Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Study of Dylan Thomas's Poetry: CH - Nagaraju, K. V. Seshaiah
A Study of Dylan Thomas's Poetry: CH - Nagaraju, K. V. Seshaiah
org
Abstract: Dylan Thomas is one of the writers who has often been associated with Welsh literature and culture
in the last sixty years. He is possibly the most notable Welsh author. Fortunately, it is mainly his literary work, and not his tumultuous lifestyle, that is still associated with him. The analysis of some of his poems mirrors his sincere relationship to Wales. In 1937 he married to Caitlin MacNamara who gave birth to three children. These circumstances indicate a typical British conservative and straight forward approach to family life. Dylan Thomas was influenced in his writing by the Romantic Movement for the beginning of the nineteenth century and this can be seen in a number of his best works. Dylan Thomas uses symbols and images of nature to express how he feels towards death and childhood. He says that images are used to create a feeling of love towards life. Despite Dylan Thomass obscure images, he expresses a clear message of religious devotion in many of his poems. The style of Dylan Thomas is an opaque poetic style which Thomas used to perfection. He possessed tremendous talent and was blessed with immense gifts that made him a professional success at a relatively young age. Key words: Dylan Thomas, Romanticism, Poetic Style, I. Introduction Dylan Thomas is one of the writers who has often been associated with Welsh literature and culture in the last sixty years. He is possibly the most notable Welsh author. Fortunately, it is mainly his literary work, and not his tumultuous lifestyle, that is still associated with him. The analysis of some of his poems mirrors his sincere relationship to Wales. Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914. After he left school at the age of sixteen, he started working as a journalist in Swansea. In 1937, he married Caitlin MacNamara who gave birth to three children. These circumstances indicate a typical British, conservative and straightforward approach to family life. However, Dylan started drinking heavily, and Caitlin is rumoured to have had several extramarital affairs, even with colleagues and friends of her husband. Having moved to London, alcohol and indulgence were expensive for the young family, so they could not cover their costs anymore. Thus, in 1950, Thomas announced that he would emigrate to the United States because he thought he would be paid better there than in England. He settled in New York where he recited his works, and was profoundly admired. Nevertheless, the money he earned was spent on alcohol, which led his marriage with Caitlin into a serious crisis. On November 9, 1953, he died after a heavy drinking binge in a Manhattan hotel, at the age of 39. Later, Thomass body was brought "home" to Wales. He was buried in the churchyard of Laugharne. Dylan Thomas was influenced in his writing by the Romantic Movement from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and this can be seen in a number of his best works. Dylan Thomas uses symbols and images of nature to express how he feels towards death and childhood. He says that images are used to create a feeling of love towards life. Despite Dylan Thomas often obscure images, he expresses a clear message of religious devotion in many of his poems. He creates images that reflect Gods connection with the earth and body. In And death shall have no dominion, Thomas portrays the redemption of the soul in death, and the souls liberation into harmony with nature and God. Thomas associates God with thunder, rainbows, and night only to remind us that he is even more present in a simple stone as he is in other great entities. Colour imagery is also there in some of his poems as he describes his happiness as a child. He explains his young days as being as happy as the grass is green. The style of Dylan Thomas is an opaque poetic style, which Thomas uses to perfection. It is used to describe the unusual and day-to-day activities. Dylan Thomas possessed tremendous talent and was blessed with immense gifts that made him a professional success at a relatively young age; however, his personal life was often disappointing.
II.
Romanticism is an aesthetic attitude born out of a late eighteenth century reaction to the Enlightenment, stressing powerful feelings, originality, the individual response and a return to nature. The Romantic period in English literature is usually considered to extend from 1798, when Wordsworth and Coleridge published their www.iosrjournals.org 6 | Page
III.
IV.
The poetry of Dylan Thomas, in its own particular spectrality, also showcases a voice inflected by the presence and insertion of death and the death-image. For Sylvia Plath, the concept of the death-poet was both consciously fostered by her in poems, such as Lady Lazarus, but also irreversibly solidified by the nature of her death by suicide, which for some readers, added the weight of a macabre authenticity. Dylan Thomas s poems are signified by a powerful death-myth, which emanates from the poet himself. The poems were originally crafted by Thomas with the presence of death always lurking, but when they were subsequently stamped with a seal of authenticity by his death amidst controversy and excess in America, Thomas himself became a spectral figure of death. Thomass career being longer and more prodigious than Plath in reception, there are more opportunities in not only his poems, but also his stories, plays and film-scripts to find intriguing avenues for discovery. Thomas was a well-established writer when he died, but like Plath, his death, due to its www.iosrjournals.org 7 | Page
V.
The intensity of any literary work largely depends on powerful imagination. It also depends on the effective execution of that very imagination in the pages of a literary work. Therefore, to visualise his/her imagination the poet/writer often employs various literary devices. The most effective and compelling of those is the use of imagery (a figure of speech). Imagery is used in literary works to refer to the ways the writers compose mental images in words. It signifies all the sensory perceptions used in a literary work, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. Imagery is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement). Imagery engages the readers imagination through wonderful descriptions or illustrations that vividly portray the reality of a particular moment. A literary work with effective imagery gives the reader a clear mental picture of what is happening and enhance what the writer is trying to convey to the reader. Dylan Thomas is widely regarded as one of the 20th Century's most influential lyrical poets, and amongst the finest as such of all time. His acclaim is partly due to the force and vitality of his verbal imagery that is uniquely brilliant and inspirational. His vivid and often fantastic imagery was a rejection of the trends in the 20th Century poetics. While his contemporaries gradually altered their writing to serious topical verse, Thomas devoted himself to his passionately felt emotions. Thomas, in many ways, was more in alignment with the Romantics than he was with the poets of his era. He was considered the Shelley of the 20th century as his poems were the perfect embodiments of 'new-romanticism' with their violent natural imagery, sexual and Christian symbolism and emotional Subject matter expressed in a singing rhythmical verse. Dylan Thomas attached great importance to the use of imagery, and an understanding of his imagery is essential for an understanding of his poetry. Thomas' vivid imagery involved word play, fractured syntax, and personal symbolism. Thomas poetic imagery shows the use of a mixture of several techniques, the most prominent being the surrealistic, imagistic, and metaphysical. But the bible, his study of Shakespeare and other English poets also laid under contribution. Thomas as a resourceful "language-changer", like Shakespeare, Dickens, Hopkins and Joyce, shaped the English language into a richly original mlange of rhythm, imagery and literary allusion. Here follows a brief discussion on Dylan Thomas poetic imagery along with a critical inquiry into the major works by this poet:
VI.
Thomas claimed that his poetry was "the record of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light. To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness is to make clean." He also wrote that his poems "with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damned fool if they weren't." Passionate and intense, vivid and violent, Thomas wrote that he became a poet because "I had fallen in love with words." His sense of the richness and variety and flexibility of the English language shines through all of his work. Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night. His images were carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity www.iosrjournals.org 8 | Page
VII.
Conclusion:
Thomas' work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas' personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York. Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas' work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public.[158] Several of his poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers
VIII.
Acknowledgements
I record a deep sense of gratitude to my Teacher and Research Supervisor Dr.A.Hari Prasanna, M.A.,M.Phil.,Ph.D., Professor, Department of English, S.V. University, Tirupathi. I am indebted to her for the concern, counsel and encouragement I have received from her both at personal and academic levels. I also express my acknowledgement to the management, the Director and The H.O.D of Science and Humanities of N.B.K.R.I.S.T., Vidyanagar for their encouragement. It is a real pleasure for me to express my indebtedness to my wife, my beloved mother and other family members for their care and encouragement. I acknowledge the cooperation and assistance I have received from my friends and colleagues.
References:
Journals
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Anderson, M. Robert. Thomas A Refusal to Mourn The Explicator. Vol.38, No.4 (Summer, 1980). Cox, C.B. Dylan Thomas Fern Hill The critical Quarterly. Vol.1, No.2 (Summer, 1959). Joshi, Neeta. Influence of the Welsh Bardic Tradition in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas Punjab University Research Bulletin. 21 (1990). Mckay, D.F. Aspects of Energy in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath The Critical Quarterly. Vol.16, No.1 (Spring, 1974). Parshall, F. Peter Thomass The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower. The Explicator. Vol.29, No.8 (April, 1971). Press, John. Dylan Thomas: A Refusal to Mourn., Fern Hill, over Sir Johns Hill. Notes on Literature. No.74, (September, 1967 ). Smith, A.J. Ambiguity as Poetic Shift (Analysis of Dylan Thomass Our Eunuch Dreams). The Critical Quarterly. Vol.4, No.1 (Spring, 1962). Terrel, F. Caroll. Thomass Over sir Johns Hill. The Explicator. Vol.38, No.4 (Summer, 1980). Williams Anne. Thomass Over Sir Johns Hill. The Explicator. Vol.38, No.4 (Summer, 1980). Willis, Roger. Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood. Notes on Literature. No.102 (January, 1970). Young, Allan. Image as Structure: Dylan Thomas and Poetic Meaning. The Critical Quarterly. Vol. 17, No.4 (Winter 1975). Blamires, Harry, ed. A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English. London: Methuen, 1983. Brinnin, Joh Malcolm. Dylan Thomas in America (An Intimate Journal). New York: Viking, 1957. Cecil, Lord David, ed. The Oxford Book of Christian Verse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1940. Cox, C.B, ed. Dylan Thomas: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs : Prentice, 1966. Davies, Aneririn Talfan. Dylan: Druid of the Broken Body. Swansea: Salisbury, 1977. Davies, Walford. Dylan Thomas, Arts : A Third Course Twentieth Centur y Poetry. Unit 26, Keynes: The Open University Press, 1979.
Books
[12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
www.iosrjournals.org
9 | Page
www.iosrjournals.org
10 | Page