October 27th 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest wordsmiths of the English language, Dylan Thomas, was born, in Swansea, South Wales and died in New York 39 years later, leaving us a legacy of words that was worthy of a place in Poet’s Corner but he was such a 'bad boy’, he didn’t get his plaque until 1982. And perhaps it was also because he was a bad boy that I was unaware of his work until 1972 when an enlightened English teacher played us a recording of “Reminiscences of Childhood' read by Richard Burton and it seemed he read this just for me;
“The lane was the place to tell your secrets; if you did not have any,
you invented them; I had few. Occasionally, now, I dream that I am
turning, after school, into the lane of confidences where I say to the
children of my class, "At last I have a secret." "What is it ? What is it ?"
"I can fly!" And when they do not believe me, I flap my arms like a
large, stout bird and slowly leave the ground, only a few inches at
first, then gaining air until I fly, like Dracula in a schoolboy cap, level
with the windows of the school, peering in until the mistress at the piano
screams"
“Reminiscences of Childhood"
In that moment I had no idea, that “ugly, lovely," town, “along the bent and Devon-facing seashore" would become alive to me within a decade; or that I had already fallen in love with Welshness; the richness of tone, hyperbole, bathos and hoyle -- that deft and empathetic observation of human kind that has in it so much heart.
“And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine."
“Poem in October"
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
I think I didn’t appreciate any of that as I do now. This is the curse of youth and the blessing of age. Later I really began to read his work and in last year’s centenary of his death to reread and apply myself properly to his poetry.
Thomas’s themes are universal. His language is a gourmet feast of sounds that satisfies the soul. His structuring is so subtle it is not immediately apparent but studying his techniques brings rich rewards. He grabs you and holds you, mesmerised until he has told his story whether in poem or prose, but always with drama:
“ the metronome falls with a clout to the ground, stops, and there is no more Time;"
The music of Cymraeg is potent even in dilution.
Wales is a land lavish in contrasts; lofty mountains cover cathedral caves, copper and gold lie with slate and coal. It is dramatic, moody and untamed; a dragon lies twisted round its root. This was the land that nurtured the complex emotions of the man -- grandiose yet lacking self esteem, confident in his genius but always exaggerating his own flaws; a sickly child who knew no boundaries; by turns compassionate and careless of all.
In his 1941 sonnet “Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred" Dylan Thomas celebrated, not the heroic death of a soldier but the life of a civilian. A man of a hundred summers killed in a moment of violence which he highlights thus:
“He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died," (line2)
That is so powerful in its simplicity yet the contrast of “stepped out and died" and “he stopped a sun"
“Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun" says Thomas. Great age deserves a celebrated end!
'Time’s up,’ is a recurring theme in his poetry and he will not have this old man “go gentle.'The storks at the end of the poem make each year of his life seem a rebirth.
By contrast, in “Ceremony After the Raid" “Among the street burned to tireless death
A child of a few hours
is almost an act of un-creation -- a life denied identity except as an eternal soul; a life unlived. Study that one closely for yourself.
Dylan Thomas succumbed to his own struggles and wasn’t with us long but his words remain and will illuminate, loudly, hundreds of years to come. All I do here is to honour his struggles and his work with the final words of “Among Those Killed..."
“The morning is flying on the wings of his age
And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand"
Oonah V. Joslin, Autumn 2014