Dylan Thomas is arguably as well known for his image as for his writing, and that’s a real shame. Not least because the image is based on untruths and misconceptions, and on outright lies, although on the flipside, this public persona means that he has entered popular culture in a way that no other twentieth century poet has. Quotations of or from Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night are a staple of film and TV (and even formed the basis of a Frankie Goes To Hollywood top 5 hit – Rage Hard), the modern cliche of the hellraising, hard-drinking and scrounging womaniser poet uses him as a poster boy, he’s the object of Sylvia Plath’s desire in The Bell Jar (based on reality), and there are more films about Thomas than based on his actual work. Even people with little or no interest in poetry are likely to recognise his name, and frequently know Under Milk Wood, if only by reputation. As famous last words go, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies – I think that’s a record” before dying from them in the Chelsea Hotel (where Sid and Nancy would later die) puts him up with the all-time quotables. Despite the fact it’s totally untrue, he didn’t die until days later, through medical malpractice, and the fact that he probably never said the words at all. It doesn’t take any detective work at all to find out no-one in the pub (The White Horse tavern in New York) that night remembers him drinking whisky, or that rather than dying after the quote he was back in the same pub the next lunchtime borrowing a suit, and the legendary last words came as a distraction from the people via the people who had been supposed to be looking after him, but had engaged the private doctor who put him into the coma from which he never recovered, administering half a grain of morphine to the bronchial alcoholic, on top of the other pills he’d been given. It is ironic that little is ever said of the afternoon party he attended in the Chelsea immediately before his collapse, documented by the private detective following him over a libel case. None of the attendees has ever spoken of that afternoon, though rumours persist that this was the beginnings of heroin chic among the bohemians, which fits with several circumstantial details around his collapse. The highly litigious and volatile nature of his widow may have played a part that avenue being under reported.
Thomas was actually far from a hellraiser, and more of a clown and performing monkey, playing up to the image of him that paid the bills, and before the New York trips was just as likely to be found with half a pint of bitter and a crossword in the pub over the road from his mother as out on a bender. In New York there was the expectation he would be outrageous, and to keep the money rolling in and the invitations coming, he played up to this. His infidelities, far from being driven by an insatiable sex drive, by all accounts tended more towards finding a woman to coddle him (as his wife Caitlin did) or be his patron than through and true licentiousness. Where other women (such as Shelley Winters) claim to have been a ‘conquest, there is no evidence at all, and no-one in a position to deny what can become a self-promoting anecdote, and helped the myth.
There was another driver for the ‘public’ Thomas image too, as he self-titled Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive (his birthplace in Swansea), was a means to stand out and carve a niche for the non-University educated Welshman. Wales embraces Thomas now, but during his life he was often shunned as a poet in Wales as he didn’t speak the language and worked in England (one of his poetic documentaries about the country was rejected because ‘he wasn’t Welsh enough’), yet as a grammar-school educated young man he was intimidated and outside the circles of the top intelligentsia. And the unconventional rebel he liked to escape into allowed him the latitude to behave badly to those he disliked, yet still be forgiven by polite society.
That’s not to say Thomas was an angel. He was spoilt, hugely insecure (which he’d often try to cover with outrageous actions, revelling in the opportunity to shock ‘the establishment’), behaved deplorably to his closest friends, cadged money constantly (though as often as not to be spent on others), and was very aware of his public image, as his letters show. But he couldn’t escape the caricature he’d created. In his true vocation though, despite the fact he’d belittle some of his own output as hack work, he was dedicated and conscientious. Dozens of pages of working drafts were created and discarded for every poem, and one of his loveliest works, In My Craft Or Sullen Art, shows the motivation and drive he had for creating poetry that touched people. Far from being the ‘nature’ or surrealist poet he was often bracketed with, it is his connection to humanity and emotion which drove his work. And he was constantly striving to stretch himself and his writing. His later themes included post-nuclear apocalypse, but always with innocence and humanity at its core. It may surprise many to know that at the time of his death, the composer Stravinsky was building an extension to his home to Thomas could move in for a few months and collaborate on an opera about rebirth, nuclear war and aliens!
Thomas’s range of lesser-known outputs is quite astounding. In addition to the poetry and Under Milk Wood, and his perennially popular A Child’s Christmas In Wales, he co-wrote a novel (unusually awful), wrote books of short stories, radio broadcasts, journalism (both credited and anonymous in the forms of detective novels reviews), a TV operetta and autobiographical novel (both unfinished at the time of his death), wrote and directed documentary filmscripts, wrote feature film scripts (two made during his lifetime, two made subsequently), pretty much invented the author lecture tour of the US, and created the content which started the industry of poetry on vinyl as a commercial concern.
Stay safe,
Kit x