Dylan Thomas and the Fight Against Death

Dylan Thomas has a deep concern about the problems of life. Death, birth, rebirth or resurrection, according to him, is a part of natural cycle. His poems reflect man's fundamental problems in life. The struggle in the process of life, death owes for the future rebirth. Death energizes the soul after physical decay. He brings in the notion of physical death not to be mourned but to be celebration. These themes are deeply rooted in his religious and traditional influences. Biblical – crucifixion, prayers, sermons and pastors are intertwined with metaphysical imagery which made critics to question his religious beliefs. The objective of this paper is to analyse his attitude towards death according to his poems and critically view his convictions on resurrection, soul's unity with nature to be immortal and perfect submission to the power of nature.

1996

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the attitudes towards death conveyed by eighteen poems of Dylan Thomas, and to compare them with the Christian Protestant tradition, searching for points of similarity and dissimilarity. The theme of death is important and central in Thomas's poetry. In my analysis I conclude that Thomas's poems present ambiguous attitudes towards death, sometimes suggesting resistance, sometimes suggesting calm acceptance, always expressed in terms of Christian metaphors and allusions. Thomas's view of death can be basically understood in terms of re-absorption of the individual in the elements of nature, contrasting with the Christian notion of resurrection of the body. In the first chapter I present the Christian view of death as it is portrayed in the Bible, in the theology of Martin Luther, in John Calvin, and in the philosophy of Seren Kierkegaard, showing that the Christian view of death is the result of a long historical development. In the second chapter I present the analysis of Thomas's poems, trying to focus on his attitudes towards the death of the self, the death of the other, and the death of the human race. And in the Conclusion I present a comparison of Thomas's attitudes with the concepts and values of the Christian tradition, showing that the poet uses Christian symbols and concepts but he re-interprets them according to his on view of life and death, and according to his aesthetic purposes. N° de páginas: 211 N° de palavras: 74.157 V Resumo O propósito desta dissertação é analisar as atitudes de Dylan Thomas perante a morte, expressas em dezoito de seus poemas, e compará-las com a tradição cristã protestante, buscando pontos de similaridade e pontos de divergência. O tema da morte é importante e central na poesia de Dylan Thomas. Em minha análise eu concluo que os poemas de Dylan Thomas apresentam uma atitude ambígua diante da morte, algumas vezes sugerindo uma certa resistência, às vezes sugerindo uma calma aceitação, sempre expressa em termos de metáforas e alusões à tradição cristã. A visão de Dylan Thomas da morte pode ser basicamente entendida em termos de uma reabsorção do indivíduo nos elementos da natureza, contrastando assim com a noção cristã de ressurreição da carne. No primeiro capítulo eu apresento a visão cristã da morte conforme é descrita na Bíblia, na teologia de Martinho Lutero, em João Calvino, e na filosofia de Soren Kierkegaard, mostrando que a visão cristã da morte é resultado de um longo desenvolvimento histórico. No segundo capítulo apresento a análise dos poemas de Dylan Thomas, tentando focalizar suas atitudes diante da morte do outro, da morte do eu, e da morte da raça humana. E na conclusão apresento uma comparação entre as atitudes de Dylan Thomas e os valores da tradição cristã, mostrando que o poeta usa símbolos e conceitos cristãos mas que os reinterpreta de acordo com sua visão da vida e da morte, e de acordo também com seus propósitos estéticos. vi Table of Contents Introduction 01 Chapter 1 Death according to the Christian Tradition 08 Chapter 2 Death in the poems of Dylan Thomas 37 Conclusion Bibliography Appendix * Mortal sickness means here the unavoidable despair present in the human existence, which comes from the consciousness o f individuality and from the consciousness o f death.

"And death shall have no dominion" A new (June 2022) in-depth examination of one of Dylan Thomas's most popular, captivating, but strangely bewildering poems. A new (June 2022) in depth analysis of this brief, much-admired, absorbing, but mystifying poem. This study identifies the poem's essential viewpoints and tries to answer the question: "What, precisely, is it about?" It also examines the poetics employed by Thomas. Stanza by stanza, the review puts forward the writer's personal interpretation and explores the poem's various, and sometimes contradictory, 'meanings' that have been proposed over the years. The essay also studies, in detail, the poem's origins, syntax and overall prosody together with examining Thomas's 'sound' techniques and his distinctive choices of vocabulary. It closes by assessing some published, critical reviews of this truly remarkable poem.

Fragmentos: Revista de Língua e Literatura …, 2008

Dylan Thomas wrote several poems dealing with the problem of death. Some of them deal not only with the death of an individual but with the end of the whole humankind. "In Country Sleep" is a poem that brings this wider perspective about death, the death of the human race. This poem was dedicated to Thomas's daughter Aeronwy, and deals with the human life in its wider, cosmic perspective. The objective of this article is to analyse Dylan Thomas's attitude towards death according to this poem, and to compare it to the Christian tradition view of death.

Uniletras, 2002

Resumo: O poeta gaulês Dylan Thomas escreveu vários poemas tratando da morte de outras pessoas. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a atitude do poeta diante da morte, conforme se evidencia no poema "After the funeral," um poema dedicado à sua tia Annie Jones, e compará-la com a visão sobre a morte e o morrer segundo a tradição cristã. Neste poema, memória e exuberância verbal se entrelaçam numa elegia cheia de emoção e crítica à hipocrisia da sociedade. Evidencia-se claramente a dificuldade que o ser humano tem de lidar com honestidade e franqueza com a realidade da morte.

2005

Dylan Thomas wrote several poems dealing with the problem of death. “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” is dedicated to a child, victim of bombardment in London during World War II. The objective of this article is to analyse Dylan Thomas’s attitude towards death according to this poem, and to compare it to the view of death according to the Christian tradition. In “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” the persona laments the absurdity of a child’s death and, contradictorily, refuses to lament this death as if his lament were a profanation of its sacredness. Key words: war, death, grief, Christian tradition

Dylan Thomas's poetry is replete with the images of life and death and their cyclicality and rebirth. Such images include stars that stand for human beings' potential to reach godly heights on the one hand, and the grass that symbolizes their mortality on the other. Such images appear most prominently in his elegies " After the Funeral " , " And death shall have no dominion " , " Do not go gentle into that good night " and " Fern Hill " , which harbours pastoral elements. The images in these poems can be treated as a strong sign of his interest in paganism. The analysis of such images can provide us with clues about the elucidation of Thomas's marginal yet indispensible place within English poetry since these images attest to the fact that he was not only influenced by English Romantic poets like John Keats but also Nineteenth-century American poets like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Öz Dylan Thomas'ın şiirleri yaşam-ölüm çevrimselliğini ve yeniden doğuşu imleyen imgeler açısından zengindir. Bu imgeler arasında insanın ölümlü varoluşunu gösteren çimenler olduğu kadar onun tanrısal bir konuma erişebilme gizilgücünü simgeleyen yıldızlar da yer alır. Söz konusu imgeler ağıt türüne dâhil edilebilecek " After the Funeral " , " And death shall have no dominion " , " Do not go gentle into that good night " ve pastoral ögeler içeren " Fern Hill " adlı şiirlerinde öne çıkmaktadır. Bu şiirlerdeki imgeler şairin paganizme olan derin ilgisinin bir göstergesi olarak değerlendirilebilir. Zira Thomas'ın şiirlerinde bu imgelerin irdelenmesi onun İngiliz şiirindeki sıra dışı konumunun ve şiir geleneği içinde yerinin daha iyi anlaşılması için önemli ipuçları vermektedir. Zira, Thomas'ın şiirlerinde kullandığı imgeler ve izlekler onun sadece John Keats gibi romantik İngiliz şairlerinden değil aynı zamanda Emily Dickinson ve Walt Whitman gibi on dokuzuncu yüzyıl Amerikan şairlerinden etkilenmiş olduğunu tanıtlamaktadır. This article will attempt to unravel Dylan Thomas's use of stellar and terrestrial imagery in his poems, especially in elegies where the speaker grapples with life and death. What these images reveal is that Thomas's poetry aims to create and depict a pantheistic world that exists between the grass on the soil and stars in the sky. His is a cosmological poetics encapsulating almost everything from the minutest to the greatest. Exploring the way Thomas employs such stellar images may contribute to the elucidation of his allegedly obscure poetics as was put forward by Holbrook (1964), who found Thomas suffering from " dissociated phantasy—that which exerts a strong energy in the direction of avoiding reality and defending the self against it " (p. 9), or from lack of logic (p. 57), of meaning (p. 77) and of sense of rhythm (p. 91); thus these images will help situate him more accurately within the Anglo-American poetic canon by laying bare the poets that influenced him in terms of these images. The issue of placement is a significant one since Thomas has so far been seen as a parochial poet. Thomas's relationship and communication with American and some early Modernist poets have so far been neglected. Thomas has usually and aptly been associated with Welsh poetic tradition and

Academia Letters, 2021

2012

Dylan Thomas' work is often explored in light of the poet himself, and he has been referred to as modernism's l'enfant terrible or even described as a late romanticist. The aim in this essay is to ...

Faces of English, 2011