Dylan Thomas and Wales: the Love—Hate Relationship

Abstract

At the age of forty-seven, six years before his death, Dylan Thomas gave the following account of himself: ‘One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women.’ Although Thomas put his Welshness first, his relationship with Wales was as enigmatic, and as problematic, as his relationships with women. This together with Thomas’s English upbringing has made defining, and accounting for, what it is that can be called Welsh in his work very difficult.

I think I would say this — in a society where there are so many levels of alienation from one’s roots, it is best either to be untouched by a foreign culture, or else to have consciously come to terms with the situation. (Chinua Achebe)

Split lives never get well. (Emily Dickinson)