Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 92

29 March 1913—25 September 2000

Troubler of the Welsh Conscience

Most people have heard of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, but fewer are familiar with the poetry of his fellow countryman R. S. Thomas. This is a pity, because the “other” Thomas is reckoned by many critics to be one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. He narrowly lost the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature to the Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

One of the reasons R. S. Thomas is relatively unknown is that he chose to live remotely and obscurely. An Anglican priest, he intentionally served rural parishes in western Wales far away from bustling town and city centers. He disliked giving interviews and discouraged visitors. He also had a somewhat curmudgeonly reputation for his distrust of modern technology, living for most of his life without central heating, refrigerators, or television. He rarely read newspapers.

Thomas may have been a recluse and an occasional curmudgeon, but he was hardly a misanthrope. His poetry, although always lean and unsentimental, sympathetically chronicled the harsh lives of Welsh famers and laborers. Thomas was generally unexpressive in his personal relationships, but he felt the impoverishment of his fellow Welshmen keenly and was a long-standing critic of what he saw as their oppression by the forces of capitalism.

Another continuous theme in Thomas’s poetry was his love of the fierce Welsh landscape, especially the western seacoast. He was an ardent conservationist and wildlife preservationist his entire adult life, resisting mightily development of the countryside by both British and Welsh entrepreneurs. To the end of his life, he spoke out against the urbanization of rural Wales as well as the miserable living conditions of many of his fellow countrymen. As one commentator noted, he became the “troubler of the Welsh conscience.”

Thomas’s sympathy for the poor as well as his deep love of the Welsh countryside were fueled by a Christian-inspired dislike of violence. He became a pacifist shortly after his ordination in 1937, despite his awareness that “the general attitude of the Church to war between states” was “completely contrary to the teaching of Christ, who was that most unpopular creature in most circles, a pacifist.” But even though he criticized the Church of England for its refusal to condemn warfare, he also expressed gratitude that his ordination gave him immunity from the draft during World War II. Looking back, he suspected that had he been a layperson in 1939, his “pacifist and conscientious objections” might not have been enough to motivate a resistance on his part to conscription.

In his later years, Thomas became an active member of the British-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the pacifist organization cofounded by Bertrand Russell.