Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
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Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His
Literary Works
Lin XU
College of Foreign Studies, Guilin University of Electronic
Technology
Abstract: Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was one of great Welsh poets and writers
with productive poems and works in the 20th century, who has a dramatic and
enduring impact in the English language. He is well-known for his “play for voices”
“Under Milk Wood”; the poems such as “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
and “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”; and short stories and radio broadcasts
such as “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog” and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.
Thomas’s romantic, affirmative, rhetorical style was both fresh and influential.
Thomas became popular in his lifetime far and wide; and remained his international
fame after his premature death in 1953. He knew little Welsh and wrote literary
works in English, but almost his literary works mirror his relationship to Wales. He
spent most of his life time in Wales and almost his works were finished in Wales;
therefore, he was influenced by Wales including Welshness/Welsh culture and his
own experiences in the outskirt of Swansea and rural villages in West Wales. Welsh
contexts have been strongly embodied in his literary works, in which he wrote
about Wales and the experience of being a Welsh.
Keywords: Dylan Thomas; Wales; Dylan Thomas’s Literary Works; Welsh
Contexts; Deep Approach
DOI: 10.47297/wspciWSP2516-252711.20200408
About the author: Lin XU, English teacher at College of Foreign Studies, Guilin Univer-
sity of Electronic Technology, Guilin, China. MTI from Southwest University, China; MA
in Social Work Studies with Merit, Durham University, UK. Research Direction: British
Literature and Cross-cultural Communication. Email: lin.xu0502@foxmail.com.
Fund Project: “On the MTI Deep Education in Electronic Information Colleges and Uni-
versities” (MTIJZW201915) by China National Committee for Translation & Interpreting
Education.
105Creativity and Innovation Vol.4 No.8 2020
1. Introduction
A mong the rolling hills and stone cottages, Wales is one of nations in the UK,
where her inhabitants speak “an ancient and peculiar” language-Welsh, along
with rich culture of Wales - Welshness (Borrow, 2009, p.15). Born in Swansea,
South Wales, Dylan Thomas is one of famous Anglo-Welsh writers who had major
achievements in the English language and is almost the most famous Anglo-Welsh
writer in the 20th century (Lloyd, 1992, p. 435; Nagraju and Seshaiah, 2012, p.6).
Dylan Thomas Birthplace (n.d.) states that “At 21, he (Thomas) was the leading
Anglo-Welsh poet of the time.” Thomas is equally famous for writing the “play for
voices” “Under Milk Wood” ; the poems such as “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good
Night” and “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”; and short stories and radio
broadcasts such as “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog” and “A Child’s Christmas
in Wales” (Dylan Thomas , 2016). His prose works have a strong poetic element,
especially “Under Milk Wood” and “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog” (Ross,
2010, p.243). Thomas’s romantic, affirmative, rhetorical style was both new and
influential (Birch and Hooper, 2012, p.711). His poems are “expressive and often
lush in their phrasing, with a vibrant vitality” (Ross, 2010, p. 243). Thomas became
popular in his lifetime far and wide; and remained his international fame after his
premature death at the age of 39 in New York City, US (Dylan Thomas , 2016).
Literature, including poems, as well as being texts, has contexts (Davies,
1986, p.87). As to Thomas, the periods in which he wrote combined the places out
of which he wrote. Thomas once made a comment on the influence of his places
he lived on his life and works, especially in Wales, “I never thought that localities
meant so much, nor the genius of places, nor anything like that.” (as cited in Ferris,
2000, p.224) Davies (1986, p.1) also verified Thomas’s words and made a comment
on his whole life, “The thinner the eventfulness of a life, the larger do places loom
as contexts for poems and stories.” Also, “Thomas was very much a poet of place
in literally scenic ways” (Davies, 1986, p. 94). Suburban Swansea and even more
unknown villages with impressive landscape in West Wales provided him with a
fundamentally regional context. And using the word “regional” along with the word
“rural” is that it arouses a relationship-to-the-centre that is not simply a matter of
rural-versus-urban (Davies, 1986, pp. 87-88). Welsh contexts in Thomas’s literary
works are regional contexts, which were influenced and evoked by Thomas’s own
experiences and time no matter in rural Welsh villages or the outskirt of Swansea.
Besides, some of his literary works are mixed with Welshness and Welsh identity,
from which he tried to escape their influence but he always return to (Lycett, 2004,
p.48).
106Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
2. Dylan Thomas
Thomas was born on 27 October, 1914, in Swansea, Wales, UK. “Many of
his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager” (Dylan Thomas , 2016).
His first volume of verse, “18 Poems”, appeared in 1934, in which “Light Breaks
Where No Sun Shines” attracted attention of the literary world in the UK (Birch
and Hooper, 2012, p.711). Thomas met his future wife Caitlin Macnamara whom
he married in 1937, when he was living in London. In the early time of their
marriage, Thomas and his family settled in a Welsh fishing village-Laugharne,
Carmarthenshire, West Wales. Thomas became to be admired as a popular poet in
his lifetime; however, he found it difficult to make a living as a writer. Therefore,
he then “embarked on a Grub Street career of journalism, broadcasting, and film-
making, and rapidly acquire a reputation for exuberance and flamboyance” (Birch
and Hooper, 2012, p.711). His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s
brought about public attention to him, and his voice was frequently used by the
BBC as “a populist voice of the literacy scene” as well (Dylan Thomas , 2016).
Thomas first traveled to the United States in the 1950s, where his readings
earned international fame. Therefore, his time in America enhanced his legend.
When he went on the fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became severely
ill and fell into a faint, from which he never recovered. Finally, he died on 9
November, 1953. His body was returned to Wales where he was buried at the
village churchyard in Laugharne, where he used to live with his family, on 25
November, 1953 (Dylan Thomas , 2016).
3. Welshness
Welshness is the culture of Wales. Welsh nationalism (Welsh: Cenedlaetholdeb
Cymreig) focuses on “the distinctiveness of Welsh language, culture, and history,
and calls for more self-determination for Wales, which might include more
devolved powers for the Welsh Assembly or full independence from the United
Kingdom” (Culture of Wales , 2016). However, Thomas disliked being considered
as a provincial poet, and denied any notion of Welshness in his poetry. In spite of
this, his works were rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas admitted that he
returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman (as cited in
Dylan Thomas , 2016) emphasizes that “his inspiration and imagination were rooted
in his Welsh background”.
(1) Anglo-Welsh Language and Literature
Wales had an independent history, an expressive language, as well as a
distinguished literature which is actually older than English. As two total different
languages, “Welsh” and “English” are “perceived and used to symbolize the total
opposition between the two culture” (Trosset, 1986, p.171). Unfortunately, teaching
107Creativity and Innovation Vol.4 No.8 2020
in Welsh had been banned by the Blue Books in 1847, apparently to counter
poor standards in Welsh-speaking schools in Wales (Ross, 2010, p.197). This
conspicuous piece of cultural colonialism had been reversed years later; however,
“universal English-medium education finally destroyed the monoglot Welsh-
speaking community” (Morgan, 1988, p. 248). “Learning languages in action…will
imply cross-cultural pragmatics and a critical reflection on values and linguistic
capital. ” (Tochon,2014, p.23) A majority of the one and a half million population
still spoke Welsh, but they were mainly from countryside in desperate agricultural
jobs. The emerging middle-class spoke English, and the political challenge to this
linguistic dominance would not come for another two decades (Ross, 2010, p.198).
Welsh-language literature became outstanding in Wales through the 19 th
century; by the early decades of the 20th century, Welsh people were writing in
English, especially in the South of Wales, to give birth to a new literature - Anglo-
Welsh literature (Lloyd, 1992, p.435). Anglo-Welsh writing, including Anglo-Welsh
poetry, is the literature written in English by those who “either had indissoluble
connections with the Wales of the past or see themselves as part of the Welsh
literary scene in the present” (Collins, 1989, p. 56).
From Thomas’s works, the readers can find that Thomas was also influenced
by Anglo-Welsh literature as well as Angle-Welsh language, not the pure Welsh
language. For instance, in his “play for voices” -“Under Milk Wood”, the readers
might consider that the “voices” are Welsh voices. However, Daniel Jones (as cited
in Hawkes, 1960, p. 346) argues that the language in “Under Milk Wood” is not
“orthodox” Welsh but Anglo-Welsh, that is, “a South Wales dialect composed of the
imposition of a highly idiomatic Welsh lexicon on an English base”.
(2) Welsh Bardic Poetry and Welsh Identity
Ben Gwalchami (2014) addresses that there is a great bardic tradition in Wales.
Therefore, Thomas was inspired by Welsh bardic tradition very much and “his
rhythms and phrasing, his choice of metaphor and odd matchings of words, have
that Celtic run and lilt”, even though he “denied any possibility of adapting the
Welsh bardic meters to English poetry” (Towner, 1965, p. 616; British Heritage
Staff, 2006) Like other Anglo-Welsh poets, Thomas tended to “think of himself
as a bard, a poet who plays a public role in his community and is responsible to
celebrate or criticize it” (Collins, 1989, p. 56). John Barnie (as cited in Firchow,
1995, p. 591) criticizes Thomas “is really a parody of the Welsh,” someone who
“created an image of Wales which has been fatal to Welsh identity in England and
America in that it has portrayed Wales as a comic place full of marvelous avuncular
characters, quaint sayings, quaint uses of English, but comic and not, in the end,
what you take seriously.” Therefore, it is “the burden of Thomas’s bardhood
weighing heavily upon contemporary Anglo-Welsh poets” (Firchow, 1995, p. 591).
108Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
Flannery O’Connor stated that “An identity is not to be found on the surface.”
(as cited in Gwalchami, 2014) Trosset (1986, p.183) considers that “As one learns
a new language, then, one’s social identity becomes ambiguous.” and “Anomic
feelings increase along with increasing fluency in the new language, that is, as
one draws closer to becoming an actual speaker of that language, and thus more
uncertain about one’s own linguistic and cultural identification.” However, it is
not to say that Thomas, as a fluent English speaker in Wales, is not on the whole
responsible and even good Welsh poet, though he has little to do with the sense of
Welsh/national identity. But he has a great deal to do with his sense of place - his
“regional identity” (Firchow, 1995, p. 591).
In my opinion, Anglo-Welsh writers’ identities, including Thomas’s, are not
merely in the romantic, bardic, Eisteddfod tradition, though they are “integral and
interwoven”, which sound superficial; however, they are reflections that writers
recognize or acknowledge Welshness along with local conditions and customs in
Wales, and also to write them anew “in the spaces we carve out for ourselves” as
Thomas did in his literary works (Gwalchmai, 2014).
(3) Regionalism - Community and Relationship
Anglo-Welsh literature is different from English literature or the ones in
other English speaking countries. First, because it is the work of a minority of
the population in the UK, written more often than not out of the experience of
being Welsh and of living in Wales; secondly, because it is shaped in part by the
indigenous language and the heritage of the place out of which it is written (Collins,
1989, p.56). The uniqueness of Anglo-Welsh literature determines its feature –
regionalism. Therefore, John Wain (as cited in Davies, 1986, p.88) recognizes
the status of regionalism in Thomas’s time as one of the roots of the “unbearable
sadness” of his poems in the last period:
He grew up in a bad literary period; in some respects, even worse than the
one we are in today. For today, at least, there is a general acceptance that Britain
is a multi-racial community and there is no pressure on poets to be anything but
what they are. In those days there was an untroubled assumption, in metropolitan
England, that ‘the regions’ were dead and had no right to be anything else but
dead... A less helpful atmosphere for a Welsh poet with a world reputation can
hardly be imagined. It constituted a positive guarantee that the world reputation
would pull on way, and the Welshness another. So the man, caught between these
irreconcilable forces, blesses and mourns (Wain, as cited in Davies, 1986, p.88).
Also, Wain emphasizes that “Thomas’s personal symbol for happiness and
completeness” is a small rural community, the kind of place described in stories
like “The Peaches” and “A Visit to Grandpa’s”(in the Portrait) and in “Under Milk
Wood” which is called as “Welsh Ulysses”(Wain, as cited in Davies, 1986, p.88).
However, Thomas’s late poems celebrate landscape and geography more than they
109Creativity and Innovation Vol.4 No.8 2020
do community and people. Sometimes, relationship and community do not have
to be not hidden themes to be part of the wider meaning of a poem. In making
Welshness a landscape, Thomas seems in a broad decline from a particular tendency
in Romantic poetry. But community and relationship can be embodied within
Thomas’s own achievements. Thus, it is possible to feel that “After the funeral” in
1938 had begun to explore, via Ann Jones, Thomas’s relationship to a particular
culture - Welshness. Also, in a different mood, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Dog” had celebrated his suburban and rural origins with a deep understanding of
roots in a real society. To some degree, these materials had been interrupted by the
coming war, and Thomas’s return to London. Yet those work definitely put pressure
not only on his late poems, but also on what the readers think to be the advantages
and disadvantages of “Under Milk Wood”, the only late work in which Thomas
returned to the theme of community (Davies, 1986, pp. 88-89).
4. Influence by His Welsh Family
(1) Thomas’s Welsh Parents
Thomas was the son of Florence Hannah (1882-1958), who was a seamstress,
and David John (short for D.J.) Thomas (1876-1952),who was a local Grammar
School master. His father was born in Johnstown in April, 1876, which is very near
to Carmarthen, the oldest town in Wales. He had a first-class honours degree in
English from University College, Aberystwyth, Wales, and ambitions to reach his
position teaching English literature at the local grammar school. Thomas’s mother
Florence had been born and brought up in St Thomas, “a polluted dockside quarter
on the lower reaches of Kilvey Hill on the other side of town” (Lycett, 2004, pp. 6,
12). As Lycett (2004, p.9) mentions, “the families of both D.J. and Florrie (the short
form of his mother’s first name) came from the same county, west of Swansea”.
Because of this advantage that almost Thomas’s relatives were living in
Welsh countryside, he had chances to pay his regular visits to his relations in
Carmarthenshire, which introduced him to the realities of rural existence which had
shaped both sides of his family. Thomas’s trips to West Wales and Gower awakened
an interest in and a feeling towards a natural world beyond the Uplands. During the
trips, Thomas discovered a close Welsh-speaking world (Lycett, 2004, p. 48).
(2) Enlightenment of Thomas’s English and Poetry
Thomas’s father had strong impacts into Thomas’s life. However, Thomas
did not pass on Welsh language. D.J.’s Welsh was equal to his perfect English,
which means that it was in effect his first language. Also, both his parents were
Welsh-speaking. But “D.J. Thomas’s concern for ‘getting on’ through education –
in which process, in the early decades of this century, the first abandoned ballast
tended to be the Welsh language – led him to decide consciously not to raise his son
as a Welsh-speaker.”(Davies, 1986,p.96). His father demanded that “the children
110Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
spoke only English though their parents were bilingual in English and Welsh”, and
also he “gave Welsh lessons at home” (Dylan Thomas , 2016). That is the reason
why Thomas knew very little Welsh; thus, Thomas’s only language was English.
Thomas’s “unorthodox way with language” may also evoke the Welsh context in a
more specific linguistic sense (Davies, 1986, p.96).
Thomas’s father considered himself as a man of letters but he turned back to
schoolmastering in order to “pursue his great love of English literature, particularly
of Shakespeare.” (Lycett, 2004, p.13) Even after Thomas became a promising
young poet, D.J. had been jealous of his poetry talent, as D.J. “established s sense
of thwarted ambition (towards literature)”, which became a pattern in D.J.’s life
(Lycett 2004, p.13). “D.J.’s passionate love for poetry was salted by a sense of
frustration at not being able to pursue it in ways more congenial to his temperament
that schoolmastering” (Davies, 1986, p.2). There is some evidence that he had
failed to get recognition as a poet in his own right; more certain is that he had
considered himself wrongly passed over when appointment to the chair of English
at the new University College of Swansea was made in 1920. The disappointment,
given high profile by D.J.’s uncompromising personality, may have played a part
in the intensity of Thomas’s first experiences of literature and in the early self-
consciousness of his determination to be a poet himself (Lycett, 2004, pp.13-14).
(3) Religious Conflict Between His Parents
Even before Thomas was born, future contradictions in his family cast their
shadow. On the one hand, his father, D.J., was totally Anglicized and extremely
atheistic, a lifelong opponent of religion, who was always against God (British
Heritage Staff, 2006).
Dylan’s mother, on the other hand, was a faithful Christian. Her road to
salvation was narrow and non-conformist, but firm and unshakable. She imposed
some of her religious influence on her gifted son. Florence Thomas gave Thomas
her total love of God, in complete contrast to his father’s explicit atheism. This
must have led to great instability within the marriage of Thomas’s parents and it is
easy to understand why Dylan’s poetry and his personality were so contradictory
(British Heritage Staff, 2006).
Even though Thomas was influenced by his mother on religion, he declared
that he only wanted to write “poems of God’s world by a man who doesn’t
believe in God”(Meyer, 1971, p. 199). As Thomas announced, lots of religion
figures or images loom largely in his work, such as in his famous late poem “Fern
Hill”, in which Thomas wrote not only the boy’s happiness, but also its religious
implications. Words such as “mercy”, “Sabbath”, “holy”, “blessed”, “praise” and
“grace” through the poem. Therefore, his poems have been left an obvious religious
mark by his mother and religious experience (Davies, 1986, p. 81).
111Creativity and Innovation Vol.4 No.8 2020
5. Influence by Suburban Swansea and Welsh Rural Villages
Thomas’s roots lie deeply in Wales; and he visited and stayed in
numerous places in the South and West Wales, especially in West Glamorgan,
Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire (which is now known as Ceredigion), to which
he was overwhelmingly drawn throughout his life (The life of Dylan Thomas , n.d.).
These places have loom or are set as backgrounds in his works, helping the readers
to have access to a real Welsh world and understand Welshness and Welsh culture
better.
(1) Suburban Swansea
Swansea is located in a ceremonial county-West Glamorgan, which is a
preserved county and former administrative county of Wales. Swansea is one of
four districts in West Glamorgan (Swansea, 2016). “Finding the right balance Celtic
sentiment, nationalist roots and the uncompromising demands of upward mobility
has always been a feature of life in mainly Anglophone Swansea”(Lycett, 2000,
p. 5). As this town’s most famous son, Thomas, who described the town as it was
viewed from his hillside home as “an ugly, lovely town”(as cited in Lewis, 2013).
Though he was to move away – first to London, then later to New Quary in
Ceredigion and Laugharne, Carmarthenshire – Dylan Thomas always kept a special
affection for Swansea throughout his life and his work (Swansea: Dylan Thomas’s
Sea-town , 2014). Dylan lived at his birthplace, 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, for 23 years
and wrote two-thirds of his published works from his tiny bedroom which has been
faithfully recreated. From there, he was confronted by mixed messages: “on the
one hand, the pressing reality of Anglo-orientated suburb; on the other hand, the
liberating potential of Welsh myth”(Lycett, 2004, p.17). Thomas once said that he
had been inspired by “the leafy glades” and “shady paths of Cwmdonkin park” (The
life of Dylan Thomas , n.d.). In his radio broadcast “Reminiscences of Childhood”,
he spoke about the importance of the park and its significance in his early life. He
described it:
A world… full of terrors and treasures…a country just born and always
changing….and that park grew up with me….In that small, iron-railed universe of
rockery, gravel-path, playbank, bowling-green, bandstand reservoir, chrysanthemum
garden, …..in the grass one must keep off, I endured, with pleasure, the first
agonies of unrequited love, the first slow boiling in the belly of a bad poem, the
strutting and raven-locked self-dramatization of what, at that time seemed incurable
adolescence (Thomas, as cited in The life of Dylan Thomas , n.d.).
In December 1938, Thomas wrote a short poem, “Once it was the colour of
saying” which evidently registers a turning-point in his career. Here it is:
112Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill
With a capsized field where a school sat still
And a black and white patch of girls grew playing;
The gentle seaslides of saying I must undo
That all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and kill.
When I whistled with mitching boys through a reservoir park
Where at night we stoned the cold and cuckoo
Lovers in the dirt of their leafy beds,
The shade of their trees was a word of many shades
And a lamp of lightning for the poor in the dark;
Now my saying shall be my undoing,
And every stone I wind off like reel.
(Thomas, 2000, p.65)
(‘mitching’= playing truant)
On one level, Thomas is quite realistically remembering his early home in
Swansea - on a steep suburban hill, opposite which were a field, a school, and a
park. Also, realistic in fact is the more obscure phrase “the uglier side of a hill”:
in his youth the other side of that hill was open farmland. But the poem is also
decidedly about something more internal: the poet’s attitude to language and how it
affects his attitude to outside reality (Davies, 1986, p.12).
Ironically, it was not medieval romance or Welsh myth that captured Thomas’s
imagination at his early age but the impact of modern battle in Swansea. On 27
October,1914, the local South Wales Daily Post sought to catch public attention
with a front page report on a local battalion of the Welsh Regiment leaving Swansea
to join the British Expeditionary Force; however, Allied troops had already become
stuck in the Ypres salient (Ypres Salient , 2016) in “the first great bloody stalemate
of the war” (Ypres Salient , 2016; Lycett, 2000, p.18). This accident left a life-
long impression on the young Thomas. He was not even a teenager when he began
publishing poems about the Great War in his Grammar School magazine. At that
time, he felt the conflict inwardly. When he began to find his own voice and subject
matter, he could look back on the moment of his birth in his first published book, “18
poems”, and see it in terms of military, with all the horror cruelty of the battlefield:
I dreamed my genesis and died again, shrapnel
Rammed in the marching heart, hole
113Creativity and Innovation Vol.4 No.8 2020
In the stitched wound and clotted wind, muzzled
Death on the mouth that ate the gas (Thomas, 2000, p.14).
From then now, “birth” and “death”, particularly the unavoidability of decline
from the threshold of a life: these were to be among his most convincing themes as
a poet (Lycett, 2004, pp. 18-19).
(2) Fernhill
In his childhood, a farmhouse of Thomas’s Aunt Ann Jone - Fernhill opened
Thomas’s eyes to a different way of life. “The countryside was also more raw,
elemental so he discovered spiritual” (Lycett, 2004, p.50). The surrounding fields
were “full of natural excitements”, providing the background for Thomas’s story
“The Peaches” as well as being a romantic paradise in one of his most famous
poems “Fern Hill” (Lycett, 2004, p.49). That is, this farm is just the prototype of the
“Fern Hill” of Thomas’s poem and also the “Gorsehill” of his story “The Peaches”
(Ferris, 2000, p. 31).
“Fern Hill” (Thomas, 2000, p.29) is not only regarded in further detail as
an independent major achievement (Davies, 1986, p.77), but also as the poem
that “stands on the threshold” of the last phase (1945-1953) of Thomas’s career.
‘‘Fern Hill” has a familiar theme, a nostalgic view of innocent childhood, which
immediately raises the awareness of simply sentimental statement – the child was
happy in the poem. Thomas recalled this happy memories in his letter, “Many
summer weeks I spent happily with the cancered aunt on her insanitary farm. She
loved me quite inordinately, gave me sweets & money, though she could little
afford it, petted, patted, & spoiled me” (Thomas, as cited in Ferris, 2000, p.29). He
put these sweet and happy memories in his childhood into “Fern Hill”:
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting 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 prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
114Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxed on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the Sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams (Thomas, 2000, p.118).
“Fern Hill” also gave the readers another feature of his last poems – to be more
specific, “there is a shift from what we might term a ‘materialist’ view of nature
in his earlier poetry to a more conceptual view in the later poems” (Davies, 1986,
p. 80). The “materialist” view was known by “a moving sense of mystery”, but
was fundamentally “a vision of organic process”. The more conceptual view is the
one where human consciousness is more than simply “natural”, “having access to
religious concepts and modes of feeling which are then applied to nature” (Davies,
1986, p. 80).
(3) Laugharne
In the spring of 1938, Dylan moved to Laugharne with his wife, Caitlin, due
to financial problems. Laugharne had “its own importance to the shaping of his
future work”, and it was only a few miles from Fernhill, the farm on which the
Swansea schoolboy (Thomas) had enjoyed his happiest holidays (Davies, 1986,
p.4). During 1938 and 1939, he finished the writing of the realistic autobiographical
short stories that were published as “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog” in
1940. In August 1939, his third volume of poetry, “The Map of Love”, had been
published. “Laugharne had also made new poems as well as new prose possible. ”
(Davies, 1986, p.4) The atmosphere of the rural, seaside place where Welsh villages
were written, especially referring to Laugharne, was probably the greatest single
influence on Thomas’s final work, from which it can be seen that the sense of
Laugharne, as an actual place, influences the language and atmosphere of Thomas’s
late poems (Davies, 1986, p.82).
Laugharne remained Thomas’s spiritual home and it was the place he returned
again in May 1948, where he and his family moved to the Boathouse at Laugharne.
As Thomas preferred to be away on his own to write, the garage at the Boathouse
became his “writing shed” (The life of Dylan Thomas , n.d.). The Boathouse is
located on the edge of the hill above the estuary of the River Taf. From the house,
there is a wonderful panoramic view across the “Heron priested shore” that
115Creativity and Innovation Vol.4 No.8 2020
undoubtedly was a great inspiration as he wrote in “Poem in October”:
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall (Thomas, 2000, p.73)
(4) New Quay
After travelling to London and other parts of England, Thomas returned
to West Wales to produce “his most compelling and memorable works” - most
famously Ceredigion where his stays in New Quay and Talsarn were among the
most productive of his writing career (The life of Dylan Thomas , n.d).
Thomas’s final play “Under Milk Wood” was started in New Quay, partially
written at Southleigh near Oxford, and then finally completed in New York before
its first public performance. “Under Milk Wood” stimulated a standing debate as
to which town in Wales is the model for “Llareggub”. David Thomas (as cited in
The life of Dylan Thomas , n.d.) notices that many of the characters in “Under Milk
Wood” (from New Quay) were described before Thomas ever visited Laugharne.
Also, David Thomas has clearly established a strong case for New Quay being the
model for “Llareggub”, while the name “Under Milk Wood” is probably taken from
the farm called “Wernllaeth”. Moreover, Dylan and Caitlin’s daughter Aeronwy was
named after the River Aeron which flows through the Aeron valley to Aberaeron,
on which Thomas made a comment was “the most precious place in the world” (The
life of Dylan Thomas , n.d.).
6. Conclusion
In this paper, the depth view of Tochon (cited in Long, 2019b; Long & Ju,
2020) made a deep analysis of Dylan Thomas’s diachronic and synchronic works.
There are his poems, his novels and other literary and cultural works. As Long
(2019a, p.136) said, “the national is also the world”, that is, the national culture is
also a part of the world culture. Therefore, although Thomas’s works were mainly
done in Wales, these cultural works not only belong to Wales, but also naturally
belong to the British Empire, but also belong to the culture of the world.
As one of representative and “quintessential” Welsh poets in the 20th century,
Dylan Thomas was a talented but productive Welsh poet and writer, covering a
realm of poems, short stories and films etc. and achieved international fame in
English literature (Gwalchmai, 2014). Ross (2010, p. 243) evaluates Thomas’s
116Influences of Wales on Dylan Thomas and His Literary Works
literature achievement and life like this, “Though Dylan Thomas led a notably
bohemian life, he was meticulous literary craftsman.” Despite his hard drinking and
“tumultuous lifestyle”, his literary reputation remains intact and same 60 year after
his death (Nagaraju and Seshaiah, 2012, p.6).
Thomas’s works are not only “sensational, flamboyant, and obscure and
barbaric”, but also with “an underlying logic, discipline and organization” (Meyer,
1971, p. 200). As Thomas was “obsessed with words”, Thomas’s works echo with
a richness of sound and metaphor that transforms “his personal experience with the
elements of nature” into “a dazzling, universal vision of the meaning of existence”
(Meyer, 1971, p.200). Thomas never learned Welsh and had no interest in Welsh
politics: however, “his background profoundly influenced his work, the rhythms
and cadences of spoken and sung Welsh are integral to it” (Ross, 2010, p.243).
As a Welsh writer, he wrote his literary works in Welsh contexts; but he
knew very little Welsh. His works are imprinted deeply by his time and memories
in Wales, along with awareness of Welshness by which he was influenced
spontaneously, even he denied. Thomas’s works reflected his close spiritual
connection to Wales, where he was nurtured by her profound culture, breathtaking
landscape, long-standing literature and even her own language. Profoundly inspired
by Wales, a lot of Welsh contexts and images loom in his literary works, from
which the readers see Welsh rural villages and beautiful natural scenery; as well
as in which the greatest Welsh poet in the 20th century made his history in English
literature, even in the world.
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