IN MEMORY OF A GREAT IRISHMAN

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

IN MEMORY OF A GREAT IRISHMAN

Writings And Impressions Of AE

“The Living Torch, AE,” edited by Monk Gibbon, with an introductory essay: “A Memoir of AE: George William Russell,’ by John Eglinton (London: Macmillan). Whatever value the future may place on the literary works of AE, there seems little doubt but that the writer himself, George William Russell, will be ranked great as a man. He had so many talents, talents which to the average person might seem confusing by the very generosity with which Ah used them. He was a poet of great distinction, an eloquent prose writer and a vivid speaker. He was a theosophist and a mystic, capable of believing, as did Blake of the Welsh mountains, that the mountains of Ireland were the dwelling place of supernatural beings and even of visualising them and drawing them in pictures. This was the man of whom George Moore wrote in “Hail and Farewell”:

I remember the delight and wonder which his verse and prose had awakened n me It was just as if somebody had put his hand into mine and led me away into a young world which I recognised as the fabled Arcady that had flourished before man discovered gold, and forged the gold into a ring which gave him power to enslave White mist curled along the edge of the woods, and the trees were all in blossom. There were tall flo^" s J", U -®. grass, and gossamer threads glittered in the Ays of the rising run. and it seemed to me that the man must live always in this hour, and that he not only believed in Arcady, but that Arcady was always in him.

Yet this Arcadian and philosopher was also the man who, fired by the doctrine of Horace Plunkett, rode on a bicycle through the villages of Ireland preaching the virtues of co-operation and lecturing on dairy-farming, the man of practical affairs who organised the farmers, founded creameries and banks, became such an authority on rural economy that he was summoned to Washington to give advice to the Government of the United States and was considered competent to give evidence on finance before a royal commission. . With a genius that shone brilliantly in so many facets it is easy to understand that AE should have come to be regarded as one of the great men, very possibly the greatest, of his generation in Ireland, though he himself was not of Irish birth. His verse is not likely to live as will that of W. B. Yeats, nor his prose as that of Bernard Shaw, but the man himself will remain memorable and his work on behalf of humanity live after him. George Moore once said in casual conversation, . “You know, I think that AE Is too great a man to be a great artist.” Simone Tery, a French writer who is quoted by Mr. Monk Gibbon, expressed the idea more clearly when she wrote: “Ce qu’on aime le mieux dans Yeats, ce sont ses vers. Mais le chef-d’oeuvre d’AE, qui est un grand artiste, e’est encore lui-meme.”

It is good that we should know all we can - about such a man. John Eglinton, a life-long friend, has written a memoir in which as much use as possible is made of AE’s letters. It tells in brief of most of the things that were important in AE’s life, and John Eglinton’s own comments are amplified by contributions from various friends of AE’s who have set down their recollections and impressions. The place in literature which AE may eventually occupy is well suggested by John Eglinton in his preface:

It is the men who have believed who are ultimately best remembered. The sincere assent of anv mind to a religious interpretation of life is a memorable point in our human records. A man born with a spiritual perception has an advantage like that of those warriors of old who fought with supernatural weapons; and the names of those poets whom we associate with any such perception assume in retrospect a growing effulgence amid names much more important in their day. What a name, for example, is that of Bichard Rolle of Hampole, .of Thomas Traherne, of Henry Vaughan, of William Blake. They seem to have owed little to their fellow-men, and their importance is altogether out of proportion to their technical accomplishment or to their authoritative standing in the development of thought or literature. It is possible that the name of George Bussell will shine in the future with something of the light of these names, and that his poems will continue to make him friends like those whom his personality attracted to him in life.

The task of collecting from ephemeral journals the more important examples of AE’s writings has been undertaken by a young disciple of his, Mr. Monk Gibbon, who iu “The Living Torch” provides three hundred pages of AE’s best work, contributed in his capacity of editor to “The Irish Statesman” and “The Irish Homestead.” _ It is a representative selection, showing in a bewildering variety of subjects AE’s unfailing ability to comment and criticise both graciously and with penetrating vision. Few of these essays and fragments cover more than a page or two, yet the book as a whole is extraordinarily readable. It says much for Mr. Monk Gibbon’s skill in selection and arrangement that he has been able to present in these writings of AE a true picture of tlie man, a picture adequately and interestedly amplified by an eighty-page introductory essay.