Dylan Thomas
by Andrew Lycett

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Book Reviews of Dylan Thomas

Book Review: A work of substance & solid scholarship
Summary: 5 Stars

This was the first poem by Dylan Thomas I read while in college, and its words haunt me still. This poem, and others such as "Fern Hill," "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London," "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," "Poem on His Birthday," "I See the Boys of Summer," and "Over Sir John's Hill" established him as the epitome of romanticism and one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Dylan Thomas, "the Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive," was born on Oct. 27, 1914, in Swansea, Wales. He died of pneumonia and acute alcoholic poisoning in New York City, during his fourth lecture tour in the United States, on Nov. 9, 1953. His final resting place, marked by a simple white cross, is in St. Martin's churchyard, Laugharne, in West Wales.

Andrew Lycett's Dylan Thomas: A New Life was published in England last year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the poet's death. Lycett, a regular contributor to the Times (London), has written a thorough, astonishingly detailed study of Thomas' life. A cynic might describe this exhaustive biography as exhausting, for one needs patience and perseverance to wade through its intricate details.

Nevertheless, at the end, one is glad to have read this highly informative and scholarly work. One marvels at the amount of research needed to create such a sustained narrative.

As I read Lycett's work, the image of the prodigal son often rose to mind: the story of an irresponsible young man who "wasted his substance in riotous living." Much of the book is a sad chronicle of Dylan's marathon pub crawling, multiple fornications, and shameless sponging off his friends.

Dylan once revealed his personality in a nutshell: "One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women."

To put it bluntly: Dylan Thomas chased anything and everything in skirts (the gentleman doth protest too much, methinks ... concerning his protestations of disinclination toward homosexuality). A pitiful alcoholic, he often drank his breakfast, lunch, and supper. He was forever cadging from his friends, "borrowing" the "loans" that he had no intention of repaying.

In a classic statement of his professional purpose, Dylan wrote: "I have a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my inquiry is to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression."

Lycett describes Dylan Thomas as "this oddly religious man who lived outside any formal creed," and who, "caught between Muse [poetry] and Mermaid [a tavern], wrote of "the absurdity of life in the midst of mortality, and of the inevitability of death. [Dylan wrote] of the relativism of a world where good and bad are 'two ways / Of moving about your death.' He was not the first poet to see the indifferent universe . . . Shakespeare anticipated him by over four centuries. But Dylan gave this philosophy a modern existentialist perspective."

The great mystery, then, surrounding Dylan Thomas is this supreme contradiction: How could a wastrel who lived like the devil write with the pen of an angel? What heavenly muse inspired this secular humanist to compose poetry of transcendent beauty and sacred spirituality? The paradox is puzzling; strange and inexplicable are the ways of genius.

Lycett reveals the dark side of Dylan's tumultuous marriage to Caitlin Macnamara; the birth of their three children--Llewelyn, Aeronwy, and Colm Garan; and of Caitlin's decision to have four abortions.

Lycett also cites a comment that Nelson Algren made concerning Dylan: "You have to feel a certain desperation about everything either to write like that or to drink like that." Indeed, the story of Dylan Thomas is that of a man who lived a life of unquiet desperation. Some of his friends believed that this 40-a-day-man (two packs of cigarettes) drank his way into the grave because he had an overpowering death wish. Dylan Thomas had gazed into the abyss and had been horrified.

In the midst of a distressingly mediocre pop culture, Andrew Lycett, in Dylan Thomas: A New Life, offers a volume of depth and dignity, of scholarship and substance--an antidote to the mindless drivel of our time. The book contains 64 black-and-white photos.

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