The Avatars - A. E. (George Russell)

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Résumé :
In The Avatars, AE presents his own picture of what might happen if the socialistic State assumed control. So efficient has it become, that no one is homeless or insecure; everything is taken care of by the State. Yet, there is something in man that rebels against it. The spirit of man has lost itself in many illusions, and last of all it may lose itself in the most pitiful of any, the illusion of economic security and bodily comfort. These now fail to satisfy it, and there is nothing for it but spiritual adventures. About the author George William Russell (10 April 1867 - 17 July 1935), who wrote with the pseudonym ? (often written AE or A.E.), was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, painter and Irish nationalist. He was also a writer on mysticism, and a central figure in the group of devotees of theosophy which met in Dublin for many years. Russell was born in Lurgan, County Armagh (not in Portadown as has sometimes been misreported), in Ireland, the second son of Thomas Russell and Mary Armstrong. His father, the son of a small farmer, became an employee of Thomas Bell and Co., a prosperous firm of linen drapers. The family relocated to Dublin, where his father had a new offer of employment, when George was eleven years old. The death of his beloved sister Mary, aged 18, was a blow from which it took him a long time to recover. He was educated at Rathmines School and the Metropolitan School of Art, where he began a lifelong, if sometimes contentious, friendship with W. B. Yeats. In the 1880s, Russell lived at the Theosophical Society lodge at 3, Upper Ely Place, sharing rooms with H. M. Magee, the brother of William Kirkpatrick Magee. Russell started working as a draper's clerk, then for many years worked for the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), an agricultural co-operative society initiated by Horace Plunkett in 1894. In 1897, Plunkett needed an able organiser and W. B. Yeats suggested Russell, who became Assistant Secretary of the IAOS. Russell was editor (from 1905-23) of the Irish Homestead, the journal of the IAOS. His gifts as a writer and publicist gained him a wide influence on the cause of agricultural cooperation. He then became editor of The Irish Statesman, the paper of the Irish Dominion League, which merged with the Irish Homestead, from 15 September 1923 until 12 April 1930. With the demise of this newspaper, he was for the first time in his adult life without a job, and there were concerns that he could find himself in a state of poverty, as he had never earned very much money from his paintings or books. At one point his son Diarmuid was reduced to selling off early drafts of his father's works to raise money, to the annoyance of Russell, who accused the lad, with whom his relations were not good, of raiding the wastepaper baskets. Unbeknownst to him meetings and collections were organized and later that year at Plunkett House he was presented by Father T. Finlay with a cheque for ?800. This enabled him to visit the United States the next year, where he was well received all over the country and his books sold in large numbers. He used the pseudonym AE, or more properly, ?. This derived from an earlier ?on signifying the lifelong quest of man, subsequently abbreviated. (wikipedia.org)