On The Irrational Features In Dylan Thomas's Poetry

Dylan Thomas is one of the most prominent and most influential poets in Britain and the United States since the 1940's. In his short lifetime, he innovated the modern English poetry not only in poetic techniques, but also in the notion of poetic creation. He brought his individualized experience of life into his poems. Through his keen perception of the material world, he touched upon the immanent essence of the universe and ultimately attained an ideal state in poetic expression. The present thesis is an attempt to probe into the irrational features in Dylan Thomas's poetry so as to bring to light the true meaning in his fantastically magnificent verses.In Dylan Thomas's poetry, he repeatedly refers to an inexorable, amoral force that exists within the universe. This force exists in all things, yet cannot be controlled. He found difficulty understanding it. If observed seriously, we can discover that the"force"is something similar to"will-to-live"---the fundamental notion of Arthur Schopenhauer. According to Schopenhauer,"the will is the ultimate source of reality, which is essentially irrational". Dylan Thomas accepted Schopenhauer and Freud's irrational notions about"desire of death"and"will-to-live", and explored these irrational features of human existence in his poetry through the interplay of dark and light; of desire and decay; of death and life.In his view, poetic language should be the combination of sound, color and rhyme, but not the result of logic and reasoning. Dylan Thomas opposes the notion that everything should be dominated by rationality. He claims that the formal factor, which is related to emotion directly, is the essential element of poetic language. His vivid imagery and personal symbology have consistently been seen as the distinguishing features of his work, which also give his poetry an irrational tint.However, it does not mean that Thomas was completely against the literary traditions. His poetry was marked by several influences in different moments of his life and on different levels. The names should contain Blake, Freud, Joyce, Schopenhauer, Donne, and many others. He was also influenced by metaphysical poetic tradition, by his Welsh origin and by Biblical tradition, from which he acquired a distinguished eloquence and a very developed notion of rhetoric as well as the ability of using and creating musicality. These literary traditions offered Thomas exquisite craftsmanship and also influenced his irrational poetic notions. There are both irrational features and modernistic elements in Dylan Thomas's poetry. However, Dylan Thomas is not a pure irrationalist. He esteemed tradition and inherited tradition. It is the interplay of the traditions and his irrational notion that made his poetry unique and eminent.This thesis is made up of three chapters. The First Chapter discusses the irrational themes of Dylan Thomas's poetry and the interplay of these themes; the Second Chapter explores Dylan Thomas's irrational poetic notion and his irrational language strategies; the Third Chapter proves into the influences of literary traditions on Dylan Thomas and the relationship between these traditions and his irrational features.