The sun., 1919-03-09
By BENJAMIN DE cASSERES.

~ few. Books OF elemental ire and
insight are rarer still. Where are the Wis
ions to-day that come "a Us trailing clouds
of gloryf Where are the written words
even in lyrical poetry-that carry one like
magical boat beyond matter and time
and that reyerberate with the sonorities of
the shoreless Atlantics of the brainf
Ecstasy in prose died with Swinburne In
England. In America James Huneker is
the only one among us who continues the
great dithy1ambic crescendos of Chateau
BRAND, Hugo, Flaubert, Emerson and
Saltus.
> But with the Irish to write like the
prophets annunciatory is natural An
Irishman cannot think. He sees. He is
an ecstatic being-born to the Tyre and
fhe clarion. He is the son of the Vision.
The Irishman stands nearer the invisibles
than any other European. He is the least
civilized of all men because he is more an
cient than tomorrow.
The English written literature of the
future belongs to Ireland. She has the
voice. Yeats. Dunsany, Synge, Stephens,
Lionel johnson, Wilde, Shaw, A. E.-to
name the big names that come to hand
stand to-day where the past ends. They
tumble with the golden keys of the imagi-
nation at the door Of another intellectual
and emotional dimension. Great is Ire
land, and her poets are christened with
Light.
A. Els George Russel) new book is
called The Candle Of Vision. 1t is
rarely beautiful book that storms the uni
.verse Of matter and sends it fleeing into
the ether, where is dissolves like tale
that should never have been told. 1t is
A Els confession, analysis and challenge.
He walks boldly, sanely and fearlessly in
another world-without table tapping,
controls" or ouija boards. He taps the
roots of the imagination and bores through
the unconquerable atom. 1t Is q ire
mendous book. To read it intently and
sympathetically at one sitting, as / did, is
literally to Fare Forth. 1t is to take the
greatest voyage, if one is equipped with
wings, that man can take. And when ''the
End" is reached one opens the eyes on the
strange world of chairs, tables and walls
and rub himself back-into reality? No.
Into illusion. For the world Of matter is
the illusion and the excursion with A. z.
was the fact.
Books such as these are beyond the lit
erary or scientific critic. They are first
hand documents. When Columbus said he
had found and trod new land to the
west he was called liar. So was Calico
when he uttered his fabulous theory
about the sphericity of the world. When
Swendenborg describes minutely the
angels we must believe him-or remain
silent 1t is easier to-day to disprove the
material existence Of your fountain pen
than it is TO "disprove" the existence of
the worlds and beings visited by Plotinus,
Blake or 4. f. What l see is my truth.
And other than my truth there is no truth.
Mathematics itself is only a collective IL
fusion about numbers. In another dimen-
sion the multiplication table as we know
it may be totally false. Ii may be so In
Mars.
names A. f links himself with immortal
and revered names. There is in his book
the profound and serene spiritual certainty
of Emerson. the waking experiences of
Blake, the momentary hypostatic union of
Plotinus, the reasoning and style of Mae
terlinck, the sublime intoxication in the
Eternal OF Spinoza, the scientific digging
of Berkeley, who declared other than God
nothing is; the fantasy Of Algenon Black
wood; the spiritualized sensuality of
Keats, the Eternal Becoming of Hegel, the
ethereal ,--ality of Shelley. Indeed, The
Candle Of Vision may be the Origin Of
Species or the NOrMm Organum of a new
science Of life. as completely revolutionary