Born on 24th October 1914 in Swansea,Wales, his father D.J.Thomas wasteacher ofthelocal Grammar School.Dylan stud‐ led here and left schoolin 1 931.Swansea fascinated him greatly in his boyhood.He has recorded the thri‖ s of his boyhoodLぃ his Semi‐ autographicai short stories, Portrait of the Artist as a yOung Dog and in his broadcast talks Quite Eariy One Morning.After leaving school he worked for a year as a reporter On a Swansea newspa‐ per.Then he wentto London,where he did minoriobs fOr newspa‐ pers such as writing reviews for thri‖ ers.He tried to get en‖ sted in the armed forces during the SeCOnd wo‖ d War but was releё ted as medica‖ y unfit Then be became script write and announcerin the B.B:(〕l He earned great reputation as a rnarve‖ ous reciter of poetry
on the radio or on gramophone records.Butin private life he waS eaFning the displeasure of hiS friends by drinking too much. ln 1937 he married Caitlin Macnamara and moved to live in Laugharne. He toured Amenca three umes and delighted huge augiences with his third tour.His published worksinclude 18 Poems(1934)Twenty‐ five Poems(1936)and CO‖ ected Poems(1952)besides his short stories and broadcast talks mentioned earlier.
Dy:an Thomas was perhaps the rnost powerful among the post 1940 pOets of Eng‖ sh.He turned awayfrom the po‖ tical and social preoccupat:ons of the Poetry of the 1930:s represented by W.H. Auden and others.He led the surrea‖ st poets ofthe 1940s.Edith Switwe‖ ,.George Barket and David Gascoyne were prominentin this group.Surrea‖ st poetry has been described as a perpetualflow of irrational thoughts in the form of surrea‖ sm but is restrained in his choice of images. He has explained the process in a letterto Henry Treece he says he a‖ ows animage to be made emotlona‖ y in him and then brings to bear upon it his inte‖ ectual and critical faculties.Then he lets lt‐ the f:rm image‐ breed another and thatin turn breed another and so on;a‖ the images come intO COnflict,of COuFSe Withi向 htts imposed forrna;linη itsi which clearly indicates that an element of conscious restralnt was there. lt was no anarchic disorgan卜 atiOn,the contro‖ ing hands ofthe poeti:s genius is present. Surrea‖sm was a reaction from the over‐ lnte‖ ectuality of the pre‐ vious era.
Another movementin which Dylan participated was the neo‐ romanticism ofthe 1940s which:ald greater emphasis on emotion and imagination than on the inte‖ ect.Sti‖ another movement which took shape in the late forties vvas the New apocalyptic Movement. These poets denounced the over― inte‖ ectua1lty and the socialin‐ terest ofthe poetry ofthe 1 930s.They aimed atrnaking poetry broad, deep and limitless as‖ fe itself.ThiS rnovement can be described as a continuatiOn Of the surrea‖ st rnovement . But Dy:an is sald to have disown認・it as a l:terary school,though sOme people say that
it was he who fathered the movement. E.L Black(N;ne Modern poets)Says that Dylanis poetry can be divided into three classes:first those that are alrnost surrealist second,a few poems that are straightforward and third,thoSe that present nosta:gic memories of ch‖ dh00d.丁 he range of sublectS explored by Dylan was limited.Chief among them were sex death and re‖ giOn,the maiorinfluences on Dylan thomas were Hopkins and Freud and in his later poetry the Bible:s influence a:so is clearly visible.
An interestiQg aspeCt Of Dylan Thomasis poetry is what is knQwn as synaesthesia‐ present:ng as sense image in terms of another sensation;e.go sight in terms of sound,sound in terrns of
tou_9h orsme‖ etc.This is a direct outcome of his unified sensib‖ :ty, whith:n tuFn Can be attributed to his unified view of rea‖ y assome‐ thing transcending name and form and peⅣ ading everything.He is
said to have been obsessed with the thought of death.Butit should le realiSed that h:s not a flinching from death as something ter‐ rible.On the other hand he equates death with b:rth;one thing dies when anoheris born.The birth does nottake place afterthe death ;the two things are coeval,sirnultaneous.ltis not a:inear sting of events but everything happening together.丁 his not a linear sting of
events but everything happening together.丁his reminds us of Eliotis words:The mQment ofthe rose andthe moment ofthe yew are of equal duration(Little Gidding,section 5)meaning they happy attheぃsame time . Jhis w6rld view also brings him near to the Heraclitean llux , the pantheism o, Wordsworth and Shelley and the lndian doctrine ol Advaitha - a nameless, formless entity maniresting itsell in manirlod lorms and names . But to many English critiis tiis is unpleasant and they insist that he should make his religious commitmenls clear. (For a ,ullgr treatment 6f this seeJ. Hillis Miller - poets o, Reality p.p 190-216) He explored the depths of the unconscious mind ,or images; he explored the nalure ol reality and found its oneness; he explored lhe nature of .reality and ,ound its oneness; he explored Time and lound its creator and deslroyer and he explored the possibilities ol language to communicate what he has apprehended . This preoccupation with the possibilities of language is inevitable when what is apprehended is subtle and tenuous. We see same the predicament. in Eliots four Quartets (in all the four poems)
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