When World War II broke out, the pacifistic and anti-political poet Dylan Thomas was prepared to take action to avoid conscription. When his push for conscientious objector status fell through, he proceeded to drink himself into illness the night before his conscription tribunal. This earned him an exemption on medical grounds. Yet Dylan went on to follow up his trickery with foolishness, as he bragged about how he had gotten out of war. The citizens of the town of Laugharne, Wales grew angry at Dylan, and their pressure – along with the debt he had to pay before he was evicted from his cottage – drove his family out of town.
“Self-destructive genius” would make for an adequate summary of Dylan’s life. He was jealous, consistently in debt, and even occasionally violent. Moreover, the conscription incident was not nearly the first time that he turned to alcohol to solve a problem. Dylan described his own colorful nature by saying he had “a beast, an angel and a madman in me.” His fellow writer, Truman Capote, described him as “an overgrown baby who’ll destroy every last thing he can get his hands on, including himself.” Capote’s analysis would prove to be the more accurate one.
The one war Dylan could not avoid was fought between him and his wife, Caitlin. It could be said to have started in the summer of 1940, when the couple traveled regularly in search of work, as a writer was hardly in demand during the war. An incident in which Caitlin was almost unfaithful set off a spark in Dylan’s mind, leading to fights between the couple. The trust between them, once so strong, began to slowly evaporate, and was gone permanently some years later when Dylan had an affair with an American woman whom he met up with later in London. All this misery between the Dylan and his wife was enough to send Dylan to borderline madness. There were times, in fact, when he would end up in a drunken stupor and tear his poems to shreds. One would think Caitlin would take it on herself to help restore her husband’s work, but she told a friend, “Dylan’s corrupt. Corrupt right through and through. It’s not for me to save him from himself. If he can’t do it himself, let him rot.”
But self-salvation was not on Dylan’s mind, and he died much the way he lived – drunk and delirious. The doctors found him one day, vomiting and quiet, even nearly comatose. They found sleeping and pep pills in his system – not enough to suggest suicide, but certainly more than was healthy. Multiple cortisone shots were not enough to help him out of a state he had most likely sent himself into, and his death was hardly a surprise. There, before the eyes of the doctors, was a true representation of Dylan Thomas – weak and whimpering, drunk and self-destructive, and powerless. Had his life flashed before his eyes at his last moment, one wonders if he could even tell the difference between it and his current situation.
Dylan once said, “The function of posterity is to look after itself,” and his posterity will. In spite of his trying life, his works are hardly forgettable. Generations of poetry lovers will swoon when they read, “Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred.” They will smile at “Fern Hill.” And they will smell the intensity sizzling on the page at his plea for readers to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Indeed, audiences will be able to sense the pyrotechnic ferocity of Dylan’s words while ignoring the pale misery of the hand that wrote them.
But biographers of the poet will have no such luxury. They will be forced to tell a story of a man that none of us would envy. When the shield of his poetry is cut down, only the skeleton remains. It is, in fact, difficult to find a photograph of him with even the hint of a smile – an ironic betrayal of his inner world. The researcher who must tell of the greatest poet in Welsh history as he was, and not as he flares in his words, has a sad task indeed.
It would be tempting to remember Dylan Thomas as the man who wooed a young lady turned off to men, as his head rested in her lap and he told her how beautiful she was and that he planned to marry her. It would be pleasant indeed to let that story be his epitaph. But even this beautiful anecdote is clouded by the poet’s reality – he was drunk. And thus, we are left with a depressing true tale. For a man whose most famous line was, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” the legitimate story sure is bleak.
