Alfred Richard Orage
Encyclopedia
Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual
, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age
. While working as a schoolteacher in Leeds, he pursued various interests, including Plato
, the Independent Labour Party
, and theosophy
. In 1900 Orage met Holbrook Jackson
and three years later they co-founded the Leeds Arts Club
, which became a centre of modernist culture in pre-World War I Britain. In 1905, Orage resigned his teaching position and moved to London. There, in 1907, he bought and edited the English weekly The New Age, at first with Holbrook Jackson, and became an influential figure in socialist politics and modernist culture, especially at the height of the magazine's fame before the First World War.
In 1924 Orage sold The New Age and went to France to work with George Gurdjieff, the spiritual teacher P. D. Ouspensky
had recommended to him. After spending some time of preliminary training in the Gurdjieff System, Orage was sent to America by Gurdjieff himself to raise funds and lecture on the new system of self-development which emphasized the harmonious work of intellectual, emotional and moving functions. Orage also worked with Gurdjieff in translating the first version of Gurdjieff's All and Everything
as well as Meetings With Remarkable Men from Russian to English; however, neither book was ever published in their lifetime.
In 1927 his first wife, Jean, granted him a divorce and in September he married Jessie Richards Dwight (1901–1985), the co-owner of the 'Sunwise Turn' bookshop where Orage first lectured on the Gurdjieff System. Orage and Jessie had two children, a boy and a girl: Richard and Ann. While in New York, Orage and Jessie often catered to celebrities such as Paul Robeson
fresh from his London Tour. In 1930, Orage returned to England and in 1931 he published the New English Weekly, remaining in London until his death on 6 November 1934.
, near Harrogate
, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
into a nonconformist religious family, he was generally known as Dickie and he dropped the name James altogether and adopted the middle name Richard. He became a schoolteacher in a Leeds Board elementary school at the age of twenty one and helped to found the Leeds branch of the Independent Labour Party
in 1894, writing a weekly literary column for the Labour Leader
, from 1895 to 1897. He brought a philosophical
outlook to the paper, including in particular the thought of Plato
and Edward Carpenter
. All in all, Orage devoted seven years of study to Plato, from 1893 to 1900; he also devoted seven years of his life to the study of Nietzsche's philosophy, from 1900 to 1907; from 1907 to 1914 he became a student of the Mahabharata
.
By the late 1890s, Orage was disillusioned with conventional socialism
and turned for a while to theosophy
. In 1900, he met Holbrook Jackson
in a Leeds bookshop, and lent him a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita. In return, Jackson lent him Friedrich Nietzsche
's Thus Spake Zarathustra, which led him to study Nietzsche's work in depth. In 1903, Orage, Jackson and the architect Arthur J. Penty helped to found the lively and successful Leeds Arts Club
, with the intention of promoting the work of radical thinkers including G. B. Shaw whom Orage had met in 1898, Henrik Ibsen
, and Nietzsche. During this period he returned to socialist platforms but by 1906, he was determined to combine Carpenter's socialism with Nietzsche and theosophy. Concentrating on this and in the presence of Beatrice Hastings was too much for Jean, the wife of his first marriage, the same wife who had shared in his own theosophic and aesthetic interests of his early activities in the Leeds Arts Club, who did not grant him a divorce but went to live instead with Holbrook Jackson and worked the rest of her life as a skilled craftswoman in the tradition of William Morris
. In 1906, Beatrice Hastings
whose real name was Emily Alice Haigh hailing from Port Elizabeth, a green-eyed beauty of twenty six with literary ambitions, could be seen with Orage and would eventually become a regular contributor to the New Age. By 1907, it became an intimate relationship and as Beatrice Hastings herself would later confess, "... Aphrodite
amused herself at our expense."
Orage explored his new ideas in several books. He saw Nietzsche's Übermensch
as a metaphor for the "higher state of consciousness" sought by mystics
and attempted to define a route to this, insisting this must involve a rejection of civilisation and conventional morality
. Instead, he moved through a celebration of Dionysus
to declare he was in favour not of an ordered socialism but of an anarchic movement.
In a one-year period, from 1906 to 1907, he published three books, Consciousness: Animal, Human and Superhuman based on his experience with Theosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche: the Dyonisian Spirit of the Age and Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism. His rational critique of Theosophy evoked an editiorial rebuttal from The Theosophical Review and in 1907, he terminated his association with the Society. The two books on Nietzsche were the first to be published in England as a systematic introduction to Nietzschean thought.
, following Arthur Penty
, another Leeds Art Club friend. Orage attempted to form a league for the restoration of a guild
system, much as described by William Morris
.
The failure of this project spurred him in 1907, supported by George Bernard Shaw
, to buy the weekly magazine The New Age
, in partnership with Holbrook Jackson. He quite soon turned it into his conception of a forum for politics
, literature
and the arts
. Although many contributors were Fabian
s, he to some extent distanced himself from their politics, and a wide range of political viewpoints were represented. The magazine launched an attack on parliamentary politics
, while Orage argued the need for utopianism. He also attacked the trade union
leadership, while offering some support to syndicalism
, and tried to combine this with the guild system. Combining these two viewpoints resulted in Guild socialism
, a political philosophy he began to argue for from about 1910.
Between 1908 and 1914 The New Age
was undoubtedly the premier little magazine in the UK. It was instrumental in pioneering the British avant-garde, from vorticism
to imagism
. Some of its contributors at this time included T.E. Hulme, Wyndham Lewis
, Ezra Pound
, Herbert Read
and many others. Apart from his undoubted genius as an editor, it might be said that Orage's real talent was as a conversationalist and a 'bringer together' of people. The modernists of London were scattered between 1905 and 1910. Between 1910 and 1914, largely thanks to Orage, a sense of a genuine 'movement' was created.
In other words, Orage successfully ran a forum which at least assumed (and perhaps created) a commonality between the seemingly unfathomable philosophies and artistic practices then being created.
in arguing that trade unions should pursue an increasingly aggressive policy as regards issues such as wage deals and working conditions. He approved of the increasing militancy of the unions in the pre-war era, and seems to have shared Sorel's belief in the necessity of a Trade Union-led General Strike
, leading to a re-evolutionary situation. However, for Orage, economic power precedes political power and political reform is useless without economic reform.
In the early issues of The New Age, Orage supported the women's suffrage movement, but became increasingly hostile as the Women's Social and Political Union
became more prominent and more militant. Pro-suffragette articles were not published after 1910, but heated debate on this subject took place in the correspondence column.
During World War I, Orage defended the interests of the working class. On 6 August 1914, Orage wrote in Notes of the Week of The New Age: "... We believe that England is necessary to Socialism
, as Socialism is necessary to the world." In 1917, in the published work Political Ideals, Bertrand Russell
mentions for the first time Orage Guild Socialism. On 14 November 1918, Orage wrote of the coming Treaty of Versailles
: "... The next world-war, if unhappily there should be another, will in all probability be contained within the clauses and conditions attaching to the present peace settlement." By the end of the war, Orage was convinced the hardships of the working class were the result of the monetary policies of banking and government. If Great Britain could remove the pound from the gold standard during the war and reestablish the gold standard after the war, then the gold standard is not as necessary as the oligarchic monetary few would want the proletariat many to believe. On 15 July 1920, Orage wrote: "... We should be the first to admit that the subject of Money is difficult to understand. It is 'intended' to be, by the minute oligarchy that governs the world by means of it."
After the First World War, he was influenced by C. H. Douglas
and became a supporter of Social credit
. On 2 January 1919, Orage published the first article by C. H. Douglas to appear in The New Age: A Mechanical View of Economics.
, whose ideas left a lasting impression. When Ouspensky moved to London in 1921, Orage began attending his lectures on "Fragments of an unknown teaching", the subject of which would later be published as In Search of the Miraculous
. From this point on Orage became less and less interested in literature and art, instead focusing his attention in the greater part of the 1920s on the problems of the theory and practice of mysticism
without having to run away from the world. His correspondence with Harry Houdini
on these subjects moved him to explore ideas of the afterlife. He returned to the idea that there were absolute truths and felt these were embodied in the Mahabharata
.
In February 1922, Ouspensky introduced Orage to G. I. Gurdjieff
. Selling the New Age, he moved to Paris
to study at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. In 1924 Orage was appointed by Gurdjieff to lead study groups in America. He taught the Gurdjieff System in America for seven years. Gurdjieff arrived in New York from France on 13 November 1930, and after a few years of teaching in New York, Orage was deposed by Gurdjieff and his groups were formally disbanded because Gurdjieff believed that they had been incorrectly taught and they were working under the misconception that self-observation could be practiced in the absence of self-remembering or in the presence of negative emotions. Members were allowed to continue study with Gurdjieff after taking an oath not to communicate with Orage (ironically Orage himself also signed the oath). Upon hearing that Orage had also signed, Gurdjieff wept. Gurdjieff had once considered Orage as a friend and brother and thought of Jessie as a bad choice by Orage for a mate. Orage was a chain smoker and Jessie was a heavy drinker.
Orage, Ouspensky, C. Daly King emphasized certain aspects of the Gurdjieff System while ignoring others. According to Gurdjieff himself, Orage emphasized self-observation. In Harlem, New York City, Jean Toomer, one of Orage's students at Greenwich Village and part and parcel of the Harlem Renaissance, was using Gurdjieff's work to confront the problem of racism.
The Orages sailed back to New York from England in the S.S. Washington on 29 December 1930 and arrived at 9:30 AM on Thursday, 8 January 1931. The next day, while staying at the Irving Hotel, Orage wrote a letter to Gurdjieff unveiling a plan for the publication of All and Everything before the end of the year and promising a substantial amount of money.
At lunch, on 21 February 1931, in New York City, Achmed Abdulla, a.k.a. Nadir Kahn, confided to the Orages that he had met Gurdjieff in Tibet and there Gurdjieff was a.k.a. Lama Dordjieff, a Tsarist agent and tutor to the Dalai Lama.
After the separation with Gurdjieff, Orage returned to England with Jessie. In the privately-published Third Series of writings, Gurdjieff wrote of Orage and his wife Jessie, "... his romance had ended in his marrying the saleswoman of 'Sunwise Turn,' a young American pampered out of all proportion to her position..."
, in April 1932. By the beginning of 1933, The New English Weekly was an established success with the critics but the economic effects of the Great Depression
made it difficult as a monetary venture; they were hard put for money. On 18 May 1933, Orage published Dylan Thomas
first poem, And Death Shall Have No Dominion
. On September 1933, Jessie gave birth to a daughter, Ann. On January 1934, Senator Bronson Cutting presented before the Senate of the United States Orage's Social Credit Plan as one of the tools of Roosevelt's economic policies; the news appeared in the 2 February issue of The New English Weekly. At the beginning of August 1934, Gurdjieff asked Orage to revise a new edition of The Herald of Coming Good. On August 20, Orage wrote his last letter to Gurdjieff: "Dear Mr. Gurdjieff, I've found very little to revise..."
Toward the end of his life, Orage was attacked by a severe pain below the heart, an ailment that had been diagnosed a couple of years back as simply functional and he did not again seek medical advice.
He was working on Social Credit
and prepared a speech to be broadcast on "Property in Plenty". During the broadcast, he experienced an excruciating pain but continued the speech as if nothing were happening. After leaving the studio, he spent the evening with his wife and friends and made plans to see the doctor next day. On reaching home after midnight, he went to bed and died in his sleep.
On 6 November 1934, Gurdjieff was in New York City
where he received the telegram "...from London
saying that Mr. Orage had died the same morning."
On hearing of Orage's death, Gurdjieff issued the following invitation: "I have just now learned of the death of Mr. Orage, who was for many years your guide and teacher and my inner world essence friend. I invite you to attend a meeting to pay homage to him and to speak in his memory, on Friday evening, November 9th, at 9 o'clock, in Miss Bentley's studio in Carnegie Hall
, at which time, likewise, will be played some of his favorite music and some of those pieces dedicated to him which were composed by me while he was at the Prieuré." On 7 December 1934, in a letter to Ezra Pound, T. E. Lawrence
expresses sadness at the death of A. R. Orage. Orage's former students of the Gurdjieff System left the enneagram inscribed on his tombstone.
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
. While working as a schoolteacher in Leeds, he pursued various interests, including Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
, and theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
. In 1900 Orage met Holbrook Jackson
Holbrook Jackson
George Holbrook Jackson was a British journalist, writer and publisher. He was recognised as one of the leading bibliophiles of his time.-Biography:...
and three years later they co-founded the Leeds Arts Club
Leeds Arts Club
The Leeds Arts Club was founded in 1903 by the Leeds school teacher Alfred Orage and Yorkshire textile manufacture Holbrook Jackson, and was probably one of the most advanced centres for modernist thinking in Britain in the pre-First World War period.-History:...
, which became a centre of modernist culture in pre-World War I Britain. In 1905, Orage resigned his teaching position and moved to London. There, in 1907, he bought and edited the English weekly The New Age, at first with Holbrook Jackson, and became an influential figure in socialist politics and modernist culture, especially at the height of the magazine's fame before the First World War.
In 1924 Orage sold The New Age and went to France to work with George Gurdjieff, the spiritual teacher P. D. Ouspensky
P. D. Ouspensky
Peter D. Ouspensky , , a Russian esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915.He was associated with the ideas and practices originating with...
had recommended to him. After spending some time of preliminary training in the Gurdjieff System, Orage was sent to America by Gurdjieff himself to raise funds and lecture on the new system of self-development which emphasized the harmonious work of intellectual, emotional and moving functions. Orage also worked with Gurdjieff in translating the first version of Gurdjieff's All and Everything
All and Everything
All and Everything is the name of a trilogy composed by ten books, all written by G. I. Gurdjieff. The ten books were further categorized into three series:# Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.# Meetings with Remarkable Men....
as well as Meetings With Remarkable Men from Russian to English; however, neither book was ever published in their lifetime.
In 1927 his first wife, Jean, granted him a divorce and in September he married Jessie Richards Dwight (1901–1985), the co-owner of the 'Sunwise Turn' bookshop where Orage first lectured on the Gurdjieff System. Orage and Jessie had two children, a boy and a girl: Richard and Ann. While in New York, Orage and Jessie often catered to celebrities such as Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
fresh from his London Tour. In 1930, Orage returned to England and in 1931 he published the New English Weekly, remaining in London until his death on 6 November 1934.
Early life
Born James Alfred Orage in DacreDacre, North Yorkshire
Dacre is a village and civil parish in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England, it is 5 miles south of Pateley Bridge and near the River Nidd....
, near Harrogate
Harrogate
Harrogate is a spa town in North Yorkshire, England. The town is a tourist destination and its visitor attractions include its spa waters, RHS Harlow Carr gardens, and Betty's Tea Rooms. From the town one can explore the nearby Yorkshire Dales national park. Harrogate originated in the 17th...
, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
into a nonconformist religious family, he was generally known as Dickie and he dropped the name James altogether and adopted the middle name Richard. He became a schoolteacher in a Leeds Board elementary school at the age of twenty one and helped to found the Leeds branch of the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
in 1894, writing a weekly literary column for the Labour Leader
Labour Leader
The Labour Leader was a British socialist newspaper published for almost one hundred years. It was later re-named New Leader and Socialist Leader, before finally taking the name Labour Leader again....
, from 1895 to 1897. He brought a philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
outlook to the paper, including in particular the thought of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
and Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist....
. All in all, Orage devoted seven years of study to Plato, from 1893 to 1900; he also devoted seven years of his life to the study of Nietzsche's philosophy, from 1900 to 1907; from 1907 to 1914 he became a student of the Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
.
By the late 1890s, Orage was disillusioned with conventional socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and turned for a while to theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
. In 1900, he met Holbrook Jackson
Holbrook Jackson
George Holbrook Jackson was a British journalist, writer and publisher. He was recognised as one of the leading bibliophiles of his time.-Biography:...
in a Leeds bookshop, and lent him a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita. In return, Jackson lent him Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's Thus Spake Zarathustra, which led him to study Nietzsche's work in depth. In 1903, Orage, Jackson and the architect Arthur J. Penty helped to found the lively and successful Leeds Arts Club
Leeds Arts Club
The Leeds Arts Club was founded in 1903 by the Leeds school teacher Alfred Orage and Yorkshire textile manufacture Holbrook Jackson, and was probably one of the most advanced centres for modernist thinking in Britain in the pre-First World War period.-History:...
, with the intention of promoting the work of radical thinkers including G. B. Shaw whom Orage had met in 1898, Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, and Nietzsche. During this period he returned to socialist platforms but by 1906, he was determined to combine Carpenter's socialism with Nietzsche and theosophy. Concentrating on this and in the presence of Beatrice Hastings was too much for Jean, the wife of his first marriage, the same wife who had shared in his own theosophic and aesthetic interests of his early activities in the Leeds Arts Club, who did not grant him a divorce but went to live instead with Holbrook Jackson and worked the rest of her life as a skilled craftswoman in the tradition of William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
. In 1906, Beatrice Hastings
Beatrice Hastings
Beatrice Hastings was the pen name of Emily Alice Haigh an English writer, poet and literary critic. Much of her work was published in The New Age under a variety of pseudonyms, and she lived with the editor, A. R. Orage, for a time before the outbreak of the First World War...
whose real name was Emily Alice Haigh hailing from Port Elizabeth, a green-eyed beauty of twenty six with literary ambitions, could be seen with Orage and would eventually become a regular contributor to the New Age. By 1907, it became an intimate relationship and as Beatrice Hastings herself would later confess, "... Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
amused herself at our expense."
Orage explored his new ideas in several books. He saw Nietzsche's Übermensch
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
as a metaphor for the "higher state of consciousness" sought by mystics
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
and attempted to define a route to this, insisting this must involve a rejection of civilisation and conventional morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
. Instead, he moved through a celebration of Dionysus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
to declare he was in favour not of an ordered socialism but of an anarchic movement.
In a one-year period, from 1906 to 1907, he published three books, Consciousness: Animal, Human and Superhuman based on his experience with Theosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche: the Dyonisian Spirit of the Age and Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism. His rational critique of Theosophy evoked an editiorial rebuttal from The Theosophical Review and in 1907, he terminated his association with the Society. The two books on Nietzsche were the first to be published in England as a systematic introduction to Nietzschean thought.
Editor in London
In 1906, he resigned his teaching post and moved to LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, following Arthur Penty
Arthur Penty
Arthur Joseph Penty was a British architect, and writer on Guild socialism and distributism. He was first a Fabian socialist, and follower of Victorian thinkers William Morris and John Ruskin...
, another Leeds Art Club friend. Orage attempted to form a league for the restoration of a guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
system, much as described by William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
.
The failure of this project spurred him in 1907, supported by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, to buy the weekly magazine The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
, in partnership with Holbrook Jackson. He quite soon turned it into his conception of a forum for politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and the arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
. Although many contributors were Fabian
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
s, he to some extent distanced himself from their politics, and a wide range of political viewpoints were represented. The magazine launched an attack on parliamentary politics
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
, while Orage argued the need for utopianism. He also attacked the trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
leadership, while offering some support to syndicalism
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
, and tried to combine this with the guild system. Combining these two viewpoints resulted in Guild socialism
Guild socialism
Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds. It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was strongly associated with G. D. H...
, a political philosophy he began to argue for from about 1910.
Between 1908 and 1914 The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
was undoubtedly the premier little magazine in the UK. It was instrumental in pioneering the British avant-garde, from vorticism
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
to imagism
Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...
. Some of its contributors at this time included T.E. Hulme, Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
and many others. Apart from his undoubted genius as an editor, it might be said that Orage's real talent was as a conversationalist and a 'bringer together' of people. The modernists of London were scattered between 1905 and 1910. Between 1910 and 1914, largely thanks to Orage, a sense of a genuine 'movement' was created.
In other words, Orage successfully ran a forum which at least assumed (and perhaps created) a commonality between the seemingly unfathomable philosophies and artistic practices then being created.
Orage's politics
Orage declared himself to be a socialist, and followed Georges SorelGeorges Sorel
Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists. It is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Oron J...
in arguing that trade unions should pursue an increasingly aggressive policy as regards issues such as wage deals and working conditions. He approved of the increasing militancy of the unions in the pre-war era, and seems to have shared Sorel's belief in the necessity of a Trade Union-led General Strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
, leading to a re-evolutionary situation. However, for Orage, economic power precedes political power and political reform is useless without economic reform.
In the early issues of The New Age, Orage supported the women's suffrage movement, but became increasingly hostile as the Women's Social and Political Union
Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union was the leading militant organisation campaigning for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom...
became more prominent and more militant. Pro-suffragette articles were not published after 1910, but heated debate on this subject took place in the correspondence column.
During World War I, Orage defended the interests of the working class. On 6 August 1914, Orage wrote in Notes of the Week of The New Age: "... We believe that England is necessary to Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, as Socialism is necessary to the world." In 1917, in the published work Political Ideals, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
mentions for the first time Orage Guild Socialism. On 14 November 1918, Orage wrote of the coming Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
: "... The next world-war, if unhappily there should be another, will in all probability be contained within the clauses and conditions attaching to the present peace settlement." By the end of the war, Orage was convinced the hardships of the working class were the result of the monetary policies of banking and government. If Great Britain could remove the pound from the gold standard during the war and reestablish the gold standard after the war, then the gold standard is not as necessary as the oligarchic monetary few would want the proletariat many to believe. On 15 July 1920, Orage wrote: "... We should be the first to admit that the subject of Money is difficult to understand. It is 'intended' to be, by the minute oligarchy that governs the world by means of it."
After the First World War, he was influenced by C. H. Douglas
C. H. Douglas
Major C. H. Douglas MIMechE, MIEE, , was a British engineer and pioneer of the Social Credit economic reform movement.-Education and engineering career:...
and became a supporter of Social credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
. On 2 January 1919, Orage published the first article by C. H. Douglas to appear in The New Age: A Mechanical View of Economics.
With Gurdjieff
In 1914 Orage met with P. D. OuspenskyP. D. Ouspensky
Peter D. Ouspensky , , a Russian esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915.He was associated with the ideas and practices originating with...
, whose ideas left a lasting impression. When Ouspensky moved to London in 1921, Orage began attending his lectures on "Fragments of an unknown teaching", the subject of which would later be published as In Search of the Miraculous
In Search of the Miraculous
In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching is a 1949 book by Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky about the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. It is widely regarded as the most comprehensive single volume account of Gurdjieff's system of thought....
. From this point on Orage became less and less interested in literature and art, instead focusing his attention in the greater part of the 1920s on the problems of the theory and practice of mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
without having to run away from the world. His correspondence with Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts...
on these subjects moved him to explore ideas of the afterlife. He returned to the idea that there were absolute truths and felt these were embodied in the Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
.
In February 1922, Ouspensky introduced Orage to G. I. Gurdjieff
G. I. Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or the "Fourth Way."At one point he described his teaching as "esoteric Christianity."...
. Selling the New Age, he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to study at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. In 1924 Orage was appointed by Gurdjieff to lead study groups in America. He taught the Gurdjieff System in America for seven years. Gurdjieff arrived in New York from France on 13 November 1930, and after a few years of teaching in New York, Orage was deposed by Gurdjieff and his groups were formally disbanded because Gurdjieff believed that they had been incorrectly taught and they were working under the misconception that self-observation could be practiced in the absence of self-remembering or in the presence of negative emotions. Members were allowed to continue study with Gurdjieff after taking an oath not to communicate with Orage (ironically Orage himself also signed the oath). Upon hearing that Orage had also signed, Gurdjieff wept. Gurdjieff had once considered Orage as a friend and brother and thought of Jessie as a bad choice by Orage for a mate. Orage was a chain smoker and Jessie was a heavy drinker.
Orage, Ouspensky, C. Daly King emphasized certain aspects of the Gurdjieff System while ignoring others. According to Gurdjieff himself, Orage emphasized self-observation. In Harlem, New York City, Jean Toomer, one of Orage's students at Greenwich Village and part and parcel of the Harlem Renaissance, was using Gurdjieff's work to confront the problem of racism.
The Orages sailed back to New York from England in the S.S. Washington on 29 December 1930 and arrived at 9:30 AM on Thursday, 8 January 1931. The next day, while staying at the Irving Hotel, Orage wrote a letter to Gurdjieff unveiling a plan for the publication of All and Everything before the end of the year and promising a substantial amount of money.
At lunch, on 21 February 1931, in New York City, Achmed Abdulla, a.k.a. Nadir Kahn, confided to the Orages that he had met Gurdjieff in Tibet and there Gurdjieff was a.k.a. Lama Dordjieff, a Tsarist agent and tutor to the Dalai Lama.
After the separation with Gurdjieff, Orage returned to England with Jessie. In the privately-published Third Series of writings, Gurdjieff wrote of Orage and his wife Jessie, "... his romance had ended in his marrying the saleswoman of 'Sunwise Turn,' a young American pampered out of all proportion to her position..."
Last years
In May 1930, Orage returned to England and became seriously involved with political issues and was paramount in re-sparking interest in the Social Credit Movement. He was temporarily back in New York on 8 January 1931 to meet Gurdjieff's new demands. As Orage would confess to his wife, he would not be teaching the Gurdjieff System to any group past the end of the Spring. Orage was on the pier on 13 March 1931 to bid Gurdjieff farewell on his way back to France; the Orages sailed back to England on 3 July of the same year. Back in England, Orage founded a new journal, The New English WeeklyNew English Weekly
The New English Weekly was a leading review of "Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts."It was founded in April 1932 by Alfred Richard Orage shortly after his return from Paris...
, in April 1932. By the beginning of 1933, The New English Weekly was an established success with the critics but the economic effects of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
made it difficult as a monetary venture; they were hard put for money. On 18 May 1933, Orage published Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
first poem, And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion
And death shall have no dominion is a poem written by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas .-Publication history:On 10 September 1936, two years after the release of his first volume of poetry, Twenty-five Poems was published. Twenty-five Poems revealed Thomas’ personal philosophies pertaining to religion and...
. On September 1933, Jessie gave birth to a daughter, Ann. On January 1934, Senator Bronson Cutting presented before the Senate of the United States Orage's Social Credit Plan as one of the tools of Roosevelt's economic policies; the news appeared in the 2 February issue of The New English Weekly. At the beginning of August 1934, Gurdjieff asked Orage to revise a new edition of The Herald of Coming Good. On August 20, Orage wrote his last letter to Gurdjieff: "Dear Mr. Gurdjieff, I've found very little to revise..."
Toward the end of his life, Orage was attacked by a severe pain below the heart, an ailment that had been diagnosed a couple of years back as simply functional and he did not again seek medical advice.
He was working on Social Credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
and prepared a speech to be broadcast on "Property in Plenty". During the broadcast, he experienced an excruciating pain but continued the speech as if nothing were happening. After leaving the studio, he spent the evening with his wife and friends and made plans to see the doctor next day. On reaching home after midnight, he went to bed and died in his sleep.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where he received the telegram "...from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
saying that Mr. Orage had died the same morning."
On hearing of Orage's death, Gurdjieff issued the following invitation: "I have just now learned of the death of Mr. Orage, who was for many years your guide and teacher and my inner world essence friend. I invite you to attend a meeting to pay homage to him and to speak in his memory, on Friday evening, November 9th, at 9 o'clock, in Miss Bentley's studio in Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, at which time, likewise, will be played some of his favorite music and some of those pieces dedicated to him which were composed by me while he was at the Prieuré." On 7 December 1934, in a letter to Ezra Pound, T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
expresses sadness at the death of A. R. Orage. Orage's former students of the Gurdjieff System left the enneagram inscribed on his tombstone.
Works
- Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dyonisian spirit of the age (1906)
- Nietzsche in Outline and Aphorism (1907)
- National Guilds: An inquiry into the wage system and the way out (1914) editor, articles from The New Age
- An alphabet of economics (1918)
- Readers and writers (1917–1921) (1922) as RHC
- Psychological Exercises and Essays (1930)
- The Art of Reading (1930)
- On Love. Freely Adapted form the Tibetan (Unicorn Press 1932)
- Selected Essays and Critical Writings (1935) edited by Herbert ReadHerbert ReadSir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
and Denis SauratDenis SauratDenis Saurat was an Anglo-French scholar, writer, and broadcaster on a wide range of topics, including explaining French society and culture to the English and what he called "philosophical poetry." He was born in Toulouse and died in Nice, France, but his most active years were spent in London,... - Political and Economic Writings. From 'The New English Weekly' 1932-34, with a preliminary section from 'The New Age 1912 (1936) edited by Montgomery Butchart, 'with the advice of Maurice Colbourne, T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Philip MairetPhilip MairetPhilip Mairet was a designer, writer and journalist. He had a wide range of interest: crafts, Alfred Adler and psychiatry, and Social Credit. He was also a translator of major figures including Sartre. He wrote biographies of Sir Patrick Geddes and A. R...
, Will DysonWill Dyson]William Henry Dyson was an Australian illustrator and political cartoonist.-Early life:Dyson was born at Alfredton, near Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, the son of George Dyson, then a hawker and later a mining engineer, and his wife Jane, née Mayall. Dyson was educated at state schools at...
and others' - Essays and Aphorisms (1954)
- The Active Mind - Adventures in Awareness (1954)
- Orage as Critic (1974) edited by Wallace Martin
- Consciousness: Animal, Human & Superman (1978)
- A. R. Orage's Commentaries on Gurdjieff's All and Everything, edited by C. S. Nott
External links
- A. R. Orage: A Memoir (1936) Philip Mairet
- Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club (1893–1923) (Scolar Press 1990) Tom Steele
- Gurdjieff and Orage: Brothers in Elysium (2001) Paul Beekman Taylor,
- English 480/680: Modernism In and Beyond the “Little Magazines”, Winter 2007, Professor Ann Ardis, Brown University
- Orage and the history of the New Age periodical, Brown University, Modernist Journals Project
- Brown University, Modernist Journals Project main index
- Encyclopedia Britannica article on Orage
- Complete archive of The New Age under Orage
- Leeds University Library Brotherton Collection Manuscripts c20 Orage
- C. Daly King: "The Oragean Version" (1951) A record of Orage's transmission of the Gurdjieff Ideas during the 1920-30s in New York City