00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:05.000
11

00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:05.667
10

00:00:05.667 --> 00:00:06.333
9

00:00:06.333 --> 00:00:07.000
8

00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:07.667
7

00:00:07.667 --> 00:00:08.167
6

00:00:08.167 --> 00:00:09.000
5

00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:09.667
4

00:00:09.667 --> 00:00:10.542
3

00:00:11.833 --> 00:00:15.333
[Dramatic music]

00:00:15.333 --> 00:00:21.208
Oh, as I was young and easy,
in the mercy of his means

00:00:21.208 --> 00:00:25.542
time held me
green and dying,

00:00:26.500 --> 00:00:31.500
though I sang in my
chains like the sea.

00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:48.125
[Dramatic music continues].

00:00:48.125 --> 00:00:52.583
The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas
was extravagantly praised,

00:00:52.583 --> 00:00:55.417
and he was
unmercifully reviled.

00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000
The greatest living
writer of English verse,

00:00:59.625 --> 00:01:03.333
fine, bold,
original, strong.

00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:07.917
A wild,
loud-mouth drunken Celt,

00:01:08.500 --> 00:01:11.542
doomed, damned.

00:01:16.417 --> 00:01:21.000
The second of two children,
Dylan was born in 1914

00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:26.167
at Number 5, Cwmdonkin Drive
in the seaport of Swansea.

00:01:26.167 --> 00:01:29.875
An ugly, lovely
town he called it.

00:01:30.750 --> 00:01:32.958
From his earliest days
he was obsessed

00:01:32.958 --> 00:01:34.458
with words and
with poetry.

00:01:35.042 --> 00:01:38.667
Years later, the sights
and sounds and smells of his

00:01:38.667 --> 00:01:42.417
boyhood world reappeared
in stories and poems known

00:01:42.417 --> 00:01:43.500
around the world.

00:01:51.542 --> 00:01:54.875
A frail boy, he was
often in delicate health,

00:01:54.875 --> 00:01:58.042
but like other boys, he
played on the green slopes

00:01:58.042 --> 00:02:02.583
of the park next door, had
fights in the bandstand,

00:02:02.583 --> 00:02:06.667
drank from the chained cup,
larked about the railway

00:02:06.667 --> 00:02:09.375
lines down by the
docks with other truants,

00:02:09.375 --> 00:02:13.708
and as he said, old men
from nowhere and watched the

00:02:13.708 --> 00:02:15.833
ships that
sailed to everywhere.

00:02:19.333 --> 00:02:22.000
He spent many childhood
summers in the country,

00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:26.625
best of all were visits to
his beloved Aunt Annie Jones.

00:02:26.625 --> 00:02:29.667
She lived on a
farm named Fernhill.

00:02:30.375 --> 00:02:34.917
It was here that he said he
spent his lamb white days

00:02:34.917 --> 00:02:39.333
while the calves sang to his
horn and the bells of the

00:02:39.333 --> 00:02:42.083
Sabbath rang
all morning long.

00:02:42.542 --> 00:02:55.458
[Gloomy music]

00:02:55.458 --> 00:02:56.417
[Uplifting music]

00:02:56.417 --> 00:02:58.875
When he was old enough
to learn about girls,

00:02:58.875 --> 00:03:02.208
cigarettes and beer, he
moved to London with two

00:03:02.208 --> 00:03:04.625
friends from
Swansea, both painters.

00:03:05.542 --> 00:03:07.667
They lived a life
as he described it,

00:03:07.667 --> 00:03:10.667
slightly crazed,
slightly dirty,

00:03:10.667 --> 00:03:12.792
slightly wicked.

00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:19.542
At this time he wrote
some of his best poems.

00:03:20.708 --> 00:03:24.167
If I were tickled
by the rub of love,

00:03:24.167 --> 00:03:29.125
a rooking girl who stole me
for her side broke through

00:03:29.125 --> 00:03:32.875
her straws, breaking
my bandaged string.

00:03:32.875 --> 00:03:37.667
If the red tickle, as the
cattle calve still set to

00:03:37.667 --> 00:03:40.333
scratch a laughter
from my lung,

00:03:40.333 --> 00:03:44.333
I would not fear the
apple nor the flood,

00:03:44.333 --> 00:03:47.583
nor the bad blood of spring.

00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:54.167
Dylan's lamb white days
were over by 1937

00:03:54.167 --> 00:03:55.833
when he took a wife.

00:03:56.375 --> 00:03:58.167
As he wrote to
an old friend,

00:03:58.667 --> 00:04:01.917
my own news is
very big and simple.

00:04:01.917 --> 00:04:05.542
I was married three days
ago to Caitlin Macnamara,

00:04:05.542 --> 00:04:09.542
in Penzance Registry
Office with no money,

00:04:09.542 --> 00:04:13.417
no prospect of money, no
attendant friends or relatives.

00:04:13.417 --> 00:04:17.875
And in complete happiness,
she looks like the princess

00:04:17.875 --> 00:04:19.875
on the top of a
Christmas tree.

00:04:19.875 --> 00:04:22.333
But for God's sake,
don't tell her that.

00:04:24.708 --> 00:04:27.792
We are quiet and small
and cigarette stained

00:04:28.542 --> 00:04:29.958
and very young.

00:04:31.958 --> 00:04:35.333
Catlin's command of words
and her extravagances nearly

00:04:35.333 --> 00:04:36.875
matched her husbands.

00:04:36.875 --> 00:04:39.125
And their passionate
fights were as fierce

00:04:39.125 --> 00:04:40.708
as their love for
one another.

00:04:42.167 --> 00:04:44.958
Their first child
was a boy, Llewelyn.

00:04:44.958 --> 00:04:48.417
Dylan began to take on
the responsibilities

00:04:48.417 --> 00:04:49.708
of a family man.

00:04:51.667 --> 00:04:54.167
To earn money he
worked as script writer,

00:04:54.167 --> 00:04:57.042
reader, radio
actor, reviewer.

00:04:58.208 --> 00:05:00.667
When Dylan's second
book of poems appeared,

00:05:00.667 --> 00:05:05.083
Dame Edith Sitwell said, I
know of no young poet of our

00:05:05.083 --> 00:05:09.000
time whose poetic gifts
are on such great lines.

00:05:09.375 --> 00:05:12.417
Despite such praise,
Dylan found it harder

00:05:12.417 --> 00:05:13.750
and harder to work.

00:05:14.417 --> 00:05:17.542
He was beset by ill
health, heavy drinking,

00:05:17.542 --> 00:05:19.375
and too many debts.

00:05:20.583 --> 00:05:23.833
In search of a quieter
and more productive life,

00:05:23.833 --> 00:05:26.667
Dylan and Catlin settled in
the little fishing village

00:05:26.667 --> 00:05:30.542
of Laugharne where they had met
once before their marriage.

00:05:30.958 --> 00:05:39.417
[Gloomy music continues]

00:05:39.417 --> 00:05:43.500
In time, Dylan began to
work again on a radio play.

00:05:43.500 --> 00:05:47.875
His subject was the people
he knew in his own village.

00:05:48.167 --> 00:06:08.917
[Upbeat music]

00:06:08.917 --> 00:06:22.042
[Upbeat music continues]

00:06:22.042 --> 00:06:24.542
Dylan and Caitlin lived
in the boathouse of an

00:06:24.542 --> 00:06:26.333
abandoned ferry slip.

00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.500
Dylan's mother
came to visit often.

00:06:31.292 --> 00:06:33.500
Her favorite grandchild
was Aeronwy,

00:06:33.500 --> 00:06:34.667
the second born.

00:06:34.667 --> 00:06:37.542
Blonde Colm was
the youngest.

00:06:37.542 --> 00:06:39.833
Dolly was made of all work.

00:06:39.833 --> 00:06:43.375
Dog Mably was old
and slept a lot.

00:06:43.375 --> 00:06:45.792
While Caitlin and the
children walked in the

00:06:45.792 --> 00:06:49.250
sunshot woods nearby and
swam in the ever changing

00:06:49.250 --> 00:06:52.167
tides of the river Taf
below the boathouse.

00:06:52.542 --> 00:07:00.792
[Melancholic music]

00:07:00.792 --> 00:07:03.833
There were some happy times
and some brief periods of

00:07:03.833 --> 00:07:07.500
productivity for Dylan,
but as his family grew,

00:07:07.500 --> 00:07:11.458
so grew their needs
and Dylan's disquietude.

00:07:12.333 --> 00:07:15.917
"It is so difficult for me to
live and keep my family alive."

00:07:15.917 --> 00:07:17.458
He wrote a friend.

00:07:17.458 --> 00:07:20.667
There are many petty jobs,
which by their nature and by

00:07:20.667 --> 00:07:22.625
the time they claim,
stop me writing as

00:07:22.625 --> 00:07:24.000
I could wish to write.

00:07:24.625 --> 00:07:27.208
The problem keeps
me treadmilling

00:07:27.208 --> 00:07:28.792
all the waking night.

00:07:29.583 --> 00:07:32.917
When he could endure it no
longer he took the train to

00:07:32.917 --> 00:07:37.917
London to earn, to
drink, to forget.

00:07:45.250 --> 00:07:47.958
"I did all I could to make
him work at his own special

00:07:47.958 --> 00:07:51.667
work," wrote Caitlin, but
the back debts went on,

00:07:51.667 --> 00:07:55.667
pressing only harder, getting
steadily more voracious.

00:07:56.500 --> 00:07:58.333
And the future was
laden with threats

00:07:58.333 --> 00:08:00.458
and wangling tortures.

00:08:00.458 --> 00:08:04.625
Poor nervous Dylan who had
inherited his father's acid

00:08:04.625 --> 00:08:07.833
pessimism for all his
anticipating the worst,

00:08:07.833 --> 00:08:10.875
suffered sleepless
nights more than me.

00:08:12.333 --> 00:08:16.000
Dylan usually returned from
London trips with relief

00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:17.042
and renewed ambition.

00:08:17.875 --> 00:08:21.042
"I can get down to
those ogre words again,

00:08:21.042 --> 00:08:22.375
he once wrote.

00:08:22.375 --> 00:08:25.458
"Without nightmares
of doubt and debt,

00:08:25.458 --> 00:08:30.792
and my dear diabolic family
shall be protected for a time."

00:08:32.500 --> 00:08:34.875
He worked when he could
in a little green

00:08:34.875 --> 00:08:36.750
shack near his house.

00:08:36.750 --> 00:08:39.958
It was at once his
haven and his crucible.

00:08:41.250 --> 00:08:43.458
He wrote his
poetry amid cobwebs,

00:08:43.458 --> 00:08:47.208
old ink bottles, favorite
photographs

00:08:47.208 --> 00:08:50.458
and illustrations. Walt
Whitman,

00:08:50.458 --> 00:08:57.000
D.H. Lawrence, Marianne Moore,
Bruegel's dancing villages,

00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:59.417
a clown by Rouault.

00:09:01.083 --> 00:09:04.167
He worked and
reworked phrase by phrase,

00:09:04.167 --> 00:09:07.375
writing,
rewriting, writing again.

00:09:08.333 --> 00:09:11.333
A poem often went through as
many as a hundred revisions

00:09:11.333 --> 00:09:13.000
before it was published.

00:09:14.917 --> 00:09:17.750
From time to time when
words would come no longer,

00:09:17.750 --> 00:09:20.208
he would wander
into the village.

00:09:20.208 --> 00:09:54.208
[Upbeat music]

00:09:54.208 --> 00:09:57.542
But the nagging thoughts
always returned.

00:09:58.292 --> 00:10:01.542
"For a whole year, I have
been able to write nothing.

00:10:01.542 --> 00:10:05.667
Nothing at all, but one
tangled sentimental poem."

00:10:06.500 --> 00:10:10.083
He needed tuition
money for his oldest son.

00:10:10.083 --> 00:10:13.375
He must write more,
earn more, save more.

00:10:14.500 --> 00:10:17.083
He wanted to go to America
where there would be money

00:10:17.083 --> 00:10:19.208
and vast
appreciative audiences.

00:10:19.208 --> 00:10:21.542
A chance for a new start.

00:10:22.458 --> 00:10:27.125
And so delighted,
frightened, he went.

00:10:28.042 --> 00:10:33.042
He wrote to an editor, "I
flew over America like a damp

00:10:33.042 --> 00:10:38.250
ranting bird, boomed and fiddled
while home was burning,

00:10:38.250 --> 00:10:42.458
carried with me all the time
my unfinished letters,

00:10:42.458 --> 00:10:46.542
my dying explanations
and self accusations,

00:10:47.333 --> 00:10:51.292
the lonely half
of a loony may be play in

00:10:51.292 --> 00:10:54.000
a heavy, hurtful bunch."

00:10:55.083 --> 00:10:58.250
On whirlwind tours
from coast to coast,

00:10:58.250 --> 00:11:01.375
clowning
outrageously, lionized,

00:11:01.375 --> 00:11:05.875
triumphant, yet
miserable, he lectured,

00:11:05.875 --> 00:11:08.375
partied, drank and read.

00:11:09.667 --> 00:11:13.958
Now I am a man
no more, no more.

00:11:13.958 --> 00:11:18.792
And a black reward
for a roaring life.

00:11:18.792 --> 00:11:25.625
Side the old ram rod
dying of strangers,

00:11:25.625 --> 00:11:30.750
tidy and cursed in
my dove cooed room,

00:11:30.750 --> 00:11:38.458
I lie down thin and
hear the good bells jaw.

00:11:38.458 --> 00:11:45.417
For, oh, my soul found a
Sunday wife in the cold

00:11:45.417 --> 00:11:50.958
black sky and
she bore angels.

00:11:50.958 --> 00:11:55.375
Harpies around me
out of her womb.

00:11:55.375 --> 00:12:00.958
Chastity prays for
me, piety sings,

00:12:00.958 --> 00:12:06.417
innocence sweetens
my last black breath.

00:12:06.417 --> 00:12:16.125
Modesty hides my thighs in
her wings and all the deadly

00:12:16.125 --> 00:12:21.708
virtues plague my death.

00:12:21.708 --> 00:12:26.208
[Applause]

00:12:26.208 --> 00:12:28.167
His public success
was great,

00:12:28.167 --> 00:12:31.542
but somehow he took
little pleasure in it.

00:12:31.542 --> 00:12:34.292
What Dylan most enjoyed
was the anonymous

00:12:34.292 --> 00:12:36.458
freedom of a man in a bar.

00:12:36.458 --> 00:12:51.667
[Upbeat music]

00:12:51.667 --> 00:12:53.833
When he left New York,
he had spent nearly

00:12:53.833 --> 00:12:55.250
all the money he had made.

00:12:56.833 --> 00:12:59.458
Returning home to
Caitlin and his children,

00:12:59.458 --> 00:13:02.583
he found that his
father was mortally ill.

00:13:03.208 --> 00:13:05.125
In devotion to
the dying man,

00:13:05.125 --> 00:13:08.250
he wrote one of his
most celebrated poems.

00:13:08.958 --> 00:13:12.792
Do not go gentle
into that good night.

00:13:12.792 --> 00:13:18.000
Old age should burn and
rave at close of day.

00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:22.583
Rage, rage against
the dying of the light.

00:13:23.625 --> 00:13:27.958
Though wise men at their
end know dark is right,

00:13:27.958 --> 00:13:31.375
because their words
had forked no lightning.

00:13:31.375 --> 00:13:36.083
They do not go gentle
into that good night.

00:13:37.875 --> 00:13:43.250
And you, my father
there on the sad height,

00:13:43.250 --> 00:13:49.833
curse, bless me now with
your fierce tears, I pray.

00:13:50.583 --> 00:13:54.708
Do not go gentle
into that good night.

00:13:54.708 --> 00:14:00.833
Rage, rage against
the dying of the light.

00:14:03.083 --> 00:14:06.458
Once he had said that his
poems were written for the

00:14:06.458 --> 00:14:07.958
love of man and
in praise of God,

00:14:07.958 --> 00:14:10.625
and I'd be damn a
fool if they weren't.

00:14:11.833 --> 00:14:16.292
But now to Dylan, both man
and God were failing him.

00:14:16.292 --> 00:14:19.583
Deeper and deeper
in debt and despair,

00:14:20.125 --> 00:14:23.750
he decided against his own
better judgment against the

00:14:23.750 --> 00:14:28.292
pleas of his friends and of
Caitlin to go again to America.

00:14:28.542 --> 00:14:38.583
[Upbeat music]

00:14:38.583 --> 00:14:42.250
In anguish and uncertainty,
he did finish his

00:14:42.250 --> 00:14:44.167
play Under Milk Wood.

00:14:44.167 --> 00:14:46.750
And because he was a
perfectionist when dealing

00:14:46.750 --> 00:14:49.875
with his own craft, he
coached and coaxed the

00:14:49.875 --> 00:14:52.458
actors into the moods
and meanings he wanted.

00:14:53.458 --> 00:14:56.083
They found his theater
knowledge formidable

00:14:56.083 --> 00:14:58.750
and his authority as a
director inspiring.

00:14:59.208 --> 00:15:06.458
[Upbeat music]

00:15:06.458 --> 00:15:08.708
"Love the words,"
he told them.

00:15:08.708 --> 00:15:11.083
"Love the words."

00:15:13.250 --> 00:15:16.292
With five actors and himself
taking the parts of 31

00:15:16.292 --> 00:15:19.125
characters, he presented
what he called his

00:15:19.125 --> 00:15:22.292
"looney maybe play" to a
New York audience.

00:15:22.292 --> 00:15:25.542
Mr. Pugh in the
School House opposite,

00:15:25.542 --> 00:15:28.000
takes up the
morning tea to Mrs. Pugh,

00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:32.125
and whispers on the stairs;
Here's your arsenic, dear.

00:15:32.125 --> 00:15:34.542
[Laughter]

00:15:34.542 --> 00:15:37.208
And your
weedkiller biscuit.

00:15:38.292 --> 00:15:40.750
I've throttled
your parakeet.

00:15:40.750 --> 00:15:43.250
I've spat in the vases.

00:15:43.250 --> 00:15:46.167
I've put cheese
in the mousehole.

00:15:47.250 --> 00:15:48.292
Here's your...

00:15:49.208 --> 00:15:50.667
nice tea, dear.

00:15:50.667 --> 00:15:52.042
Too much sugar.

00:15:52.042 --> 00:15:54.292
You haven't
tasted it yet, dear.

00:15:54.292 --> 00:15:55.500
Too much milk then.

00:15:55.500 --> 00:15:57.667
[Laughter]

00:15:57.667 --> 00:15:59.292
Down in
the dusking town,

00:15:59.292 --> 00:16:02.667
Mae Rose Cottage,
still lying in clover,

00:16:02.667 --> 00:16:04.958
and listening to
the nanny goats chew,

00:16:04.958 --> 00:16:07.625
draws circles of
lipstick round her nipples.

00:16:08.208 --> 00:16:09.875
I'm fast.

00:16:09.875 --> 00:16:16.042
[Laughter]

00:16:16.042 --> 00:16:17.792
I'm a bad luck.

00:16:18.833 --> 00:16:20.458
God will strike me dead.

00:16:22.333 --> 00:16:25.958
I'm 17, I'll go to hell.

00:16:25.958 --> 00:16:26.875
[Laughter]

00:16:26.875 --> 00:16:28.667
She
tells the goats.

00:16:28.667 --> 00:16:30.042
You just wait.

00:16:31.083 --> 00:16:33.417
I'll sin till I blow up.

00:16:33.417 --> 00:16:37.750
[Laughter]

00:16:38.167 --> 00:16:40.667
It was
too late for success.

00:16:41.250 --> 00:16:45.875
He had had enough of public
performance and enough even

00:16:45.875 --> 00:16:47.250
of his own exhibitionism.

00:16:48.583 --> 00:16:52.750
And in despair, he said,
"I've come to the melancholy

00:16:52.750 --> 00:16:56.000
conclusion that my
health is totally gone.

00:16:56.583 --> 00:17:03.208
I can't eat, I can't drink,
I'm even too tired to sleep.

00:17:04.042 --> 00:17:07.333
I've seen the
gates of hell."

00:17:09.083 --> 00:17:12.083
Yet, even as his
lost hopes were fading,

00:17:12.750 --> 00:17:16.125
he could regather his wit
and regale his audience with

00:17:16.125 --> 00:17:18.375
ribald nonsense
and hilarity.

00:17:19.375 --> 00:17:24.125
I don't mind answering, but
I can't even to very simple

00:17:24.125 --> 00:17:27.625
questions such as, uh,
what is the relation,

00:17:27.625 --> 00:17:28.542
damn that book.

00:17:28.542 --> 00:17:31.042
[Laughter]

00:17:31.042 --> 00:17:34.125
What is the
relationship of a poet,

00:17:34.125 --> 00:17:38.417
uh, to society in
the, uh, in the,

00:17:38.417 --> 00:17:41.167
uh, pre hydrogenous age?

00:17:45.458 --> 00:17:47.875
If every hermaphrodite
were a schizophrene,

00:17:47.875 --> 00:17:49.042
which half would you take?

00:17:49.042 --> 00:17:52.458
[Laughter]

00:17:52.458 --> 00:17:56.000
[Applause]

00:17:58.583 --> 00:18:03.208
Or the influence of W.C.
Fields on Virginia Woolf.

00:18:03.208 --> 00:18:07.708
[Laughter]

00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:14.750
But in
New York, one evening,

00:18:14.750 --> 00:18:19.417
desperate beyond all recall,
he went to a bar where by

00:18:19.417 --> 00:18:23.833
his own account, he
downed 18 straight whiskeys.

00:18:24.750 --> 00:18:27.625
Four days later on
the 9th of November,

00:18:27.625 --> 00:18:32.500
1953 in a hospital
room he never saw,

00:18:32.792 --> 00:18:35.583
he died in his own darkness.

00:18:37.292 --> 00:18:40.208
Caitlin took his
body back to Laugharne.

00:18:44.750 --> 00:18:51.875
In my craft or sullen art,
exercised in the still night

00:18:51.875 --> 00:18:57.542
when only the moon rages
and the lovers lie abed.

00:18:57.542 --> 00:19:00.292
With all their
griefs in their arms.

00:19:01.208 --> 00:19:06.375
I labour by singing light,
not for ambition or bread,

00:19:06.375 --> 00:19:11.083
or the strut and trade of
charms on the ivory stages,

00:19:11.083 --> 00:19:17.833
but for the common wages
of their most secret heart.

00:19:18.542 --> 00:19:23.792
Not for the proud man apart,
from the raging moon I write

00:19:23.792 --> 00:19:29.000
on these spindrift pages,
nor for the towering dead

00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:32.875
with their
nightingales and psalms,

00:19:33.667 --> 00:19:37.958
but for the lovers, their
arms round the griefs

00:19:37.958 --> 00:19:43.500
of the ages, who pay no
praise or wages,

00:19:43.958 --> 00:19:48.875
nor heed my craft or art.

00:19:53.750 --> 00:20:34.542
[Uplifting music]