Dylan Thomas, The Bard of Wales

By Gwen Heart

He was an exciting, stimulating and compelling writer very often misunderstood by colleagues as well as critics who failed to dig deeper into his chequered personality. It was difficult and even impossible to establish what was true and what was not true about Dylan Thomas. Even his mother was confused over his birth year and swore he was born in 1915 and not 1914. An outstanding poet but decidedly who never cared what price may paid for his company because it was very exhilarating but he was not arrogant. It was just his nature.

The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swasea, South Wales

There were less disagreement about Dylan as an artist than as an icon poet. The learned found them to be psychological nonsense but Dylan, in a short time, was to prove he was as good as William Shakespeare. Various images created by the media (for their sensational news) such as him to be that of an outrageous young man, drunken lecher, etc. It was not fair. He was referred to as wild Welsh boy who roared through a brief life. But then, it was Dylan’s own doings because of the images he created for himself in his more buoyant moods. He took on the role of romantic poet doomed to a tragic fate. He estowed his genius upon the world as a hero laughing in death’s face.

Unfortunately, at the end, no one, not even Dylan knew who the ‘real’ Dylan was. Was it fiction, fact, legend or lie? Did he pretend to be sensitive, penniless, misunderstood artist lost and harassed in a philistine world?

His life pieced together was like the fragments of coloured glass in a panorama of kaleidoscope; some were brilliant, sparkling colours while others were dark, sombre and murky. His contradictory impulses and moods were beyond his control. He found it difficult to unwind himself most of the time which took him to the most sublime poetry... and back again. Each time he shook the fragments of his life style they settled on different patterns, presently bright and joyful, and at other times, restrained and compulsive. When he wrote under these circumstances especially in the night, he would wake up in the morning and find them to be brilliant of which he was unaware when he wrote them. To be more specific, sometimes he wrote as though in a trance. All the time, he had tried to fix the pieces into overwhelming colours and form. He was of extraordinary virtues and equally extraordinary vices but beyond all these was the total man in full command of truth about life to the satisfaction and understanding of millions.

Dylan Thomas was the sensitive misunderstood artist whose brief life, weighed down by his own seekings but who praised the fleeting beauty of youth and innocence. All these images were nearest to the real Dylan as he ran through life in the places, the people and the experiences of Wales that influenced his writings. And in the centre of them all, was the man himself.

The poet became influenced by his family at a time when names had a bearing. He was born Dylan Marlais Thomas at 5, Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea on October 27, 1914 as the second child of David John Thomas, a local school teacher and Florence Hannah Williams. Marlais is a tribute to one of Dylan’s great uncles and to the values he represented.

Dylan is a name from ancient Welsh myth and religion from the days before the dawn of Christianity, from a thousand years before the English appeared in Britain. Dylan is the son of Arianrhod; she and her son are those half-human, half-divine figures derived in the tale of ‘The Mabinogion’.

Dylan’s father was almost the inevitable label of Anglicized Welshman known as David John and his mother had an English name but they gave their son names that asserted both their heritage and their hopes that evoked the mystery of prehistory of the Welsh and their values.

The Bard of Wales, Dylan Thomas in his youth.

Swansea was the epitome of a city that had straddled several worlds. English and Welsh were spoken almost equally when Dylan was born. Dylan entered the Swansea grammar school in 1925 where his father was the senior English master. Later, Dylan was to claim that he never had a proper academic record as a result of his own shortcomings and the lax discipline of the school. However, he excelled in English with his father reading Shakespeare to him from a very tender age. Dylan started writings poetry from the age of eight. He started writing poems for the Grammar School and little works for the school magazine. He went on to be the editor. He went on to writing professionally with his stories and with Under Milk Wood.

Apart from writing Dylan was interested in the theatre and performed at various amature productions at the Swansea Little Theatre. He was very successful and over exuberant as an actor. His talent stood good for the later works of the BBC and his reading tours of the United States. Later he worked for South Wales Daily Post. As he became popular, he acquired a circle of close friends who were passionate about art as he was. Among them, Mervyn Levy and Fred James were painters. Daniel Jones and Tom Werner were musicians. Trevor Hughs and Bert Trick were writers. These learned people met and discussed their professions with each other that influenced Dylan to a great extent.

Dylan continued to write and became obsessed by it. From 1930 to 1934, between the ages of 16 to 20, he wrote over 250 poems. He also wrote short stories and all were published in volumes. The major subjects that dominated his works were death, life, creativity and destruction and they are all apparent in his early works. His preoccupation was death and he often hinted that he did not have long to live.

He argued life cannot exist without death nor death without life. The young may have been ignorant of this grim alliance and in Fern Hill, no one could have escaped this ineluctable fact. Fern Hill is the best known poem in his first edition.

With years of iconic writing almost in par with his English counterpart, William Shakespeare, Dylan became his own enemy. His fears and uncertainty led him to inappropriate behaviour and rise to fear along with the vicious circle led him to an early death with heavy drinks and smoking.

A brilliant young life was snuffed out on 9 November, 1953.