Irish Genius George W.Russell (AE) Pays Boston a Visit on February 10

Photograph of George W. Russell (AE) at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts

Ireland's famous mystic, poet, painter, essayist, economist and agricultural reformist George W. Russell visited Massachusetts on February 10, 1928, part of a six week tour of America.

Born in Lurgan, County Armagh, Russell moved to Dublin as a child and played an important role in Ireland's evolution in the early 20th century, as a writer, activist and thinker. He wrote under the pen name AE.

The Boston Globe story of February 11 called Russell "the most brilliant and versatile genius (Ireland) has produced in this generation....The shambling six footer, who has just turned 61, with a great flowing grey beard, ambled into the lobby of the Statler Hotel yesterday afternoon, smiled shyly at reporters from behind his spectacles....talking with reporters for half an hour and impressing them with the flash of his wit and the power of his intellect.

Russell then traveled across the river to Cambridge, where he "lectured at Harvard in the afternoon and dined with President Abbot Lawrence Lowell in the evening."

Image courtesy of Harvard Math Department

AE said that the Gaelic revival and the poets of Ireland "had a large influence in the Irish fight for freedom. There has been no great movement in Ireland that has not had a poet at the roots of it. Padraic Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh, poets, were all executed for their part in the Easter Rebellion.

"In our ancient sagas nothing was prized save the essential human virtues," Russell told reporters who were gathered. "The emphasis is on truth, chivalry, heroism. They are a kind of pagan rendering of 'love thy neighbor.' Earlier contact with them would have removed much of the bitterness from our political life."

After his stay in Massachusetts, Russell visited New York, Baltimore, Nashville, Wichita, Chicago and various other cities.

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