AE's Letters to Minanlabain

George William Russell, better known as Æ (1867-1935), mystic, poet, painter, journalist, editor, and practical rural economist, was a pivotal figure in the Irish literary revival and in the emergence of modern Ireland. From the beginning of the twentieth century he formed life-long friendships with W. B. Yeats, George Moore, Lord Dunsany, James Stephens, Stephen Mackenna (translator of the Enneads of Plotinus), James Joyce, and other writers, thinkers, and artists, and was closely associated with the Irish National Theatre Society (later the Abbey Theatre). The present volume is a collection of intimate and casual letters written by Æ to the late Kingsley Porter and his wife Lucy. Mrs. Porter introduces the letters with a preface telling of Æ's visits to their home, Glenveagh Castle in Ireland. Here is the real Æ - allowing his mind to play over personalities and the contemporary scene with freedom and spontaneity. His comments on American politics, economics, Prohibition, and the Depression, are witty and penetrating. Equally amusing is his description of the scene in England. The political situation in Ireland, on the other hand, filled him with anxiety, and one sees in these letters his deep love of Ireland - the hills, rocks, and the sea, even the 'Irish air'. He writes also of his own work - of the process of creating The Avatars, which proved to be his last book of prose; of his painting, and of his friends - Yeats, Frank O'Connor and the rest. In American, where Æ charmed hundreds of audiences, these pointed comments on affairs, and on the way in which he worked, will find many interested readers. In the literature by and about Æ, as it grows up, this collection should have a distinctive place. I believe the only good news of any interest does not come from the great cities or from councils of state, but from some lonely watcher on the hills who has had a momentous glimpse of infinitude and felt the universe rushing at him If ever in the future cycles I become a divinity a hundred million years from this and have charge of a planet, I will create plenty of lovely people. It will be the aesthetic planet, and ugliness will be a crime.