George William Russell

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George William Russell

George William Russell (born April 10, 1867 in Lurgan , County Armagh , Ireland , † July 17, 1935 in Bournemouth , Dorset , England ) was an Irish poet , editor , painter , journalist and theosophist . He usually appeared under the pseudonym Æ .

life and work

Childhood, marriage, children

Russell was born on April 10, 1867 in Lurgan, the youngest of three children. The father Thomas Russell († 1900) was an accountant. In 1878 the family moved to Dublin , where he attended the Metropolitan School of Art from 1880 and from 1882 additionally the college in Rathmines (a suburb of Dublin). In 1885 he dropped out of schools prematurely, the "will was too weak", as he himself said. On June 9, 1898, he married the theosophist Violet North († 1932) in Dublin . The marriage resulted in two sons, Brian (* 1900) and Diarmuid (1902–1973). A son born in 1899 died after just one month.

Social reform work

Russel worked for a long time under his real name for the Irish Agricultural Organization Society (IAOS), founded in 1894 by Horace Plunkett , whose aim was to free Irish smallholders from dependence on usury and to provide a new basis for Irish agriculture create. When Plunkett needed organizational support in 1897, on the recommendation of William Butler Yeats , Russell became one of the leading figures ( Assistant Secretary ) in the IAOS and the main organizer of this co-operative social reform movement in Ireland.

The theosophist

On June 16, 1885, Russell founded a subsidiary of the Hermetic Society in Dublin , together with William Butler Yeats , whom he had met a year earlier at art school, and Charles Johnston . In June 1886 he joined the Theosophical Society and was a co-founder of a theosophical lodge in Dublin. When the Theosophical Society split in 1895, he followed the direction of William Quan Judges and became a member of the Theosophical Society in America (TGinA). After Judges' early death in 1896 and the subsequent change of course of the TGinA under Katherine Tingley , he resigned from the TGinA and re-established the Hermetic Society in March 1898 as an organization independent of the Theosophical Society. He himself became president and remained in that capacity until 1933, when he handed this office over to Patrick Gillman Bowen .

The artist

GW Russell: Bathers

Russell came into contact with the Dublin literary scene early on. Along with William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory, he is considered one of the central figures of the more traditionally-minded part of the Irish Renaissance . In addition to several volumes of poetry , he wrote a variety of mystical , political, and practical articles and treatises . Between 1905 and 1923 he was the editor of Irish Homestead magazine and between 1923 and 1930 of The Irish Statesman .

He died in England and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.

Selection of works

Poetry

  • Homeward: Songs by the Way (1894)
  • The Earth Breath (1897)
  • The Divine Vision (1904)
  • Collected Poems (1913)
  • Salutation (1917)
  • The House of the Titans (1934)
  • Selected Poems (1935).

mysticism

  • The Candle of Vision (1918)
    • German way to enlightenment: visions of a modern Celtic seer. Translated from English and edited. by Sylvia Botheroyd; Eugen Diederichs 1992 Diederichs Yellow Row 95
  • The Interpreters (1922)
  • Song and its Fountains (1932)
  • The Avatars (1933)

Web links

Commons : George William Russell  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Heinz Kosok: History of Anglo-Irish Literature . Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-503-03004-2 , p. 147, and Ruth Fleischmann, George Russell (AE): Practical Poet in the Irish Co-Operative Movement , in: Wolfgang Riehle, Hugo Keiper (Eds.) : Anglistentag 1994 Graz , Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1995, pp. 107–122.
personal data
SURNAME Russell, George William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Æ; AE
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Northern Irish poet, painter, journalist and theosophist
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Lurgan , Armagh (County) , Northern Ireland
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1935
Place of death Bournemouth , Dorset , England