Wales-Ireland Research Network Academic Symposium, Aberystwyth, 14 September 2016

On 14 September I travelled to Aberystwyth University for the annual conference of the Wales-Ireland Research Network. The conference’s topic was ‘1916 in Ireland and Wales’. The conference was attended by academics from Ireland and Britain and heard a range of papers, including one on Frongoch where the 1916 combatants were interned in 1916-17.

Representatives of the Welsh Government and the National Library of Wales were also in attendance.

I delivered a paper on George Russell’s (AE) 1916, which was based on my MA thesis from the 1970s, and focused on the poem, ‘To the memory of some I knew who are dead and who loved Ireland’ in which AE paid tribute to Pearse, MacDonagh and Connolly as well as three who lost their lives in World War 1 – Alan Anderson, Willie Redmond and Tom Kettle.

The text of my paper is set out below.

‘The confluence of dreams’: AE's 1916 – a paper delivered at the Wales-Ireland Academic Exchange 1916 Conference, Aberystwyth, 14 September 2016

Last weekend I attended the annual meeting of the British-Irish Association (BIA), which was held this year at Pembroke College, Oxford. The conference was dominated by the challenges for Ireland and for Irish-UK relations arising out of the referendum vote, but there was also discussion of commemorations. The view was expressed that this year's 1916 centenary commemorations had gone very well, having been conducted sensitively and with considerable emphasis on inclusivity. The BIA conference included an ecumenical service at the college chapel and one of the prayers written for the occasion referred to our lands 'united and divided by an entwined history', which just about sums up our situation.

I have had considerable opportunity this year to reflect on this entwinement between Irish and British history. I have attended events at various locations in Britain commemorating both the Easter Rising and the Irish participation in World War 1, sometimes remembering both events on the same day at different venues.

In Ireland, we have, I think, become quite relaxed about the idea that the 1914-1918 war is part of our history just as much as Easter 1916 even if the central narrative of modern Irish history is clearly the one that runs through Dublin's GPO and Kilmainham Jail during 1916. I am not sure that there is as yet a full reciprocal recognition of the Irish dimension to British history, but that may come in time.

There is something of an irony in the fact that, just as Ireland has completed a journey leading to our current, comfortable relationship with our nearest neighbour, Britain is embarking in a new and uncertain direction following the EU referendum, but I will park that thought for the moment and come back to it at the end. It is time to move on to reflect on an aspect of the 1916 centenary that holds a special interest for me - literary engagement with the Easter Rising.

One of the features of the period of Irish history whose centenary we are in the midst of commemorating is that it coincided with an extraordinary flowering of Irish literature. Moreover, there are clear connections between our history and our literature during the first half of the 20th century. A number of writers took part in revolutionary activity while our greatest writers gave plenty of attention to political developments in Ireland. Last year, we marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of WB Yeats and this year, as we invoke the memory of 1916, Yeats's work seems to me to be an indispensable companion. Today, however, I want to dwell on the lesser literary light that was George William Russell, or AE as he is better known.

Born in Lurgan in 1867, Russell moved to Dublin with his family in 1880 and spent most of the rest of his life there. Today, he is remembered mainly on account of his association with WB Yeats as part of the Irish literary revival. Students of James Joyce's work may also be familiar with AE on account of his appearance in Ulysses, where he comes in for some gentle parodying on account of his vegetarianism ('Esthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical') and the fact that Leopold Bloom (and no doubt Joyce also) was in his debt – A.E.I.O.U.

The key point about AE however is how different he was from Yeats in so many respects. Yes, they were friends from the time they first met at art school in Dublin and both were involved in the Irish Literary Theatre which evolved into the Abbey Theatre in 1904. Their friendship came unstuck as what Yeats called 'theatre business, management of men' drove them apart, but they made up later although, thereafter, there was always some wariness between them.

AE's early nationalism was romantic and mystical. He saw in turn of the century Ireland an "awakening of the ancient fires" and maintained that "the Gods have returned to Erin and have centred themselves in the sacred mountains and blow the fires throughout the country". Before we dismiss these wild imaginings, we should remember that they were characteristic enough of the period from which they emerged. Yeats for example asserted that Ireland was one of the "seven great fountains in the garden of the world's imagination". Late 19th century Irish nationalism clearly lacked for nothing in confidence and ambition!

From about 1905 onwards, Yeats became increasingly disenchanted with Ireland until, in 1913, he declared that 'Romantic Ireland's dead and gone/It's with O'Leary in the grave.' AE shared much of that disenchantment and was, like Yeats, the butt of DP Moran's colourful invective in The Leader where he was routinely referred to as 'the hairy fairy'. The key turning point in AE's life came in 1897 when, on Yeats's recommendation, he joined Horace Plunkett's Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, initially as an organiser of cooperative societies and, from 1905 onwards, as editor of the IAOS weekly journal, The Irish Homestead, which James Joyce called, with a somewhat characteristic ingratitude to AE who had published his first stories, the 'pigs' paper'.

From the time he took up the editorship of the Homestead, most of AE’s energies were consumed by the task of weekly journalism, a craft he embraced with aplomb. As he trained his eagle eye on a changing Ireland, he became an acute commentator on Irish affairs. No other Irish writer could boast 25 years of such intensive engagement with Irish affairs and he offers a unique perspective on the Ireland of his time. As he observed a changing Ireland, his nationalism became more pragmatic and analytical. His creative writing took a backseat to his journalism and political writings, notably Cooperation and Nationality (1913) and The National Being, which was published in 1916. Dedicating the latter work to his mentor, Horace Plunkett, AE wrote that Plunkett had, by taking him into the IAOS, 'grafted a slip of poetry on your economic tree.'

Another key difference between Yeats and AE was that, while Yeats was the consummate poet, Russell did not possess his friend's rare gift with words and, while he was an accomplished writer, few of his poems rise to the highest standard. His poetic voice never evolved in the way Yeats's did - from the Lake Isle of Innisfree to the Circus Animals Desertion, from 'I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree' to 'I must lie down where all ladders start/In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.' AE could never have written those latter lines, and probably would not have wanted to. AE wrote in a different vein. Here's an example of his verse:
,The whole of the world was merry,
One joy from the vale to the height,
Where the blue woods of twilight encircled
The lovely lawns of the light.’

Unlike Yeats, who during the second half of his life specialised in public poems, AE's collected poems consist predominantly of personal, somewhat mystical lyrics, although I will come back later to a couple of notable exceptions to that rule.

George Russell's achievement lay, it seems to me in his prose and journalism rather than his poetry. Even as a prose writer, however, Yeats was in a different class. Yeats's prose and occasional writings were all part of his persona as a poet. AE was aware that most of his output fell short of the highest literary standard. Alluding to Horace Plunkett, he wrote about The National Being that: 'it may not be economics in your sense of the word. It is certainly not poetry in mine.'

Russell’s weekly output covered topics, quite literally, as diverse as animal husbandry, rural cooperatives and village libraries. His more down-to-earth essays often had a higher purpose, however, forming part of his crusade to improve the standard of public debate and the general intellectual climate in Ireland.

In one of his few public poems that, at the end of his life, he included in his Collected Poems, AE wrote:
‘We would no Irish sign efface,
But yet our lips would gladlier hail
The first born of the coming Race
Than the last splendour of the Gael.’

This echoed his struggles, akin to what Yeats experienced, against those in early 20th century Ireland who espoused what AE considered to be an excessively narrow, backward-looking nationalism. With his growing concern for the Irish economy and society, AE looked to the creation of a cooperative commonwealth. Appalled by the poverty he encountered in the west of Ireland, he began to exalt the communal spirit over "petty individualism". He likened a disorganised society to "a heap of bricks" and aspired with characteristic optimism to reorganise Irish society along cooperative lines.

Another formative influence on the evolution of AE's political outlook was the Dublin Lock-Out of 1913 during which AE, departing from his longstanding practice of keeping out of public controversy in the interests of the cooperative movement, became a staunch advocate of the workers' cause. He published what he called a 'warning' to 'the aristocracy of industry' in Dublin putting them on notice that the 'restlessness in poverty' of Dublin's workers was making 'our industrial civilisation stir like a quaking bog.' His support for the workers, which included an appearance at a rally in the Royal Albert Hall where he directed sharp criticism towards the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Catholic Church for their indifference to the suffering of the workers and their families, brought him into contact with James Connolly, someone he grew greatly to admire.

The Home Rule crisis made AE, a lifelong pacifist, anxious as he fretted about the impact on Irish society and on the country's intellectual climate of the increasingly sharp tensions between Ireland's different religious and political traditions. The overwhelming violence unleashed by First World War added his sense of gloom and foreboding.

AE's public response to the Rising came in the first issue of the Irish Homestead to appear following the events of Easter week (the paper's premises had been damaged during the fighting in Dublin). In this commentary, he described the Rising as 'one of the most tragic episodes in Irish history.' With his usual desire to detect silver linings, AE argued that the cooperative movement was now more important than ever as 'the camp of reconcilement where the vast majority of Irish people separated by tradition for centuries may meet and unite in an economic brotherhood.' He criticised the manner in which Irish people were segregated into camps whose adherents knew nothing about each other than what they learn 'through the distorted mirror of party journalism.'

As a pacifist, AE was alarmed by the Rising but believed that 'the heart and intellect of Ireland' would eventually find its voice and most of the rest of his life as a writer was devoted to the realisation of that ambition, with which he persisted through the dark days of the war of independence and the civil war. He argued that the causes of insurrection were fundamentally economic and reckoned that the majority of those who had taken part in the Rising had come from the 'economically neglected' classes. Privately, he accepted that the Rising had also had 'spiritual causes' but did not want to publish anything about these until the excitement had died down and passions cooled. He suspected that Ireland was suffering from 'a kind of suppressed hysteria'

Despite his reticence about taking a public stance, AE wrote an extraordinary letter to Arthur Balfour on the 1st of June 1916, just a few weeks after the executions of the Rising's leaders had come to an end. In a brave and far-seeing assessment of the shift in public sentiment away from the Irish party and towards the heirs to the Easter Rising, he argued that 'Mr Redmond cannot speak for the Irish people .. He has lived so long out of Ireland that he cannot gauge the feelings of the present generation and his ignorance of the power of the Sinn Féin movement is proof of this’ (Letters from AE, p. 112). The particular purpose of AE's intervention was to counsel against any settlement that excluded Ulster. By way of guarantees for Ulster in a self-governing Ireland, he was prepared to accept an Irish House of Lords with a veto over legislation that might be inimical to Ulster Protestants.

AE's other main preoccupation during 1916 was the publication of The National Being: some thoughts on an Irish polity, his most ambitious piece of social and political thinking. It's a fascinating work, an appeal for moderation at a time when what he called 'twin serpents of sectarianism' were ready to strangle Ireland's potential. By 'national being', he had in mind the creation of a national civilisation 'worthy of our hopes and our ages of struggle'. The book offered a blueprint for Ireland’s future as a ‘cooperative commonwealth’, with all of its institutions based on cooperative principles. He believed that Ireland would at first borrow from Westminster, but would subsequently develop institutions that would reflect Ireland's distinctive character. Ireland's future would be determined by the quality of Irish thought and ideals.

AE hoped that the country would be governed by an 'aristocracy of character and intellect' rather than an aristocracy of birth. Put picturesquely, his dream was that there was 'the seed of Pericles in Patrick's loins, and that we might carve an Attica out of Ireland.' He believed that Ireland could never become an industrial society and argued that 'the creation of a rural civilisation is the greatest need of our time.' His vision of a society based on cooperative principles was posited on the emergence of a Home Rule Ireland, something that was already a fading prospect by the time The National Being was published.

Russell continued to mull over Irish affairs, with a deepening sense of alarm. In 1917, he wrote an extraordinary poem that deserves to be far better known than it is. The poem is ‘To the memory of some I knew who are dead and who loved Ireland.’ It was published in the Irish Times on 19 December and coincided with Russell’s participation in the Irish Convention, which sought to no avail to broker a compromise between republicanism and unionism regarding the future of Ireland. In a letter accompanying his poem, he explains its genesis. At the time of the Easter Rising, he confessed that ‘all that was Irish in me was profoundly stirred’. This caused him to write a poem (which he did not publish at the time) commemorating some of those who died as a result of the Rising, Pearse, MacDonagh and Connolly. Then, he remembered those who died in other battles: ‘they fought because they believed they would serve Ireland.’ He expressed the hope that ‘the deeds of all may in the future be a matter of pride to the new nation.’

AE’s poem pays tribute to Pearse: ‘Here’s to you Pearse, your dream nor mine,/But yet the thought for this you fell,/Has turned life’s water into wine.’ He also praised MacDonagh, whose ‘high words were equalled by high fate’, but reserved his most fulsome endorsement for James Connolly, ‘my man’, who believed that ‘earth with its beauty might be won/For labour as a heritage’ and who, according to AE, ‘cast the last torch on the pile.’

The outstanding feature of AE’s poem is that it includes verses on three Irishmen who lost their lives in the First World War.
‘You who have died on Eastern hills
Or fields of France ..
You, too, in all the dreams you had,
Thought of some thing for Ireland done.’

He pays tribute to Alan Anderson (son of IAOS secretary, RA Anderson) to Tom Kettle, 'Equal your sacrifice may weigh,/Dear Kettle of the generous heart', and Willie Redmond, 'You too, had Ireland in your care'.

While AE's poem cannot match Easter 1916 in the power of its language and the quality of its thought, AE's exemplary inclusiveness was well ahead of its time. Its evocation of 'the confluence of dreams/That clashed together in our night,/One river, born of many streams,/Roll in one blaze of blinding light', could well serve as an anthem for Ireland's commemorations in 2016.

The trajectory of AE's attitudes to developments in Ireland after 1916 mirror those of WB Yeats. At the Irish Convention, he sought to preserve the unity of Ireland where he argued for dominion status with financial autonomy. He stepped down when he discovered that the British Government had given the Ulster unionists guarantees about their exclusion from any Irish settlement.

AE's journey through life was an extraordinary one. He went from being the airy mystic of the 1890s to a down-to-earth advocate of agricultural co-operation. In the period between the Easter Rising and the creation of the Irish Free State, he took up an advanced nationalist position. And during the first decade of independence, he became a disenchanted observer of the realities of independence, especially after the imposition of literary censorship which shook the foundations of his faith in a distinctively Irish civilisation forged from ancient roots combined with contemporary nationalism. As editor of the Irish Statesman from 1923-1930, he sought to promote reasoned debate in the new Irish State and was strongly critical of the republicans for their refusal to accept the will of the majority. A dejected AE left Ireland in 1933 and died in Bournemouth in 1935.

Returning to the idea of the people of these islands being united and divided by history, let me say that one of the advantages we have today is that we are no longer trapped in an English-Irish dichotomy. Our imaginations are now being enriched by Welsh and Scottish stories among others, and this affords us an opportunity to have a broader, richer view of our past. I don't know if I want to view our two neighbouring islands as united by history. I prefer to think of us as separate but connected, proud of who we are but respectful of, and curious about, the others who share the geographic space in which our histories are made.

As far as current controversies are concerned, the regrettable fact that the UK will at some time cease to be a member of the European Union seems to me to put a fresh onus on us to find ways of preserving the gains made in Irish-UK relations in recent decades. The historical record - including in that unexpectedly dramatic decade a century ago - suggests that not much in life ought to be taken too much for granted.

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London