The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures. Thus we are pleased to present the creative efforts of individuals who have helped to create bridges of understanding among cultures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were trying to build bridges between individuals and classes and between the present and the future.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n We who have grasped the spirit\u2019s hand<\/em><\/p>\n Are not divided when we part;<\/em><\/p>\n Though men by ghostly shapes possessed,<\/em><\/p>\n Map their false bounds of \u2018East\u2019 and \u2018West\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>James Cousins \u201cFarewell\u2014Yet Not Farewell\u201d<\/p>\n James Cousins was the Irish poet and writer on cultural issues who with A.E. (George Russell) and William Butler Yeats played a major role in the Irish literary revival of the late 1890s \u2013 early 1900s.\u00a0 In 1915 he left for India as literary editor of The New India <\/em>of Annie Besant (1847-1933) and became one of the organizers of the university of the Princely State of Travancore, where he headed the Department of Fine Arts and English Studies.\u00a0 Thus, he was in a privileged position to study the interaction between Western and Indian thought with a critical eye.\u00a0 Cousins was much appreciated by the Indian philosopher and social activist Sri Aurobindo who was an attentive observer of Western evaluations of Indian culture.<\/p>\n Cousins was born in Belfast in Northern Ireland into a Protestant family, but after his studies, he moved south as there seemed to be more vitality in what became the Republic of Ireland. As he wrote in 1902 \u201cWe knew that Ireland had attained freedom in the spiritual world and would soon attain it in the physical.\u201d\u00a0 In 1899, Yeats had created the Irish Literary Theatre bringing together young writers and actors who wanted to create a national literary movement based on Irish history and folklore.\u00a0 Cousins joined with Yeats both as an actor and as a writer of plays. Cousins\u2019 1902 play in poetic form The Sleep of the King <\/em>was one of the first productions as Yeats\u2019 own play Countess Cathleen <\/em>had been banned by the Roman Catholic Church and could not be produced. Cousins played lead roles in the plays opposite Maud Gonne who was the object of Yeats\u2019 romantic attachment, but it was a one-way passion for Yeats.<\/p>\n Yeats may have thought that Cousins was getting too close romantically to Maud Gonne or he may have really objected to the humor of Cousins\u2019plays. In any case the friendship between the two men snapped over the use of humor in Cousins\u2019 plays and was never\u00a0 renewed, although in his essays Cousins was respectful of Yeats\u2019 role in creating an Irish national culture. Cousins wrote \u201cA national culture is impossible without the individual creative artist; the individual artist is important and unintelligible save in his relationship to his national culture.\u00a0 Where either tries to do without the other, degeneracy ensues nationally and individually\u2026The true artist is the true patriot, speaking the language of eternity but in the vernacular of his own time and place\u2026Where art does not rise from authentic springs, but is piped from distances by subterranean ways, it becomes troubled, muddied and at best only reaches a dull mediocrity.\u00a0 But art that embodies the creative impulse of the universe, with high vision and deep emotion, in its own time and place and way, will by the force of its authenticity pass beyond these limits into universal appreciation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>Romantically Cousins was attracted to the woman who became Margaret Cousins (1878-1954) when they married in 1903.\u00a0 She was a founder of the Irish Women\u2019s Franchise League and was a life-long advocate of equality for women, author of a 1907 book Votes for Women.<\/em> She had spent a month in an English prison after being arrested in a demonstration in front of 10 Downing Street on the right of English women to vote. Later in 1932, she spent a longer period of time in an Indian prison for advocating free speech for women. She had written on Indian women\u2019s movements in 1922 The Awakening of Asian Women.<\/em> (1) <\/em><\/p>\n James Cousins remained close to the other leader of the Irish literary revival, A.E. of whom he wrote that A.E. was \u201cthe immortal voice of a spirit thinly veiled in human flesh.\u201d Cousins was also influenced by the writings and activities of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and their teachings of Esoteric Christianity. As both A.E.\u00a0 and Yeats were close to the Theosophical Society, Cousins joined. Thus when the Theosophical Society President Annie Besant, active in Indian political and cultural renewal; asked them to go to India, they accepted. The rest of the lives of both James and Margaret were devoted to cultural and educational activities in Asia, broken by shorter periods teaching in American and European universities. As James Cousins wrote \u201cThe springs of action are not on the lowlands of life but on summits hidden beyond the sky line.\u201d Cousins saw education as \u201ca progressive liberation of the inherent capacities of the individual according to his own special qualitative and quantitative proportions.\u201d<\/p>\n In India Cousins became a close co-worker with Rabindranath Tagore with whom he shared the vision of the role of art in life.\u00a0 Tagore wrote \u201cOur soul has her hunger for this immediateness of realisation, whereby she is enabled to know herself.\u00a0 The love, the contemplation, the vision that alone satisfy this hunger finds its place in Literature, in Art.\u201d<\/p>\n Cousins was concerned by the ways in which intuition, emotion, cognition and action structure human life.\u00a0 \u201cThe arts are both an expression of a time and place and yet some deep aesthetic sense in each individual allows him to be moved by great art across the divides of time and place.\u201d<\/p>\n Art has never been just an individual achievement but has always had a social dimension. The paintings and sculpture of temple and church was to be contemplated by all. Rulers and the wealthy have been patrons of the arts while often restricting creativity to their individual tastes.\u00a0 Modern governments have followed the pattern and can play both positive and negative roles.\u00a0 Today, the mass media can open doors to true creative experience as well as playing to the lowest mass attitudes.\u00a0 Thus we are at a time of particular importance for a world-wide discussion of the role of the arts, of the ways in which we can learn from each other, of art as bridges between cultures.\u00a0 We can discuss the ways in which art is related to spirit and the higher dimensions of being.<\/p>\n Note:<\/p>\n (1)\u00a0\u00a0 For an autobiography see James H. Cousins and Margaret Cousins We Two Together <\/em>(Madras: Ganesh and Co, 1950, 784pp.)<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n Rene Wadlow:<\/em><\/p>\n Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens.<\/em><\/p>\n Member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures. Thus we are pleased to present the creative efforts of individuals who have helped to create bridges of understanding among cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}