Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas, (
October 27 1914 –
November 9 1953) was a
Welsh poet and
writer.
|
5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea: the birthplace of Dylan Thomas |
Dylan Thomas was born in the coastal city of
Swansea,
Wales. His father David, who was a writer and possessed a degree in English, brought his son up to speak
English rather than Thomas's mother's native language,
Welsh. His middle name, "Marlais", came from the
bardic name of his uncle, the
Unitarian minister Gwilym Marles (whose real name was William Thomas). Thomas was unable to actively fight in
World War II because he was considered too frail, however he still served the war effort by writing scripts for government
propaganda.
Thomas attended the boys-only Swansea Grammar School, in the Mount Pleasant district of the city, where his father taught English Literature. It was in the school's magazine that the young Dylan saw his first poem published. He left school at age 16 to become a reporter for a year and a half.
Thomas' childhood was spent largely in
Swansea, with regular summer trips to visit his mother's family on their
Carmarthen farm. These rural sojourns, and their contrast with the town life of Swansea, would inform much of his work, notably many short stories and radio essays and the poem
Fern Hill.
Thomas wrote half his poems and many short stories when he lived at the family home at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive;
And death shall have no dominion is one of the best known works written at this address. By the time his first poetry volume,
18 Poems, was published in November 1934, he was one of the most exciting young poets writing in the English language.
In
1937 Thomas married
Caitlin MacNamara and would have three children with her, although the relationship was very often stormy and littered with affairs (Caitlin had an affair with
Augustus John before, and quite possibly after, she married Thomas). January of 1939 saw the birth of their first child, a boy whom they named Llewelyn (died in 2000). He was followed in March of
1943 by a daughter,
Aeronwy. A second son and third child, Colm Garan, was born in July 1949.
Thomas liked to boast about his drinking. During an incident on November 3, 1953, Thomas returned to the
Chelsea Hotel in
New York and exclaimed "I've had 18 straight whiskies, I think this is a record".
He collapsed on November 9, 1953 at the
White Horse Tavern, in
Greenwich Village, Manhattan after drinking heavily while in New York on a promotional tour; Thomas later died at
St. Vincent's Hospital, aged 39. The primary cause of his death is recorded as
pneumonia, with pressure on the
brain and a fatty
liver given as contributing factors. His last words, according to
Jack Heliker, were: "After 39 years, this is all I've done". Following his death, his body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at
Laugharne, Wales, where he had enjoyed his happiest days. In
1994, his widow, Caitlin, was buried alongside him.
Dylan Thomas is widely considered one of the greatest
twentieth-century poets writing in English. He remains the leading figure in
Anglo-Welsh literature. His vivid and often fantastic imagery was a rejection of the trends in twentieth-century verse: while his contemporaries gradually altered their writing to serious topical verse (political and social concerns were often expressed), Thomas gave himself over to his passionately felt emotions, and his writing is often both intensely personal and fiercely lyrical. (Thomas did, nonetheless, write at least four war poems, one of which is especially famous: "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Girl in London.") Thomas, in many ways, was more in alignment with the
Romantics than he was with the poets of his era. Thomas also differed from many major twentieth-century poets (dating from the Imagists onwards) in his championing of oral poetry. In this sense, Thomas was well-adapted to his time: his rise coincides with the improvement and profusion of recording technology and radio. The audio-literature company Caedmon (now a division of HarperCollins) was launched with Thomas's recording of his story "A Child's Christmas in Wales." Thomas' short stories are poetry exploded. Most notable is a semi-autobiographical selection published in 1940 entitled, 'Portrait of an Artist as a Young Dog', in which he explores his youth.
Aside from stories and verse, Thomas did a great deal of radio and film work, especially during WWII. His filmscripts (mostly propaganda) were done for Strand Films. One of these,
Green Mountain, Black Mountain, is notable for its integration of verse into documentary (similar in this to Auden and Grierson's
Night Mail from the 1930s). Another,
These Are the Men, is a singularly creative attack on Nazi leaders. He also experimented with creative filmscripts; his
The Doctor and the Devils was filmed in 1985 with Timothy Dalton, Twiggy, and Stephen Rea. His radio broadcasts were generally literary talks;
Under Milk Wood and
A Child's Christmas in Wales both seem to have originated in radio talks. Thomas also worked on an unfinished novel,
Adventures in the Skin Trade. The roughly 60 completed pages are a good beginning at a comic
Bildungsroman.
Thomas's circle, sometimes known as the "Kardomah Boys" after the coffee shop where they often met, included the composer and old school friend,
Daniel Jones, the poet
Vernon Watkins, the poet Charles Fisher and the artists
Alfred Janes and
Mervyn Levy.
Brought to the attention of the public by the discerning eye of the English Romantic poet
Victor Benjamin Neuburg,the poetry editor of the Sunday Referee, Thomas was invited to London by Neuburg and introduced to the capital's influential literary critics.
He is particularly remembered for the remarkable voice-play
Under Milk Wood, for his poem
Do not go gentle into that good night which is generally interpreted as a plea to his dying father to hold onto life, and for the short stories
A Child's Christmas in Wales and
The Outing.
As would be expected of a famous poet whose best known line is "Do not go gentle into that good night", many memorials have been constructed or converted to honour Thomas. Tourists in his home town of
Swansea can visit a statue in the maritime quarter, the Dylan Thomas Theatre, and the
Dylan Thomas Centre, formerly the town's guildhall. The latter is now a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and is the setting for the city's annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. The memorial is inscribed with the closing lines from one of his best-loved poems,
Fern Hill: "Oh I was young and easy in the mercy of his means/Time held me green and dying/Though I sang in my chains in the sea". This is inscribed on a rock in a closed-off garden within the park. Thomas's home in
Laugharne, the
Boat House, is also a memorial. The Powerful Coolmore Racing Stud have a Colt (horse) who is called Dylan Thomas and won the Irish Derby on the 2nd July 2006.
Several of the pubs in Swansea also have associations with the poet. One of Swansea's oldest pubs, the
No Sign Bar, was a regular haunt, renamed the Wine Vaults in his story
The Followers.
In 2004 a new literary prize, the
Dylan Thomas Prize, was created in honour of the poet. It will be awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30.
His obituary was written by his long term friend
Vernon Watkins.
It has been suggested that
Bob Dylan, who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman, changed his name in tribute to Dylan Thomas. Bob Dylan has often denied this, responding in a 1966 interview, "Get that straight, I didn't change my name in honor of Dylan Thomas. That's just a story. I've done more for Dylan Thomas than he's ever done for me." In
1965 he claimed that he took the name from an uncle named Dillon, adding, "I've read some of Dylan Thomas' stuff, and it's not the same as mine." In his
2004 biography,
Chronicles Vol.1, however, Dylan admits that Dylan Thomas was relevant to his choice of alias, but only because he liked the spelling better, changing the
surnom de plume of "Dillon" to "Dylan". Dylan is also billed as Robert Milkwood Thomas on
Steve Goodman's "Somebody Elses Troubles" where he plays piano and harmonises on the title track. Dylan's 1963 song
When the Ship Comes In contains the phrase, "the chains of the sea," which matches the last line of Thomas's
Fern Hill: "I sang in my chains like the sea".
PoetryCollected Poems 1934 â€" 1953 (London: Phoenix, 2003)
Selected Poems (London: Phoenix, 2001)
ProseCollected Letters Collected Stories Portrait of the Artist as a Young DogUnder Milk WoodQuite Early One Morning (posthumous)
*
Dylan Thomas: Volume I - A Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems (Caedmon TC 1002 - 1952)
*
Under Milk Wood (Caedmon TC 2005 - 1953)
*
Dylan Thomas: Volume II - Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1018 - 1954)
*
Dylan Thomas: Volume III - Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1043)
*
Dylan Thomas: Volume VI - Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1061)
*
The Life and Work of Dylan Thomas*
Dylan Thomas on Poets.org Biography, poems, audio clips, and related essays from the Academy of American Poets
*
"The Mumbles", a village frequented by Thomas*
The city of Swansea's site on Thomas *
BBC Wales' Dylan Thomas site*
The Dylan Thomas Theatre Company Swansea *
The graves of Dylan and Caitlin from findagrave.com*
French Audio Book (mp3) from Under Milk Wood, translated in French by JB.Brunius
*
"The pub and the hellraiser: The poet, the actor, their pub, a furore" The Independent online edition
30 November 2005*
BBC Wales biography of Caitlin*
Biography (obituary) of son Llewelyn, from Guardian Unlimited (2000)
