Читать книгу Some Impressions of My Elders - St. John G. Ervine - Страница 7

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But the Co-operative Movement did not absorb the whole of his energies. He is as many-sided as William Morris was, almost as many-sided as Leonardo da Vinci. His work on the Irish Homestead would seem to be sufficient to employ all the vitality of a healthy, active man, but "A. E." cannot be contained within the pages of a weekly review, and so, while writing four or five pages every week of the finest journalism to be found in Great Britain or Ireland, he has also produced seven remarkable books and painted many pictures, engaged in political and economic controversy, and sat as a member of the Irish Convention which endeavoured, in 1917, to discover a solution of the Irish Problem. In a strange and, to me, incomprehensible book, called "The Candle of Vision," he has wrought his mysticism to such a pitch of practicality that he is able to offer his readers an alphabet with which to interpret the language of the Gods! It manifests itself in some of his pictures, where strange, luminous and brightly-coloured creatures are seen shining in some ordinary landscape, creatures that seemed to me, when I first saw them, akin to Red Indians. In everything that he writes and does, there is a consciousness of some spiritual presence, not the spiritual presence of the Christian theology, but of the Pagan Legends. One night, in his house in Dublin, I drew the attention of a lady to one of his pictures, a dark landscape, in the centre of which a very brilliant and beautiful creature was dancing. "A. E." turned to us and said, "That's the one I saw!" and I remembered the story I had been told earlier in the evening, that he saw fairies, that he actually took penny tram-rides from Dublin to go up into the mountains to see the fairies! I do not remember what the lady said, but I remember that she looked exceedingly astonished, and, indeed, I myself felt some astonishment. If Mr. Yeats had said that he had seen a fairy, I should have smiled indulgently and should neither have believed that he had seen one nor that he himself believed that he had seen one. But while I do not believe that "A. E." saw a fairy, otherwise than in his imagination, I am certain that he believes he saw one, not as a creature of the mind, but as one having flesh and blood. He claims no peculiar merit for himself in seeing visions. "There is no personal virtue in me," he writes in "The Candle of Vision," "other than this that I followed a path all may travel but on which few do journey." He tells his readers how they, too, if they have the wish, may see the things which he has seen, and he gives descriptions of some of his visions. People as incredulous as I am can very easily dispose of "A. E.'s" visions as the fantasies of a man suffering perhaps from inadequate nourishment—for "A. E." was careless about his meals in those days—just as the visions of St. Theresa and St. Catherine of Sienna may be explained by the feverishness of mind that comes to people who are starving themselves or are suffering from neurosis. Here is an account of one of his visions. You are to understand that it is not a dream such as you and I have when we are asleep, but something seen by a man who is awake at broad of day, something actual, something that you who read this might also see if you were to follow the path on which he has travelled:

So did I feel one warm summer day lying idly on the hillside, not then thinking of anything but the sunlight, and how sweet it was to drowse there, when, suddenly, I felt a fiery heart throb, and knew it was personal and intimate, and started with every sense dilated and intent, and turned inwards, and I heard first a music as of bells going away, away into that wonderous underland whither, as legend relates, the Danaan gods withdraw; and then the heart of the hills was opened to me, and I knew there was no hill for those who were there, and they were unconscious of the ponderous mountain piled above the palaces of light, and the winds were sparkling and diamond clear, yet full of color as an opal, as they glittered through the valley, and I knew the Golden Age was all about me, and it was we who had been blind to it but that it had never passed away from the world.

The Golden Age is here, at this moment, and all the noble creatures who filled it with chivalry and beauty are crowding about us. We have only to open our eyes and we shall see!...

Once, suddenly, I found myself on some remote plain or steppe, and heard unearthly chimes pealing passionately from I know not what far steeples. The earth-breath streamed from the furrows to the glowing heavens. Overhead the birds flew round and round crying their incomprehensible cries, as if they were maddened, and knew not where to nestle, and had dreams of some more enraptured rest in a diviner home. I could see a ploughman lift himself from his obscure toil and stand with lit eyes as if he too had been fire-smitten and was caught into heaven as I was, and knew for that moment he was a god.

It is very vague, the disbeliever feels, and there is nothing in it to make one accept it as a vision of a thing actually seen, rather than fancied; but there can be no doubt of the intensity with which "A. E." believes in the actuality of it. These visions form the foundation of his political and economic faith. He advocates co-operative enterprise because he believes in his visions as actual happenings. In a poem, called "Earth Breath," he says: