|
Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, in his 1955 introduction to ''Song at the Year's Turning'', the first collection of Thomas’s poetry to be produced by a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century." ==Life== R. S. Thomas was born in Cardiff, the only child of Thomas Hubert and Margaret (née Davies). The family moved to Holyhead in 1918 because of his father's work in the Merchant Navy. He was awarded a bursary in 1932 to study at Bangor University, where he read Latin. In 1936, having completed his theological training at St. Michael's College, Llandaff, he was ordained as a priest in the Church in Wales. From 1936 to 1940 he was the curate of Chirk, Denbighshire, where he met his future wife, Mildred "Elsi" Eldridge, an English artist. He subsequently became curate-in charge of Tallarn Green, Flintshire, as part of his duties as curate of Hanmer. In Hanmer he was assistant to the Revd Thomas Meredith-Morris, the grandfather of writer Lorna Sage, a fact later described by Byron Rogers as a "crossing of paths of two of Wales's strangest clergymen", Whilst Sage devotes a great deal of her autobiography ''Bad Blood'' to her late relative, however, she does not mention Thomas at all, who was in any case in Hanmer before Sage was born. Her memoir gives some insight into the strange environment in which Thomas worked as a young priest.〔Sage, L. (2001), ''Bad Blood'', Fourth Estate〕 Thomas never wrote a great deal of his curacies and nothing is known of the relationship between him and Meredith-Morris.〔Rogers B. (2006), ''The Man Who Went Into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas'', London: Aurum〕 Thomas and Eldridge were married in 1940 and remained together until her death in 1991. Their son, Gwydion, was born on 29 August 1945. The Thomas family lived on a tiny income and lacked the comforts of modern life, largely through their own choice. One of the few household amenities the family ever owned, a vacuum cleaner, was rejected because Thomas decided it was too noisy.〔Dalrymple, Theodore, ("A Man Out of Time: A life of poet R. S. Thomas entertains and illumines" ), a review of ''The Man Who Went into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas'', by Byron Rogers, in ''City Journal'', 6 November 2006, accessed 30 December 2006.〕 For twelve years, from 1942 to 1954, Thomas was rector of St Michael's Church, Manafon, near Welshpool in rural Montgomeryshire. It was during his time in Manafon that he first began to study Welsh and that he published his first three volumes of poetry, ''The Stones of the Field'' (1946), ''An Acre of Land'' (1952) and ''The Minister'' (1953). Thomas' poetry achieved a breakthrough with the publication, in 1955, of his fourth book, ''Song at the Year's Turning'', in effect a collected edition of his first three volumes, which was critically very well received and opened with Betjeman's famous introduction. His position was also helped by winning the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award. Thomas learnt the Welsh language at age 30,〔 too late in life, he said, to be able to write poetry in it. The 1960s saw him working in a predominantly Welsh-speaking community and he later wrote two prose works in Welsh, ''Neb'' ((英語:Nobody)), an ironic and revealing autobiography written in the third person, and ''Blwyddyn yn Llŷn'' ((英語:A Year in Llŷn)). In 1964 he won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. From 1967 to 1978 he was vicar of St Hywyn's Church (built 1137) in Aberdaron at the western tip of the Llŷn Peninsula. Thomas retired from church ministry in 1978 and he and his wife relocated to Y Rhiw,〔("R S Thomas" at st-hywyn.org.uk )〕 in "a tiny, unheated cottage in one of the most beautiful parts of Wales, where, however, the temperature sometimes dipped below freezing", according to Theodore Dalrymple.〔 Free from the constraints of the church he was able to become more political and active in the campaigns that were important to him. He became a fierce advocate of Welsh nationalism, although he never supported ''Plaid Cymru'' because he believed they did not go far enough in their opposition to England. Thomas was nominated for the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature〔(R. S. Thomas nominated for Nobel prize at independent.co.uk )〕 the winner of which was Wislawa Szymborska. Thomas died on 25 September 2000, aged 87, at his home in Pentrefelin near Criccieth. He had been ill with a heart condition and had been treated at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor until two weeks before he died.〔〔(BBC News Wales: RS Thomas – Wales' s outspoken poet )〕 After his death an event celebrating his life and poetry was held at Westminster Abbey with readings from Heaney, Andrew Motion, Gillian Clarke and John Burnside. Thomas's ashes are buried close to the door of St John's Church, Porthmadog, Gwynedd. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「R. S. Thomas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|