The Interpreters

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 Fay brothers in the Irish National Theatre Society (later the Abbey Theatre). Russell's influence was as extensive in practical and political affairs as it was in the more intimate spiritual domain: many writers were first encouraged by Russell's editorial guidance in the Irish Homestead and, later, the Irish Statesman - among others, Frank O'Connor, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, F. R. Higgins, and Patrick Kavanagh. Nations conceive of themselves as guided or sustained by a divine wisdom, and I have wondered in what manner impulse might flow from Heaven to Earth. Out of my meditation on this came The Interpreters. Those who take part in the symposium suppose of the universe that it is a spiritual being, and they inquire what relation the politics of Time may have to the politics of Eternity. . . . The Interpreters may be taken as a symposium, between scattered portions of one nature dramatically sundered as the soul is in dream. - from author's Preface In his biography of Æ, Henry Summmerfield relates of him that probably in mid-1884 he "began to experience waking dreams of astonishing power and vividness which seemed to be thrust into his consciousness by a mind which was not his. Images of cosmic happenings and other worlds overwhelmed him with a majesty far removed from anything of which he was aware in his own being. 'I remember how pure, holy and beautiful these imaginations seemed,' Æ wrote in later years, 'how they came like crystal water sweeping aside the muddy current of my life. . . . The visible world became like a tapestry blown and stirred by winds behind it. If it would raise but an instant I knew I would be in Paradise."' The Interpreters is surely imbued with the force of this powerful inner life.