DAN MULHALL unpacks the diverse roles of George Russell, from poetry to political commentary and agricultural advocacy
THE recently established AE George Russell Society has nothing to do with the F-1 racing driver of the same name. Instead, it commemorates the life and work of George William Russell, better known by his pen-name, AE.
Poet, painter, mystic, advocate of agricultural cooperation, editor and political commentator, George Russell was born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh in 1867 and moved to Dublin a decade later.
Russell met W.B. Yeats during their time together at art college in the mid-1880s, which was the beginning of a long but chequered friendship. As a poet, AE could never match Yeats’ way with words and was consistently overshadowed by him. For me, AE deserves particular credit for his sustained contribution to Irish public life during those three formative decades between 1900 and 1930.
AE’s writings as a cultural nationalist had a strong mystical flourish. He wrote that “the Gods have returned to Erin and have centred themselves in the sacred mountains and blow the fires throughout the country”.
“Out of Ireland,” he predicted, “will arise a light to transform many ages and peoples.”
His life changed course in 1897 when he joined the Irish cooperative movement, which gave him a hands-on knowledge of the grim living conditions in much of rural Ireland. It convinced him of the value of agricultural cooperation, a conviction from which he never wavered.
In 1904, AE combined with Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory to help found the Abbey Theatre, but his relationship with Yeats became strained as Yeats’s autocratic management style clashed with AE’s more democratic instincts.
In 1905, AE took over as editor of the cooperative movement’s newspaper, and devoted most of the rest of his life to this demanding editorial work at The Irish Homestead, where he published some of James Joyce’s first short stories, and later at The Irish Statesman (1923-30). It meant that he had a bird’s eye view of everything that happened in Ireland during that time of political transformation. AE sympathised with the Dublin workers during the lock-out of 1913 and travelled to London for a rally in the Royal Albert Hall at which he bravely took aim at Ireland’s Catholic Church and the Irish Parliamentary Party on account of their animosity to the striking workers.
After 1916, AE, who had been close to James Connolly, became increasingly sympathetic to Sinn Féin and was invited by Lloyd George to participate in the Irish Convention which was tasked with finding a solution to the political impasse between nationalists and unionists. AE came up with a compromise plan for an all-Ireland dominion with autonomy for Ulster and maintenance of the imperial connection, but it was rejected by both sides.
His passivist instincts caused him to worry more and more about the spread of violence in Ireland. During the civil war, he was sharply critical of the anti-treaty side and was generally supportive of the Cumann na nGaedheal government, but not uncritically so. For example, in the late 1920s he became a fierce critic of the government’s introduction of literary censorship.
After the Irish Statesman folded in 1930, he made a number of visits to America where his ideas about rural civilisation sparked interest, including on the part of President Roosevelt who met AE for lunch at the White House in January 1935.
A seriously-ill AE was forced to cut short his American tour. He returned to Europe and died in Bournemouth in July 1935.
AE’s poem on the Easter Rising was notable for its inclusiveness. It pays tribute to 1916 leaders, Pearse, MacDonagh and Connolly, but also to those who died on the Western Front, including Tom Kettle and Willie Redmond. His concluding verse recalls 'the confluence of dreams'
That clashed together in our night
One river, born from many streams,
Roll in one blaze of blinding light.
It was a deliberate effort to build bridges between different political traditions in Ireland. He confessed that he wrote it 'in the hope that the deeds of all may in the future be a matter of pride to the new nation.'
George Russell enriched Ireland's literary and intellectual life at a vital time in the life of the nation.
He never embraced the aristocratic, authoritarian nationalism of Yeats’ later years, and nor did he subscribe to his friend's enchantment with the Anglo-Irish tradition. His preference was for “the wedding of Gaelic to world culture” without which 'Ireland would not be a nation but a parish”.
Or, as he put it in verse:
‘We would no Irish sign efface,
But yet our lips would gladlier hail
The firstborn of the Coming Race
Than the last splendour of the Gael …’.
Daniel Mulhall is a retired Irish Ambassador whose latest book is Pilgrim Soul: W.B. Yeats and the Ireland of his Time (New Island Books, 2023). He was the keynote speaker at the AE George Russell Society’s inaugural dinner at Dublin’s United Arts Club on July 13.
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