IRELAND THE ANOMALOUS
STATE: PARANORMAL CULTURES AND THE IRISH LITERARY & POLITICAL REVIVAL
Wendy E. Cousins
In 1841 the
Irish census showed a population of 8.2 million but through famine and
emigration this had declined to 4.5 million by 1900 (Public Records Office of
Northern Ireland 2007). In the first decade of the twentieth century the island
was troubled politically and beset with poverty and disease. Dublin
as a capital city was little more than a large town, with a population of
around 400,000 and the worst housing conditions in the British
Isles. Mortality rates were high, the death rate in Dublin
per thousand was 22.3 while in London
it was just 15.6 (The National Archives
of Ireland 1911). The Anglo-Irish Protestant class, descendants and successors
of the Protestant Ascendancy that had ruled Ireland in the eighteenth century
made up only 10% of the city’s population, yet within this small section of
society a number of closely-interconnected poets, artists, women’s
liberationists and revolutionaries were exploring altered states of
consciousness, esoteric philosophies, Eastern religions and radical politics in
a way that prefigures the zeitgeist of 1960s California. Their writing was to
influence the course of Western literature and define the rebirth of Ireland
as a nation.
Poet and polymath
George William Russell (‘AE’) proclaimed the awakening of the old gods in the Dublin hills and taught
the members of his wide social circle techniques of altering consciousness which
they learned to use as a means of inspiring their artistic work. Other writers
as diverse as W.B. Yeats, the duo Somerville
and Ross, and James Cousins were variously involved in mysticism, spiritualism,
Theosophy and ceremonial magic. Automatic writing mediums Hester Dowden, Eileen
Garrett and Geraldine Cummins were also features of the literary scene. In political and public life the paranormal had
influence. The island saw out the end of the
nineteenth century as part of the British Empire under the governance of Conservative
statesmen Arthur and Gerard Balfour, both eminent members of the Society for
Psychical Research (SPR), who served successive terms as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Their
SPR colleague, Sir William Fletcher Barrett, as well as investigating
telepathy, dowsing and poltergeists was Professor of Physics at the Royal
College of Science for Ireland.
Revolutionary activist Maude Gonne (one of the founders
of Sinn Féin and
Yeats’s muse) reported a number of personal paranormal experiences and held
to the belief that “every political movement on earth has its counterpart in
the spirit world and the battles we fight have perhaps been already fought out
on another plane and great leaders draw their often unexplained power from
this” (Gonne McBride 1938: 336).
For creative
people engaged in processes of personal
and national reinvention this fascination with the Otherworldly was
simultaneously a manifestation of a sense of geographic and cultural
dislocation, and an inventive way of integrating paradoxes of identity and
territory. A process of re-enchantment which allowed the ordinary
to become extraordinary and enabling them to reach a new ‘province of the imagination’.
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References
Gonne MacBride, M. 1938. A Servant of the Queen. Buckinghamshire:
Colin Smyth Ltd.
The National Archives
of Ireland (1911) Poverty and Health http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/poverty_health.html
[accessed 14th May 2012].
Department of Culture
Arts and Leisure. 2007. Statistics:
Counting the Emigrants. [Online: Record Office of Northern
Ireland].Available at: http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/exhibitions_talks_and_events/19th_century_emigration_to_the_north_america_online/statistics.htm
[accessed 14th May 2012].
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WEB
LINKS
Bigraphical entry for George William Russell from the Ulster History Circle
William
Butler Yeats Online
Exhibition from the National Library of Ireland http://www.nli.ie/yeats/
Biographical note on James Cousins
Wikipedia biographical entry for Hester Dowden
Wikipedia biographical entry for Eileen Garrett
Wikipedia biographical entry for Sir William Fletcher Barrett
The
Society for Psychical Research
Wendy
E. Cousins webpage http://ulster.academia.edu/WendyCousins/About
YOU
TUBE LINK
Maud Gonne’s work as a revolutionary activist with
Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Erin)
from the documentary Guns & Chiffon (2004) Paradox Pictures directed by Geraldine
Creed
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