“We hold the Ireland of the heart
More than the land our eyes have seen
And love the goal for which we start
More than the tale of what has been.”— George William Russell
(A.E.) (1867–1935), “On Behalf of Some Irishmen Not Followers of Tradition,” in Collected Poems by A.E. (1913)
The poet, essayist, economist, critic, and artist George William Russell, who wrote under
the pseudonym A.E., died 80 years ago today in a nursing home, dismayed by the
direction taken by the Irish Free State since it had won a measure of autonomy
from Britain for the people of Ireland. But then again, there was virtually nothing that
could match the mystical nationalism and nationalistic mysticism of this often
overlooked member of the Irish Literary Renaissance.
Russell’s vision of Ireland
as not just a country about to fulfill its potential, but also about to
serve as a beacon to the world, is every bit as ecstatic as the one held by
American believers in “Manifest Destiny” the century before. “Out of Ireland will arise a light to
transform many ages and peoples,” he wrote to William Butler Yeats (maybe his
only rival for belief in the other-worldly) in an 1896 letter.
Novelist George Moore, who described a trip with his friend in his
autobiographical trilogy Hail and
Farewell (1912), regarded Russell in a half-amused, half-captivated
fashion: “AE is extraordinarily forthcoming, and while speaking on a subject
that interests him, nothing of himself remains behind, the revelation is
continuous, and the belief imminent that he comes of Divine stock, and has been
sent into the world on an errand.”
Though telling James Joyce when they first met that there was “not
enough chaos in your mind to create a world,” Russell ended up publishing three
of the young man’s stories that eventually ended up in Dubliners. Joyce, proud and probably
peeved at that initial remark, satirized “A.E.” as “A.E.I.O.U.” in Ulysses.
Joyce, it seems, was one of the few people who did not fall under
Russell’s spell. Those who came to Russell’s house to listen to him rhapsodize
included the likes of George Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, J.M. Synge, Lady
Gregory, James Stephens, Padraic Colum, Patrick Kavanagh, Austin Clarke, Oliver
St. John Gogarty—anyone who was anyone in the Irish literary (and even political) world.
What was Ireland’s “light to transform many ages and peoples”? It
was very unlikely that Russell had the “Celtic Tiger” in mind—economic growth has proved
chimerical. No, it wasn’t wealth, but literature that has proved enduring.
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