A.R. Orage, A memoir by Philip Mairet

A.R. Orage, A memoir by Philip Mairet

"Between forty and fifty years of age most men, perhaps all, experience something of a crisis. They pass through the change from the upward to the downward arc of life, when something deep in the soul turns backwards toward home, whatever outward habits may be continued. They hear a whisper within, that they had better try some other mode of living, do something even opposite to what they have done before, and if they cannot bear to hearken, they often die."

This is the story of an unusual man who hearkened to the call; who found renewal through resignation, triumph through submission; who abandoned a brilliant career at the peak of his powers to seek spiritual adventure in the Gurdjieff "monastery" at Fontainebleau.

A. R. Orage was, according to G. K. Chesterton, "the most vigorous and lucid exponent of economic philosophy of our time... a man who wrote fine literature in the course of writing fighting journalism." Brilliant editor of one of Britain's most influential weeklies, The New Age, who numbered among his contributors Shaw and Wells, Orage, like W. B. Yeats whom he resembled, emerged from theosophical influences. "Their gods were not my gods," says G. K. Chesterton, but they "saved both men from the godforsaken cheap materialism of most revolutionists of their day."

"Anyone called upon casually to count our best writers on his fingers would probably have left out Orage: because he was so important," said Chesterton, "nobody thought of him first as a writer."

"You taught me to write, you taught me to think ...what not to do... I cannot tell you how often I call to mind your conversation or how often, in writing, I remember my master." This is Katherine Mansfield writing to Orage in 1921. She is only one of a score of celebrated authors to whom Orage was one of the great editors of all time.

"But why must you go?" his faithful secretary asked him when abandonment of his career seemed to her like the end of the world. He could only answer: "I am going to find God."

After more than a year of rigorous labor and mental discipline, digging ditches under Gurdjieff's impressively efficient direction, Orage undertook, in the name of Gurdjieff and in the cause of his Institute, his mission to America, where he lived and taught for five years. The esoteric groups that he trained are still functioning.

"You alone of all men of genius I have ever met seem totally to have conquered pride," John Cowper Powys wrote to him in 1930. Then in 1931, in accord with the Gurdjieff notion that a man must find his own work in life, Orage returned to England a new man to found a new paper, The New English Weekly, which began publication April 1932. Orage's time was short; he died November 1934, shortly before his 62nd birthday.

He was an intimate of George Russell (AE), whose obituary article on the death of Orage was the last thing the venerable Irish poet and mystic ever wrote for publication.

Philip Mairet, an intimate colleague of the great editor in the last three years of his life, originally wrote this memoir "to divine the earlier Orage from knowledge of the man he ultimately became." For this revised and enlarged edition, thirty years later, he has written a new Introduction and an Epiloque, nearly as long again as the original memoir.

To the new generation interested in writers and writing, editors and editing, this book offers the exciting discovery of a master craftsman. To another generation, passing from the upward to the downward curve of life, Orage's unique spiritual adventure will make absorbing reading, direct and personal "as a whisper from within." It is also an indispensable chapter in the great story of the Gurdjieff movement.

Publication of this revised enlarged edition is precedent to the forthcoming publication of Orage's writings, including not only his famous literary criticism, but his much less known spiritual works.

Details

• Hardcover with dust jacket (Has wear & tear)
  
• Condition: Good
  
• Publisher: University Books