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Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914 – 1953), the Welsh poet, storyteller and playwright, had “a way with words”. His language is renowned for its musical quality, its graphic imagery and its sheer original vitality.
Background:
Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, South Wales, on 27th of October 1914. For the first twenty years of his life, he lived at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, in a semi-detached house, on a hill overlooking Cwmdonkin Park and the magnificent panorama of Swansea Bay. (This setting provided a rich source of imagery, particularly for the poet’s early writings).
Dylan was not a healthy child and was often kept away from school, suffering from various ailments such as asthma and bronchitis. Because of ill health, he didn’t start school until he was seven years old. He first attended Mrs Hole’s school in Mirador Crescent (the “dame school” reflected upon in “Reminiscences of Childhood”). At eleven years of age, he transferred to Swansea Grammar School, where his father taught English. Dylan was no great academic during his secondary school years; he failed all his subjects, apart from English. He was, however, by the age of sixteen, already showing a talent for writing poetry and prose. Dylan was already emerging as a “verbal craftsman”, with a unique gift for words.
Throughout his schooldays, the sickly young Dylan preferred his own company and would spend hours, alone, reading. He was particularly impressed by the vivid, natural imagery of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry.
When he was sixteen, Dylan Thomas left school to take up a post as a junior reporter with the “South Wales Daily Post”. He wrote most of his poetry, or at least the first drafts, between leaving school to work in Swansea and moving to London in 1934, at the age of twenty.
In London, he mingled in literary circles and made many friends with like-minded poets and writers. He married Caitlin Macnamara in 1937 and soon afterwards, returned to Wales, settling at the famous “Boat House”, in Laugharne. It is believed that the village of Laugharne inspired him to write “Under Milk Wood”.
Poor health continued to dictate the course of his life. In 1940, unable to join the army, he worked, instead for the BBC, doing documentary films and readings, including “Memoirs of Christmas”, “Holiday Memory” and “Return Journey”.
In February 1950, Dylan Thomas visited America, for the first time, to give poetry readings and lectures. He made further trips to America, over the following three years, during which time, his health deteriorated rapidly. His condition was badly aggravated by bouts of heavy drinking. On the 9th of November 1953, while in New York taking part in a performance of “Under Milk Wood”, he died.
Dylan Thomas was “in love with the shape and sounds of words” and this excitement and enthusiasm is clearly conveyed throughout his writings. He once compared the writing of the “Ballad of the Long-legged Bait” with “carrying a huge armful of words to a table he thought was upstairs” and wondering if he “could reach it in time, or if it would still be there”.
One of his favourite techniques was to use familiar words in an unfamiliar context. As he once commented:
“I like to put down the word in blood. It’s a curious kind of word, it means insanity, among other meanings”.
In his poem “I Fellowed Sleep”, he uses the word “blood” in this familiar sense:
“ There grows the hour’s ladder to the sun
Each rung a love or losing to the last
The inches monkeyed by the blood of man…”
The poet’s attitude towards using words in unusual senses is contained in a letter he wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson (1933), commenting on Miss Johnson’s use of the description “unquiet mouse”. Thomas says “unquiet” adds nothing to the word “mouse”. He continues that a writer should always choose qualifying adjectives from one of two possibilities. Either find or invent an adjective that will include all associations, or preferably, devise an adjective that will entirely replace all previous associations – one that will enable the reader to see the object in a completely new light.
Another of Dylan Thomas’s favourite linguistic devices was to use different parts of speech in an unusual context. For instance, in the poem “Over Sir John’s Hill”, he uses a verb as a collective noun in “wrestle of elms”. Another example is“…the gulled birds have/To hawk on fire”, the latter meaning that “duped” birds are like hares in a game of hares and hounds. In “Unluckily for Death”, the poet provides another startling instance of this type of grammatical usage. He was particularly fond of applying it to religious images, for sheer impact:
“The stream from the priest black wrested spinney
and sleeves
Of thistling frost
Of the nightingale’s din and tale.”
Thomas relished what has been described as “syntactical congestion”. Phrases pile up in so much of his writing and it is left up to the reader to search out subject, object, verb and best of all, adjective and adverb.
The Welsh poet and writer also enjoyed using slang and local dialect. Although Thomas did not speak or read the Welsh language, he was totally immersed in its rhythms and lyricism. There is no doubt that all his work is deeply influenced by the sound and flow of the dramatic and colourful Welsh language. Dr Geoff Madoc-Jones, when he first met Thomas, commented: “I was struck with how the verse sounded and felt Welsh”.
Welsh slang sits comfortably, without explanation, throughout Dylan Thomas’s writings and readings. For example, in “Return Journey”, he refers to the schoolboy who “mitched, spilt ink, rattled his desk and garbled his lessons with the worst of them”. “Mitched” is a local Welsh term for playing truant. Again in “In the White Giant’s Thigh”, he uses the word “gambo” (farm cart) in the description “butter fat goosegirls bounced in the gambo bed”. In “Quite Early One Morning”, he uses the word “billyduckers”, a corruption of the Welsh word “bilidowcar”, meaning “cormorant”.
But even more significant than Thomas’s use of local slang, was his adoption of Welsh intonation and the musical flow and structure of the Welsh language. A simple, yet delightful example, is, “She was about eighteen and a fine-looking girl, not a film star, mind, not Mr Roberts’s type at all”. (excerpt from “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog”). The Welsh have a tendency to end an observation with “throw away” words and phrases, such as “mind you”, “is it?” and “I’m doing such and such, I am”.
By the time of his death, at the age of thirty-nine, Dylan Thomas had achieved international fame, both as a writer and a speaker who could communicate with everyday folk in a uniquely dramatic
way. He did much to popularise poetry and his flamboyant, theatrical personality captivated audiences at home and abroad.
Part of the genius of the man was that he could turn commonplace words and language into something fresh, original and compelling.
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