Dylan Thomas:

The bard of Wales

By Gwen Herat

at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea
'Now as I was young and easy under the apple bough
About the little house and happy as the grass was green
The night above the dingle starry
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes
and honoured among wagons I was the prince of the apple town
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light'
From the Fern Hill

It has been impossible to establish what is true and what is not about Dylan Thomas because many of whom he knew personally such as friends, critics, colleagues and biographers tend to disagree on many points. He is an outstanding poet without any doubt and held in high esteem by eminent people who describe him as the greatest poet of the 20th century. Nothing short of magnificence, especially as good as William Shakespeare and William Wordsworth, his poetry has been described as psycho-pathological and brilliant. Such comments are rare by any standard.

I visit the Dylan Thomas Centre or any event on-hand annually because the Centre is a stone-throw away from a my brother's residence. Since my sister-in-law is Welsh, I get the opportunity to read Dylan Thomas's Welsh-written manuscripts. Many images have been created about Thomas akin to William Shakespeare, some others have created for their own ends, such as that of a outrageous, drunken lecher or that of a wild Welsh boy who roared through a very brief life.

'It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour hood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested Shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call for seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth'
From the Poem in October

Between leaving school and moving over to London changed his life dramatically for the worse. His father was stricken with cancer with few years to live, the parents planned to sell their comfortable house and moved to a smaller one. Life at home became awful hell where poverty, drinks, violence, aggression and jealousy bred.

For all of us around the world who believed and still believe that William Shakespeare can never be replaced might find ourselves proved wrong during the course of this century...and it may not be that far for Dylan Thomas to be Bard of England as well. Today, recognised as the Bard of Wales, our impulses and moods can take him from coarseness to the most sublime poetry. Each time one shakes them, they settle in different patterns, brighter, more joyful with brilliance. Other times, restrained and overwhelming.

Dylan Thomas was an extraordinary man with many virtues and almost equally extraordinary vices. While millions continue to adore, worship and exhalt his literary genius, they all are sad why he had to smoke himself to death, drink himself to death and to die at such a tender age, strided as a genius, established as an icon.

Though Thomas was terrified of the war when bombs fell on London and Swansea, and when he found his wife's infidelity with a guest, they all contributed to the germination of the idea of Under Milk Wood grew under such unpleasant situations. Confronted with horror around him and the frightful carnage, his place sane enough to reject the insanity of the rest of the world. So, Thomas reasoned the only sane village in the world would be declared insane. These ideas finally surfaced in Under Milk Wood.

The moment the book was out, it was a roaring success not only in Wales or England but in the USA as well. This classic became one of the best movies of the time and Thomas made his fortune followed by many successful works. He wrote profusely while getting into brawls, and drinking bouts. The more villain he became (they were all impulses) the greater he wrote. With his health deteriorating, he remained in a coma from which he never recovered. Caitlin, his wife, hurried from Laugharne to New York. He died on 9 November, 1953 and was buried in his churchyard in Wales.

This exceptional writer illuminated our lives with his vision and dazzled by waves of reflections on the surface of life as though he could visualise the roots of the sea. That was the greatness of this Master of the literary world.

Under Milk Wood displayed the charm of Dylan Thomas's confidence, secure and loving. The paradise of Fern Hill had moved a few miles across the estuary to Milk Wood, a town full of lovebirds. Thomas has managed to slip the chains of time, those chains that held him 'green' and dying at Fern Hill.