Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas (Swansea, Wales, October 27, 1914 - New York, November 9, 1953) was a British poet, short story writer, and playwright.

Famous for being a bohemian and also famous for his captivating booming voice, which attracted, like a youthful singer, hundreds of people to his poetry recitals, or to stick to the receiver when he spoke on the BBC. A precocious and suddenly deceased poet, chaos and excess were his path to genius.

Biography

Dylan was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914. His precocity is already noticeable from his childhood, at the age of 4 he is able to recite Shakespeare's Ricardo II by heart, preconfiguring not only his singularity, but also his histrionic skills. His father, David John Thomas (1876–1952) was a little-known writer. He graduated with honors from Aberystwyth University; he was a teacher at Swansea Grammar School & # 39; in which he studied Dylan and strongly promoted the formation of his son.

At the age of 16 Thomas dropped out of school to become, at his father's urging, a journalist for the South Wales Evening Post. It is in this publication that Thomas' writing skills are unleashed. He poetically wrote obituaries, and film and theater reviews where he did not leave a puppet with a head, tearing apart the best of the Welsh tables of that time (it already shows his propensity for scandal). After a hard day's work he used to quench his insatiable thirst in the bar of the Antelope Hotel or in the bar of the Mermaid Hotel, where he would listen to the stories of the English sailors, while he would get drunk to the marrow. After 18 months at the South Wales Evening Post he left the job under a lot of pressure. He joined a theater group in Mumbles called the Little Theatre, although he pursued his journalistic work independently.

However, journalism would not turn out to be the goal of his destiny, poetry —his “craft or surly art”— would definitely drag him towards its domains.

Dylan Thomas Statue in Swansea.

Works

Thomas's work is not copious, but it is of unusual quality and freshness. There were four literary fields in which he ventured: the short story, the theater script, the script for radio and cinema, and, finally, poetry. It is this last area in which he has been most recognized. In May 1933, after leaving Swansea for London the previous year, Thomas published in the New English Weekly several of the poems for which he is best known: “And death shall have no dominion”, “ Before I Knocked” and “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” (a poem supposedly dedicated to his first girlfriend and daughter, who drowned in 1931). In 1934 he began to publish his poems in The Listener and on December 18 of that same year he published his first book: Eighteen Poems (1934), for which he won the contest organized by The Sunday Referee. He had already gained renown with publications of the poems that would be collected in his first books in various magazines, such as New Stories, New Verse, Life and Letters Today, The Criterion (directed by writer T. S. Eliot).

The passionate lyricism and musicality of Thomas's poetry contrasts with the rest of the poetry of his time, more concerned with social issues or mere modernist experimentation of form. Thomas evidences in these poems the influence of English surrealism, and also includes influences from Celtic tradition, biblical or sexual symbols. For Thomas "poetry must be as orgiastic and organic as copulation, divisive and unifying, personal but not private, propagating the individual in the mass and the mass in the individual."

Not only Dylan's poetry, but his prose (his childhood and adolescence narrated in the beautiful tales of Portrait of the artist as a young doc) adheres to the experience itself, without mediation or consideration and uses (creatively) eternal and universal symbols: life [the plum that my mother plucked], death [the worm that corrodes the living]... Because the dynamics In Dylan, the individuality that he restores on the historical stage with his verses (his daemon, in my opinion, was his libertarian youth), is that of a constant loss, only possible to recover —with the passage of time, and like Coleridge's opium youth—from the loss of all senses.

Thomas's activity doesn't stop. He had already settled in the English capital, in addition to procuring, through his poetry, a circle of readers and literary friends. In 1936 he married Caitlin MacNamara, while publishing his second book Twenty-Five Poems , which only strengthened his reputation among critics and readers. However, things are not going well financially. Plunged into exasperating poverty, alcoholism has completely taken over him and it is through drink that he finds the lucidity that allows him to create the dark and delusional images that made his poetry famous.

Around 1939, Europe began to experience the horror of World War II. Dylan Thomas wants to enlist, but is declared unfit for combat (under C3 statute, which puts him in the last group to be called up to war). He then begins his radio career, for which he has shown particular talent, especially as a scriptwriter and announcer. He made around 200 recordings for the BBC and wrote the screenplay for at least five films in 1942 sponsored by Strand Films (e.g.This Is Colour, New Towns For Old, These Are The Men and Our Country). On BBC radio his work is commenting on film documentaries, but he would also have other projects booked, such as the dramatic poem Under Milk Wood ( Under the milk forest , posthumous, 1954). His books The World I Breath and The Map of Love appear.

In 1946, what is considered his masterpiece Deaths and Entrances appears. He travels to the United States where he dabbles in the film script, which he will not see on screen.

In 1952 a compilation of his poems between 1934 and 1952 (Collected Poems. 1934-1952) was published, for which he was awarded the Foyle Prize for Poetry. Included in the compilation is one of his most recognized poems, Do not go gentle into that good night , written as an unorthodox elegy on the death of his father.

While writing the script for a play by Igor Stravinsky, on November 9, 1953 at 12:40 p.m., at St. Vincent Hospital in New York, Thomas died. The first rumors about the cause of death of Thomas favored the version of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by an alleged suicide, some said that it had been a violent assault on the tracks of the Van Cortlandt Park station in New York City and others maintained that he had finally managed to drink himself to death as a young Danish woman claimed that a rather drunk man told her about the loss of his first love and gave her a book before falling on the tracks. It has been believed for a long time that Thomas was suffering from a strong Endogenous Depression due to a tragic love story that he lived in his youth in Wales, despite this family and friends never confirmed the veracity of the story or the existence of Dylan's supposed girlfriend., Rose Souther or their daughter Esther Thomas Souther. On postmortem analysis, the pathologist found the immediate cause of death to have been swelling of the brain caused by the lack of oxygen that accompanies pneumonia.

His last words were 'I've had 18 glasses of whiskey, I think that's a record'.

Influence

Robert Zimmerman is said to have taken his name, Bob Dylan, from his deep admiration for the poet.

During an interview in early 1999, American singer-songwriter Elliott Smith displayed an introverted attitude and discussed his alleged suicide attempt. Beyond the multiple problems that the artist had had since his rise to fame, Elliott assured that this originated when his father, Dr. Gary Smith, told him the alleged story of Dylan Thomas, a drunken poet who, after remembering the death of his first beloved youth Rose Souther and her daughter, threw himself onto the train tracks in Van Cortlandt Park (New York), but not before giving away one of the copies of the book Do not go gentle into that good night to a young woman who was passing through the station.

Discography

• Dylan Thomas: Volume I — A Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems (Caedmon TC 1002–1952)
• Under Milk Wood (Caedmon TC 2005–1953)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume II — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1018–1954)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume III — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1043)
• Dylan Thomas: Volume IV — Selections from the Writings of Dylan Thomas (Caedmon TC 1061)
• Dylan Thomas: Quite early one morning and other memories (Caedmon TC 1132–1960)
• Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood and other plays (Naxos Audiobooks NA288712 – 2008) (originally BBC – 1954)

Film adaptations

All film adaptations of Thomas' scripts were made posthumously

Translations into Spanish

• Poems, Revista Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos n.o 476. Translation of Xoán Abeleira. It includes poems and comments about these.
• Dylan Thomas: Loved by grace, biography written by George Tremlett, Circe, Barcelona, 1996, translation of Xoán Abeleira. It includes poems and comments about these.
• The visitor and other stories, Barcelona: Bruguera, 1981. Translation by Ignacio Álvarez.
• Deaths and tickets, Huerga and Fierro editors, 2003. Translation and prologue by Vanesa Pérez-Sauquillo and Niall Binns.