This week’s choice moves away from technology and mathematics to the sullen art of Dylan Thomas: “In My Craft or Sullen Art.”
Not for the proud man apart
Dylan Thomas (1914—1953)
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Poem 350. In My Craft or Sullen Art
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
In this poem, Dylan Thomas speaks of his motivation for writing poetry, his “craft or sullen art.” Sullen generally means sulky or bad-tempered, but it once meant solitary or unusual, both adjectives that equally apply to the art. According to his biography in Wikipedia, he saw writing a poem as a craft work, chipping away at the language to reveal the beauty beneath.
The first eleven lines show us Thomas working alone in the silence of late night “When only the moon rages/And the lovers lie abed/With all their griefs in their arms” and tells us something of his motivation for choosing to do so: not for crude material gains (represented by bread) or the doubtful rewards of fame, nor for the adulation of an audience or the detached satisfaction of having his work performed but because he wants his verse to secure a place in their hearts.
The second stanza emphasises that he does not direct his work to sycophantically soothe proud men, nor does he write for the dead who have already been adequately served with nightingales (a reference to Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”) and the psalms of the Bible. No, he is writing for the lovers, even though they pay him no wages and heap no praise on his work, and indeed seem not to even notice his efforts.
I like this poem because it is as tremendously imaginative and eloquent as so many of his poems and it expresses his disdain for conventional rewards and his wish that his verse becomes a part of our “most secret heart”. The imagery is wonderful: “the raging moon”, “the ivory stages” and “the lovers, their arms/Round the griefs of the ages.”
Like so many others, this was read by Richard Burton in an anthology of poetry on a cassette tape belonging to my mother. It is available online but there are also recordings of Thomas reading his own poem.