The Avatars

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). There is no imagination of mine about Avatars in this book. No more than an artist could paint the sun at noon could I imagine so great beings. But as a painter may suggest the light on hill or wood, so in this fantasy I tried to imagine the spiritual excitement created by two people who pass dimly through the narrative, spoken of by others but not speaking themselves. - Æ, following dedication to W. B. Yeats The Avatars is more than the 'Futurist Fantasy' which the author calls it; it is the a testamentary document of a philosopher-poet whose conviction, often and supremely expressed, is that the reality of spirit is the sole reality, and that not only will it prevail in the end but that it prevails now for those who understand. - N. Y. Times Review of Books 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 Avatars is surely imbued with the force of this powerful inner life.