out everything
that was necessary for him to think out for himself, realizing in a
moment that he had been flung into the world without his consent, and
had never promised not to do one thing or do another. It was
hardly five minutes since he head left his aunt's house, yet in this
short space, his imagination head shot up into heaven and defied the
Deity who had condemned him to the plight of the damned because - he
repeated the phrase to himself - he had done something which he had
never promised not to do. It mattered nothing what that thing
was - the point was that he had made no promise; and his mind
embracing the whole universe in one moment, he understood that there is
but one life: the dog at his heels and the stars he would
soon see (for the dusk was gathering) were not different things, but
one thing. " 'There is but one life,' he had said to himself,
`divided endlessly, differing
in degree, but not in kind'; and at once he had begun to
preach the
new gospel."
Moore says he
does not include a personal description of Russell, for "All I remember
are the long grey pantheistic eyes that have looked so often into my
soul and with such a kindly gaze. `Those are the eyes,' I
said, `that have seen the old Keltic Gods'." Moore's second
volume in this series, Salve, is largely filled with George
Russell. He tells how Russell found him a house to live in,
and again and again how he consulted him on this subject and on that
and always with the successful result of cheerful helpfulness and
modest disclaimers. One could quote pages of this record, but
the reader must get the book himself. "Everybody in Dublin
thinks he is like AE as everybody in the world thinks he is like
Hamlet".
"You love the
Druids," I said, looking into his calm and earnest face.
"When you were earning fifty pounds a year in Pim's shop you used to go
to Bray Head and address a wondering crowd. Standing on a bit
of broken wall, all your hair flowing in the wind, you cried out to
them to return to the kind compassionate gods that never ordered
burnings in the marketplace, and I don't see why, AE, we should not go
forth together and preach the Danaan divinities, north, south, east,
and west. You shall be Paul. Barnabas quarreled
with Paul. I'll be Luke and take down your words!"
"It would be your own thoughts, my dear Moore, that you would be
reporting, not mine;" is the reply Moore puts in his mouth.
Moore reports another saying.
"The fault I
find with Christianity is that it is no more than a code of morals,
whereas three things are required for a religion - a cosmogony, a
psychology and a moral code".
In another place he remarks: "Everybody should
cultivate a kindly patience, imitating AE, who while going his way can
watch others going theirs, without seeming invidious or
disdainful.
But AE was born with a beautiful mind, and can pass a criticism on a
copy
of bad verses, and send the poet home unwounded in his self-respect".
On the last page but two of this volume
he observes: "I was writing for an hour and went out in
search of AE: it is, essential to consult AE on every matter
of importance, and the mater on which I was about to consult him seemed
to me of the very highest". In the third volume, Vale, he
returns to this point. "AE forgets what he gives, but it is
difficult for me to believe that Stephens did not benefit enormously,
as much as I did myself. How much that was I cannot tell, for
AE was always helping me directly and indirectly," and he tells of an
incident in case. "As well as anything I can think of this
anecdote shows how we run to AE in time of need, and never run in
vain;" yet he relates how Russell found fault with him for
representing him as blameless as the hero of a young girl's novel.
In spite of the anger of
over-quotation we
must give one more paragraph, Moore's tribute to Russell's
wife.
"AE's life is in his ideas as much as Christ's, and I will avouch that
his
wife has never tried to come between him and his ideas. As
much cannot
be said for Mary, whom Christ had to reprove for trying to dissuade him
from his mission, which he did on many occasions; and if
Christ had not chosen
to remain a bachelor it is open to us to believe that he would have
chosen
a Violet Russell rather than a Jane Carlyle."
FROM KATHERINE TYNAN HINKSON
Mrs. Hinkson has written four
volumes of delightful reminiscences and there are references in each of
them to AE, but our space will not permit more than one extract from
these intimate recollections. She knew Mr. Russell from early
days and her opinion of him never changed. Consequently, this
early impression carries with it the authority of a familiar friend,
and the admiration of a skilled writer and judge of
character. In the first of these autobiographical volumes,
Twenty-five Years, the following passage occurs:
"But to return to the Johnstons and
Theosophy. Their most considerable recruit - apart from W B.
Yeats, who I think, was so passionately absorbed in literature as to
have only a transient and
hardly sincere interest in other matters - was George Russell, whom we
know now as AE, our George then, the world's now. I find this
entry
in my diary for a day in December, 1887: `W.Y. brought a boy,
George
Russell, with him. Fond of mysticism, and extraordinarily
interesting.
Another William Blake!' George Russell was very boyish when I
first
saw him - shy, gentle, incapable of the lightest form of insincerity, a
most lovable creature, as he is today. He is of the world,
unworldly
- the world's stain has never touched him - without religion, yet
profoundly
religious; the peace of God which passeth understanding lies
all about
him now as it did then. He was brought up in the narrowest
tenets
of Irish Evangelism. I remember when his family was sorely
distressed
by his association with Willie Yeats. Leaving behind him the
narrow
and ugly creeds to which he was born, he has adopted no other form of
Christian
religion: he finds gods in the earth and the air - rather I
would say,
he finds God; and his life unconsciously has cast incense on
the altars
of the Unknown God.
"I have
known in my time some few undoubted geniuses, three certainly in
literature - W.B. Y eats, Francis Thompson, and George
Russell. To which I believe I have a fourth in James
Stephens. In none of these have I found the beauty of genius
as I find it in George Russell. His flame has always burnt
upward clearly. There is no room in him for any of the small
mean nesses of humanity. There is something strangely benign
about him. He keeps his image of God undistorted,
undefaced, as few of us have kept it. When I am struck cold,
remembering
that such and such a one, something uniquely previous of God's making,
is
no longer of this world, I turn to think upon George Russell, that
untroublesome
genius. I am glad that in all probability he will survive me,
for of
him more than anyone else I have ever known, I would say: `We shall
never
look on his like again'.
"He
was a shy awkward boy, with the benignity and the genius shining from
him. He adored Willie Yeats and Charles Johnston.
He extended his friendship to me. He joined those Sunday
parties at Whitehall, and we met elsewhere. He was then an
accountant at Pim's, the big draper's in George's Street,
Dublin. During the day he wrestled with the prices of
blankets and carpets, or perhaps he did not wrestle,
for he has a preposterous gift for business of a sort or says he has -
afterwards he made poems and stories, and he painted, painted, painted,
putting the most lively things on canvas, quite oblivious of how he
cast them down and where; not caring greatly what became of
them when they were done
- feeling, perhaps, that the spilt oblation on the altar of the Unknown
God is more precious than the hoarded one. He painted the
walls and
ceilings of the Theosophical Society's rooms with his wonderful angels
and
fairies, his mystical dreams and fancies; for he is a mystic
to the
lips and further as much akin to the Eastern as to the Christian
mystic,
although the teachings of his youth, arid and bitter, have closed the
door
for him on these last. If you go to see him today at Plunkett
House,
Merrion Square, where his business life, which is never without its
golden
and purple patches, is lived, you will find yourself surrounded by his
angels.
He told me the other day that he destroyed all his pictures which did
not
satisfy him; just as he sells them for a wholly inadequate
price because
he would keep them within reach of the poor man who was minded to give
himself a luxury while he would think it dishonest to charge the rich
man more".
FROM "CO-OPERATION AND
NATIONALITY" (1912)
The list of AE's works
includes, The Candle of Vision, Collected Poems, The Interpreters, The
National Being, Imagination and Reveries, Voices of the Stones, Vale
and Other Poems, Song and Its Fountains, The
Avatars, all of these having been published by the
Macmillans. His
little pamphlet; Co-operation and Nationality published by Maunsel of
Dublin,
is now out of print, and a few selections from its pages may indicate
to
the reader what the drift of his mind was in dealing with such urgent
and
practical matters. These paragraphs are taken almost at
random: -
Civilization in historical times has been a flare-up on a few
square miles of brick and mortar.
----------
In the New England States there are at
the present time about 26,000 derelict farms once held by
freeholders. They had everything and more than everything we
are trying to give our Irish farmers, and where are they now?
The cities nodded and beckoned to the children of the farm and they
went, as they are going, and will go, in spite of
small holdings, land acts, laborers' plots, and the rest, if the
miracle
is not wrought and the countryside made a place where a man can enjoy
the
fullest and freest development of his spiritual, intellectual and
social
powers. Can this miracle be wrought? It is this
question I
will try to answer.
-------------
The organized industries, the organized
communities, are always wresting any surplus from the unorganized.
------------
In congested
Ireland every job which can be filled by the kith and kin of the
gombeen kings and queens, is filled accordingly, and you get every kind
of inefficiency and jobbery. They are all publicans, and
their friends are all strong drinkers. They beget people of
their own character and appoint them lieutenants, and non-commissioned
officers in their service. All the local appointments are in
their gift, and hence you get drunken doctors, drunken rate-collectors,
drunken J.P.'s, drunken inspectors - in fact round the gombeen system
reels the whole drunken, congested world, and underneath this revelry
and jobbery the unfortunate peasant labors and gets no return for his
labours.
---------------
No country can marry any particular solution of its problems
and live happily ever afterwards. Life is an endless
struggle, and every nation will have perpetually to adjust
itself to new conditions.
------------
A man is not human in the true sense of
the word
unless he fits into humanity. A disorganized society is like
a heap
of bricks. Brief may be made but there is no reason for their
existence
unless they are to form part of a building. . . . The worst thing that
can
happen to a social community is to have no social order at
all; where
every man is for himself, and the devil may take the
hindmost. Generally
in such a community he takes the front rank as well as the
stragglers. The phrase "Every man for himself", is one of the
maxims in the gospel according to Beelzebub. The devil's game
with men is to divide and conquer them. Isolate your man from
obligations to a social order, and in most cases his soul drops into
the pit like a rotten apple from the Tree of Life.
----------------
About 100,000
Irish country people are already members of co-operative societies and
their trade turnover this year will be close on three million
pounds. The total trade turnover of the movement from its
inception till the present, is over twenty-five million pounds .
. . . . . . The opposition to this work of agricultural organization
had its
origin in the little country towns which, for the most part, produce
nothing
and are mere social parasites.
-------------
The Irish country towns only develop
mental bogs
about them. We have grown so accustomed to these arid patches
of
humanity that we accept them in a hopeless kind of way, whereas we
should
rage and prophesy over them, as the prophets of ancients Israel did
over
Tyre and Sidon. And indeed, a lordly magnificence of
wickedness is
not so hopeless a thing to contemplate as a dead level of petty
iniquity,
the soul's death in life, without ideas or aspirations. The
Chaldeans
- they who built up the Tower of Heaven in defiance of Heaven - had so
much
greatness of soul that the next thing they might do would be to turn it
into a house of prayer; but lives filled with everlasting
littleness,
fill one with deep despair and madness of heart.
----------------
Sometimes one
feels as if there were some higher
mind in humanity which could not act through. individuals, but only
through brotherhoods and groups of men. Anyhow, the
civilization which is based on individualism is mean, and the
civilization based upon great guilds, fraternities, communes and
associations is of a higher order. Canadian
Theosophist, Volume 20, #1 (1939) A LETTER FROM AE
The following letter from the pen of the late George W. Russell,
written
in 1895 to Mrs. T.P. Hyatt, is printed by the kind permission of Mrs.
Hyatt.
As an intimate revelation of the poet's method of writing, where
composition
became the exercise of a vital and devoted function and privilege and
not
merely a literary pleasure, it is of profound interest and should be of
value
to young writers. In 1895 Russell was 29 years of age, not
yet married,
and wholly devoted to Theosophy, whose principles he never
deserted.
The influences that eventually changed the whole conception of the
Theosophical
Society from a Universal Brotherhood to be the vehicle of personal
cults
had already begun to operate, and The Irish Theosophist was a protest
against
the change. Mrs. Hyatt explains that her little magazine, of
which
Russell speaks, was such a success she had to give it up as she could
not
employ competent people to look after it and finally had to choose
between
it and her household.
Dr. T.P. Hyatt is at present on a World
Tour, and has
been in India and Australia and will return from New Zealand by way of
California
to his home in Stamford, Conn.
3 Upper Ely Place,
Dublin, Ireland.
Dear Mrs. Hyatt
I would if I could send you poems,
stores and illustrations
for your magazine, but I can as it is, barely find time to do the work
for
the Irish Theosophist.
I have only a few hours; two
or three every evening,
and the Lodge work here occupies all my spare time. Of course
you could,
if you liked reprint from the I.T. anything you liked. The
Ballads
for the Children, with illustrations will, when completed, be issued in
a
small book together with a few songs.
In the first two volumes of the I.T., I
wrote some stories
which you might reprint, as they are out of print now, and but few
copies
found their way to the U.S.A. There were three: The
Midnight
Blossom, The Dawn of the Kaliyuga, and The Mask of Apollo, which might
do.
If you thought they would be suitable, I would correct some misprints
and
errors, and simplify them a little.
Gordon Rowe of 6 St. Edmunds, Regents
Park, London, writes
Stories for Children, and the Theosophical Publishing Company here is
going
to get a volume of them published shortly with illustrations by R.
Machell.
He would, I think, send you stories, as he does not regularly write for
any
other magazine.
There are heaps of things I would like
to do, but there
is no time to do them. The most gorgeous ideas float before
the imagination,
but time, money, and alas! inspiration to complete them do not arrive,
and
for any work to be really valuable we must have time to brood and dream
a
little over it, or else it is bloodless and does not draw forth the God
light
in those who read. I believe myself, that there is a great
deal too
much hasty writing in our magazines and pamphlets. No matter
how kindly
and well disposed we are when we write we cannot get rid of the
essential
conditions under which really good literature is produced, love for the
art
of expression in itself; a feeling for the music of
sentences, so that
they become mantrams, and the thought sings its way into the
soul.
To get this, one has to spend what seems a disproportionate time in
dreaming
over and making the art and workmanship as perfect as possible.
I could if I wanted, sit down and write
steadily and without
any soul; but my conscience would hurt me just as much as if
I had
stolen money or committed some immorality. To do even a
ballad as long
as The Dream of the Children, takes months of thought, not about the
ballad
itself, but to absorb the atmosphere, the special current connected
with
the subject. When this is done the poem
shapes itself
readily enough; but without the long, previous brooding it
would be
no good. So you see, from my slow habit of mind and limited
time it
is all I can do to place monthly, my copy in the hands of my editor
when
he comes with a pathetic face to me. I hope to do a series of
ballads
or stories for children, and you can always use them again if you care
to.
But we have only two or three writers here who regularly write for the
I.T.,
and until they increase in number I feel in a way bound not to
withdraw,
or write anywhere else, or leave Dunlop, our editor, in a hole.
Now I am really sorry I cannot at
present do as you wish.
If the Gods would only inspire me a little more vigorously I would
write
no end, but as it is I have to sweat over my work, such as it is, and
often
groan that I never have a chance to do it properly. I wish
your magazine
every success. You should apply to James Pryse for ballads,
and songs.
No one could do them better than he. He is the greatest
literary genius
in the T.S., and ought to be worked for all he is worth in that way.
Best wishes,
Ever yours, fraternally,
Geo.
W. Russell.
Quotes by George William Russell
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