Bring out the Religious Elements in Dylan Thomas’s Poetry.

Religious Elements in Dylan Thomas’s Poetry

Dylan Thomas was gifted with an organic sensibility in an extraordinary measure. He was uncommonly alive to his environment-social, physical and literary, and reacted sensitively to the various influences that operated upon his from his childhood on wards. As a boy he was greatly influenced by his pious mother who was his religious teacher. Under the influence of his mother he developed an unformulated love of God with the result that his

knowledge of Biblical myth and phraseology colored most of his writing.

Mature Thomas was profoundly influenced by James Joyce, Hopkins, D.H. Lawrence, W.B Yeats and many others. But the influence of John Donne and other metaphysical poets on him was significant. He learnt the crafting of his poems from the metaphysical. He resembles the metaphysical in his use of words, figures, images and comparisons. But he cannot be regarded as a religious poet in the sense in which Herbert and Vaughan were. However, in a broad sense he may be called a religious poet if we consider his pious sentiment with which he writes.

The poem ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’ is saturated with a religious sentiment. In this poem the poet speaks of a divine scheme of things on the basis of his observation of the unity of man with the process of Nature and the identity of all forms of life. Such an idea may give rise to a religious feeling. The main idea underlying here is that the creative powers of Nature and its destructive processes are the same in the great vegetative world and in man. The theme of oneness in this poem is an assertion of an underlying principal of existence. The force which drives the flower also drives the poet’s green age, and the force which blasts the roots of trees is also the poet’s destroyer.

‘After the Funeral’ is also saturated with religious fervor. After giving some preliminary details about the funeral and the hypocrisy of the mourners, the poet concentrates on the character of the dead woman, whose ‘fountain heart’ irrigated the ‘parched worlds of Wales’. The poet regards the woods as a kind of chapel where a religious ceremony would be held in honour of the dead woman. He visualizes four birds that will fly over her tomb making the sign of the cross in order to bless her spirit. Thus religious imagery lies scattered all over the poem.

Similarly, a strong religious sentiment is traceable in ‘A Refusal to Mourn’ as well as ‘Poem in October’. The former starts with the poet’s discrimination to mourn the death of a child by an air raid during war. This is due to the religious belief of the poet that the dad child has returned to the primal element. The ‘Poem in October’ begins with the images like ‘heron-priested shore’ and ‘Watery praying’ which suggest a reverend attitude to Nature and this necessarily indicates the poet’s realization or the sanctity of the universe, based on religious sentiment.

To sum up, Dylan Thomas does not express any systematic belief in religion through his poetry but the Bible and the Biblical imagery pervade his poetry. This gives a religious fervor to his poems. 

You Can also Read:  

• Treatment of Childhood in the ‘Poem in October’

• Use of Imagery in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas with a Special Reference to ‘Poem in October’

• Reasons for the Obscurity in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas

• Use of Symbols in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas