The Controversial Legacy of Dylan Thomas - Research Paper Example

The Controversial Legacy of Dylan Thomas As Dylan Thomas’ critics have made controversial claims, to the point of being mutually exclusive, about hisoeuvre; his legacy with respect to the literary canon in English has still remained elusive, if not obscure. Leaving aside his alcoholism, his intellectualism or lack of it and his craftsmanship or lack of it, have been heavily debated by the critics. The aim of this paper is to explore his poetics and politics, as well as the conflicting accounts on his authorial style in an attempt to delineate his literary contribution to British literatures. The analysis of his beautiful villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night” will be embedded to the paper. J.M. Kertzer has already noted that Thomas’ critics have made two conflicting claims: “some insist that he is "the least intellectual poet of the century" because his poetry does not appeal to or depend on reason; others hold that his work displays "rigorous intellectual organization" which provokes a subtle play of thought” (295). While the first assertion implied that the wild poet has created his poems spontaneously without resorting to logic; the second claim employed that Thomas had a rigorous intellectual control over his creations, although he was inspired by “the cult of irrationality”. Dylan Thomas, paradoxically, acknowledged both views and tried to reconcile them. On the one he asserted that his poems’ “form was consistently emotional” and “illogical naturally” (cited by Kertzer 295). On the other hand, he defined himself as a "painstaking, conscientious, involved and devious craftsman in words” (295). He advocated “passionate ideas” in order to reconcile both views. For him those “‘passionate ideas’ come to life ‘out of the red heart through the brain’ (EPW, p. 165). Both thought and feeling must be engaged in ‘the antagonistic interplay of emotions and ideas ... brain chords and nerve chords’” (295). Thus, he focused on mind-body relationship while he tried to synthesize rational thoughts with emotions as they are engaged in a battle. Furthermore, for him, a poem must be both intellectual and emotional “adventure” for the reader. Dylan Thomas’ notion of “adventure” must be examined more closely in order to have a better understanding of his poetics. According to Thomas, adventure is movement and “all poetical impulses are towards the creation of adventure” (296). For him, a poem does not reflect life; but itself must be part of life, as he described a poem in terms of action, and poet as a “person of words in action” (296). Indeed, Dylan Thomas’ poems can be best described as “words in action” with their upbeat rhythms. Thomas’ words in action set out on a quest of exploration, as they move towards the unknown; they conduct “a brief adventure in the wilderness” (296). Indeed, Thomas depicts a hero-poet who, similar to epic hero Gilgamesh, plunges into a mystic quest of existence, life and death. As Thomas’ hero-poet engages in an epic adventure and constant struggle, his mystic journey becomes a matter of life and death and his poetry embodies the conflict between the creation and destruction. It has been often noted by the critics that religious and sexual imagery pervades the world of Thomas’ poems. However, John Ackerman argues that death is the central theme of Thomas’ poetry, not sex. Ackerman states that “faced with these emotions and conflicts Thomas turns to the one overwhelming reality: death. Death, not sex, is the major obsession in his poetry” (Dylan Thomas 52). Nevertheless, it would be wrong to deduce that death is his sole obsession. Dylan Thomas’ mind works dialectically, not analytically; that’s probably why he is often misunderstood by the critics. Death often comes hand in hand with life, in Dylan Thomas’s oeuvre. As in Freud’s works, in his poetry, the death and the life drives oppose each other, yet they are inseparable. Ackerman states that “Thomas is registering the presence of death in every fibre and impulse of the body” (52) in reference to the line “Death’s feather on the nerve”. Thus, the death becomes ingrained in the body and life, as Freud argued “the aim of all life is death”. It can be asserted that the central theme of conflict between life and death is embodied in his poetry. Thomas’ technique also mimics the opposition between the creative and destructive forces, in formal structure of the poems too. As Ackerman notes, both his use of language and imagery are contradictory and conflictual. Thomas says, let all these images conflict as each image contradicts and contains the previous one (55). Dylan Thomas explains this process of conflictual images, with sexual imagery of breeding: “let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict” (54). Considering the conflicting orgy of images, no wonder why critics charged him with obscurity. However, although his dialectical method of breeding images can be confusing, it does not necessarily mean that his poetry lacks formal structures and craftsmanship. Even if his poetry “argues itself into confusion” as Kertzer noted, this confusion is “finely crafted” (315). Indeed, as Thomas himself declared, he resorts to every possible poetic device to convey meanings: “I use everything and anything to make my poems work and move in the directions I want them to: old tricks, new tricks, puns, portmanteau-words, paradox, allusion, paronomasia, paragram, catachresis, slang, assonantal rhymes, vowel rhymes, sprung rhythm” (cited by Ackerman, A Dylan Thomas Companion 84). He makes his poems “move” with every possible devise of language to be used. Unfortunately, his finely tuned craft was not enough to save him from the allegations of obscurity made by the English literary establishment, as critics portrayed him as a wild and almost primitive Welshman. James A. Davies has already demonstrated that, most of the times, Times Literary Supplement was neither sympathetic to Dylan Thomas nor his craftsmanship, if not derogatory. He was even accused of being a “charlatan, adopting obscurity to climb onto the modernist bandwagon” (Davies 252). He was also charged of arrested development and adolescence. Holbrook even called him as a “psychopath” (305). Davies argued that “such jibes occur alongside continuing concern with Thomas’s Welshness, a source of suspicion and some hostility for both Welsh-speaking and, occasionally, English-speaking Wales and the English literary world” (253). While Davies links the hostility and stereotypical approaches with Thomas’ Welshness, Dylan Thomas’ reception in Wales was also uneasy. As Davies noted, The Welsh element of Thomas’ critical history involves prejudice and stereotyping (262). Nevertheless, the critical accounts’ on Thomas’ Welshness is even more complicated than the accounts of his anti-intellectualism. While some of the critics embraced him as a Welsh bard, others dismissed his “Welshness” as irrelevant. Indeed, Thomas, himself rejected that he was influenced by “Welsh bardic poetry” and said that he can’t read Welsh (cited by Hardy 9). Barbara Hardy claimed that Dylan Thomas has become politically important figure while his importance lies on his lack of nationalism, regionalism and his poetry of nature (1). According to her Thomas is “ one of the most interesting regional poets of this century, and his Welshness—the taken for granted Welshness of his poetry, the more assertive Welshness of his prose, and the hard-to-define Welshness of his basic attitudes and thoughts and utterances—is admirably unmilitant, antinationalist, unpartisan, humorous and pacifist” (1). Hardy also praises Thomas for his lack of “national pride” (2). It is also striking, if not ironic, that she stresses both his Welshness and his lack of nationalism at the same time. Although Hardy’s claims about Thomas’ ideology are quite likely be true, it is hardly difficult to regard Thomas as a “regional” poet considering that he is widely recognized and liked in the USA as well as other parts of the world. In fact, his reception in North America is even more favorable if we consider the hostility of Wales and English literary world towards Thomas, as Thomas called himself Welsh in England and English in Wales. Similar to Hardy, Davies also tries to find Thomas’s place in the “British literatures” and for him Thomas’ importance rest on his being a Welsh writer challenging English/metropolitan literary canon. According to Davies, “what seems certain is that as ‘English Literature’ continue to lose its monolithic quality, and the limitations of post-colonial discourse for understanding the relationships between British literatures become ever more apparent, Welsh writing in English will require more theoretical attention” (286). While English and Welsh critical histories tried to locate Dylan Thomas within a literary as well as political tradition, he did not fit any of them easily. As Davies has shown, more objective and receptive North American and New-critical accounts focused on his oeuvre rather than his nationality, his intellectualism, his character, alcoholism and etc. Indeed, Ralph Maud made a plea for “close attention to Thomas’s uniqueness, rather than the approach through literary tradition” (Davies 327). Several American text-centered “new” critics highlighted his “dialectical method” and the struggle between polar opposites in his poems. Furthermore, Karl Shapiro’s reader-oriented approach also brings a very convincing argument against the charges of obscurity: “a general audience for a barely understandable poet” (326). Indeed Thomas had such large audience which would be impossible if his poems are unintelligible. Still, Shapiro found Thomas as unintellectual and unoriginal poet, while he responded to Thomas’ poems’ emotive power as his poetry “touched the raw nerve of the world” (326-27). However, Dylan Thomas seems to be too powerful for an “unintellectual and unoriginal poet”. Several American critics were unwilling to place him in a literary tradition and they stressed his uniqueness as a poet stating that “belonging to no group or movement, Thomas has affinities with many” (331). Meanwhile, Louis Simpson linked him to Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowel, and Slyvia Plath in a tradition of poetry as ‘passionate speech’” (332). D.F. Mckay also highlighted the aspects of energy in Thomas’ and Plath’s poetries. Herewith, it could be helpful to focus on his poem in line with the tradition of New Criticism. Dylan Thomas’ “Do not Go Gentle into that Good night” epitomizes his poetics summarized above. The title and repetitive lines contains strong assonances and consonances. The letters G and O are constantly repeated in the title, which alludes to the verb: go, as the forward motion of the poem begins. While the form of the title implies a forward movement of “to go”, the content of the poem says do not go as the poem raises the inevitable question of “to go or not to go”. The form and content begins to conflict from the very beginning. “Rage, Rage against the dying of the light” also has the consonantal alliteration of “G”. These alliterations make the poem very rhythmic. The repetition of “rage, rage” reminds the sound of a car engine when you are pedaling the gas. Furthermore, the poem is written in the villanelle form, which has a very light and upbeat rhythmic tone. Thomas’ words are indeed “words in action”. As the form of the poem invites the reader to be dynamic and cheerful, the reader suddenly and unexpectedly faces the gravity of the content. It is ironic that “good night” which has positive connotations and reminds a lullaby, is used as a metaphor of death. One must also note that the phrase “do not go gentle” has also sexual undertones. However, as it is often noted, the central theme of the poem is death, and particularly the death of Thomas’ father. “Do not go gentle into that good night” is written for his dying father, the only person wrote Dylan “I can’t show the…poem to…who doesn’t know his dying” (cited by Ackerman A Dylan Thomas Companion 132). However, it will be wrong to assume that the poem solely related to his dying father, since death is one of the central themes of his poetry. Dylan Thomas’ health was very frail since the day he was born, and as he stood on the thin border between life and death, death is prevailed in his poetry. Indeed, he died when he was only 39 in 1953, two years after he wrote this poem. However, the poem is usually interpreted as Thomas’ urging his father to fight his imminent death. It might be possible to think that the poem has religious undertones as well, and the father might be referring to a religious figure, but not his actual father. As he asks his father to bless him and curse him from a height while he “prays”, the line “Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears” repeats the consonant “s”. The conflicting visual images are also apparent in the poem. He plays with the struggle between day and night, dark and light, see and blind. Besides, he brings out paradoxical images like blinding sight, and a blazing blindness, as they almost create the dizziness and blindness you experience when you directly look at the sun with your naked eyes. However, the content also indicates the opposite, not only the blinding light, but the dying of the light. Dying of the light is also a metaphor for death, since the light/life force dims as you get close to death. The poem evokes visual images and reflects the play of light and shadow as well as the existential problems of life and death. It might also be indicating the light seen at the end of the tunnel, since only the grave men, near death, can see with blinding sight. As the light dims, their eyes blaze like meteors in the dark. While meteors become a simile for their eyes in the darkness, the darkness becomes a metaphor of the universe. The dialectical nature of poem invokes a double movement at the same time; first, going towards a light/darkness and second, resisting against this movement by raging. Even a superficial reading clearly shows that how elaborate Thomas’ craftsmanship is, as he resorts to every possible poetic device. Indeed, he deliberately crafts a chaotic and lively poetic universe out of words in action. However, it must be stressed that it is not random mumblings of a wild bard, but he is often misunderstood due to the very success of his craft as he deliberately designed a creative and energetic chaos, while touching the very core of the creation/destruction. Since he was successful in creating that orderly chaos, a number of critics influenced by this effect and confused the effect of his poetry with his elaborate craftsmanship. As early as 1946, Richard R. Werry, noted that Thomas’ influence rests on the intrinsic power of his poetry: “Thomas has already be-come an influence among contemporary poets, and I do not doubt that his poetry, with its distinct rhythms, its skilful inter-lacings of rhyme, much of it internal, and assonance, its bold reliance on a diction which incorporates the vocabulary of science as well as that which most of us think of as proper to poetry, is magnetizing to many other young poets. But I am convinced that Thomas ultimate literary significance will stem from the intrinsic power of his poetry rather than from the influence of his poetry upon other poets” (255-56). I agree with Werry and think that Thomas’ contribution does not lie in his political stance, his Welshness or un-Welshness or his challenge to the English literary canon, but in the intrinsic power of his poetry, which still waits to be explored fully. However, like Davies noted, Dylan Thomas’ oeuvre will certainly be reassessed as more postmodernist perspectives will be adopted, while “English literature continues to lose its monolithic quality” (286). Works Cited: Ackerman, John. A Dylan Thomas Companion: Life, Poetry, and Prose. London: Macmillan, 1991. Print. ——. Dylan Thomas: His Life and Works. London: Macmillan, 1991. Print. Davies, James A. A Reference to Companion to Dylan Thomas. Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print. Dylan, Thomas. “Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night”. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 4th edition. Boston: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Print. Hardy, Barbara. Dylan Thomas: An Original Language. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. Kertzer, J.M. “Argument of the Hewn Voice: The Early Poetry of Dylan Thomas”. Contemporary Literature 20.3 (Summer, 1979): 293-315. Print. Werry, Richard R. “The Poetry of Dylan Thomas”. College English 11.5 (February1950): 250-256. Print. Read More