Visit https://ebookultra.

com to download the full version and

explore more ebooks

The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas Annotated

Manuscript Edition John Goodby

_____ Click the link below to download _____

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-fifth-notebook-of-
dylan-thomas-annotated-manuscript-edition-john-goodby/

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookultra.com

Here are some recommended products that might interest you.
You can download now and explore!

180 Days of Reading for Fifth Grade 2nd Edition Dylan

Levsey

https://ebookultra.com/download/180-days-of-reading-for-fifth-
grade-2nd-edition-dylan-levsey/

ebookultra.com

Selected Poems 1934 1952 New Revised Edition Dylan Thomas

https://ebookultra.com/download/selected-poems-1934-1952-new-revised-
edition-dylan-thomas/

ebookultra.com

Paradise Lost The Biblically Annotated Edition John Milton

https://ebookultra.com/download/paradise-lost-the-biblically-
annotated-edition-john-milton/

ebookultra.com

The Notebook José Saramago

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-notebook-jose-saramago/

ebookultra.com
The Blue Notebook 1st Edition James A. Levine

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-blue-notebook-1st-edition-james-a-
levine/

ebookultra.com

How to Rock Climb Fifth Edition John Long

https://ebookultra.com/download/how-to-rock-climb-fifth-edition-john-
long/

ebookultra.com

The Wake and the Manuscript 1st Edition Ansgar Allen

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-wake-and-the-manuscript-1st-
edition-ansgar-allen/

ebookultra.com

The Manuscript Tradition of Procopius Gothic Wars A

Reconstruction of Family y in the light of a hitherto
unkown Manuscript Athos Lavra H 73 1st Edition Maria Kalli
https://ebookultra.com/download/the-manuscript-tradition-of-procopius-
gothic-wars-a-reconstruction-of-family-y-in-the-light-of-a-hitherto-
unkown-manuscript-athos-lavra-h-73-1st-edition-maria-kalli/
ebookultra.com

The original 1939 notebook of a Return to the native land

Arnold

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-original-1939-notebook-of-a-
return-to-the-native-land-arnold/

ebookultra.com
The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas Annotated
Manuscript Edition John Goodby Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): John Goodby; Adrian Osbourne
ISBN(s): 9781350103863, 1350103861
File Details: PDF, 21.68 MB
Year: 2020
Language: english
THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF
DYLAN THOMAS
 Modernist Archives Series
Series Editors: Matthew Feldman (University of York, UK), Erik Tonning (University of
Bergen, Norway) and David Tucker (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

Editorial Board: Chris Ackerley (University of Otago, New Zealand), Ronald Bush
(University of Oxford, UK), Mark Byron (University of Sydney, Australia), Wayne K.
Chapman (Clemson University, USA), Miranda Hickman (McGill University, Canada),
Gregory Maertz (St John’s University, USA), Alec Marsh (Muhlenberg College,
USA), Steven Matthews (Oxford Brookes University, UK), Lois M. Overbeck (Emory
University, USA), Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp, Belgium).

From letters, journals, and notebooks to unpublished or out-of-print works, unfamiliar

but important writings in translation and forgotten articles, Bloomsbury’s Modernist
Archives series makes available to researchers at all levels historical archival material
that can reconfigure received views of Modernist literature and culture.
Annotated throughout and supported by extensive contextual essays by leading
scholars, the Modernist Archives series is an essential resource for anyone with a
serious interest in twentieth-century literature and culture.

Titles in Series
David Jones on Religion, Politics, and Culture Edited by Thomas Berenato, Anne Price-
Owen and Kathleen Henderson Staudt
David Jones’s The Grail Mass and Other Works Edited by Thomas Goldpaugh and
Jamie Callison
Ezra Pound and Globe Magazine: The Complete Correspondence Edited by Michael T.
Davis and Cameron McWhirter
Ezra Pound’s and Olga Rudge’s The Blue Spill: A Manuscript Critical Edition Edited by
Mark Byron and Sophia Barnes
W. B. Yeats’s Robartes-Aherne Writings, Wayne K. Chapman
Edith Ayrton Zangwill’s The Call: A New Scholarly Edition Edited by Stephanie Brown
Man into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition Edited by Pamela Caughie and
Sabine Meyer

Forthcoming Titles
The Correspondence of Ezra Pound and the Frobenius Institute, 1930-1959 Edited by
Ronald Bush and Erik Tonning
The Selected Stories of Katherine Mansfield Edited by Todd Martin
THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF
DYLAN THOMAS

ANNOTATED
MANUSCRIPT
EDITION

Edited by
John Goodby and Adrian Osbourne
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright © John Goodby and Adrian Osbourne, 2021

John Goodby and Adrian Osbourne have asserted their rights under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this

copyright page.

Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray

Cover image © Dylan Thomas (1914–53), 1934 (oil on canvas), Alfred Janes,
(1911–99) / National Museum Wales / Bridgeman Images

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher
regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have
ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934403

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-0383-2

ePDF: 978-1-3501-0385-6
eBook: 978-1-3501-0384-9

Series: Modernist Archives

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and
sign up for our newsletters.
Love like a mist or fire through the bed of eels
Dylan Thomas, ‘I, in my intricate image’
vi
 CONTENTS

List of figures viii

Editorial preface to Modernist Archives ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xii

Introduction – ‘From the oracular archives’: The fifth notebook of

Dylan Thomas 1
Contents of the fifth notebook 39
Facsimile of the fifth notebook with facing transcription 41

Editorial note and annotations 141

Bibliography 187
Index 193
 FIGURES

1 Dylan Thomas biographical note 17

2 Tesco bag in which the fifth notebook was kept 23
3 Louie King note 25
4 Image of Zenith school exercise book 28
 EDITORIAL PREFACE TO
MODERNIST ARCHIVES

Archival excavation and detailed contextualization are becoming increasingly

central to scholarship on literary modernism. In recent years, the increased
accessibility and dissemination of previously unpublished or little-known
documents and texts has led to paradigm-shifting scholarly interventions on
a range of canonical authors (Beckett, Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Woolf, among
others), neglected topics (the occult, ‘primitivism’, fascism, eugenics, book
history and the writing process) and critical methodologies (genetic criticism,
intertextuality and historical contexts). This trend will surely only increase as
large-scale digitization of archival materials gathers pace and existing copyright
restrictions gradually lapse. Modernist Archives is a book series that aims to
channel, extend and interrogate these shifts by publishing hitherto unavailable
or neglected primary materials for a wider readership. Each volume also
provides supporting, contextualizing work by scholars, alongside a critical
apparatus of notes and references.
The impetus for Modernist Archives emerges from the editors’ well-
established series, Historicizing Modernism. While Historicizing Modernism’s
focus is analytical, Modernist Archives will make accessible edited and
annotated versions of little-known sources and avant-texts. The monographs
and edited collections in Historicizing Modernism have revealed the extent to
which contemporary scholars are increasingly turning towards archival and/or
unpublished material in order to reconfigure understandings of modernism in
its broader historical rootedness as well as in its compositional methodologies.
The present series extends this empirical and genetic focus.
Understanding and defining such primary sources as a broad category
extending to letters, diaries, notes, drafts and marginalia, Modernist Archives
x EDITORIAL PREFACE TO MODERNIST ARCHIVES

series produces volumes that not only unearth significant unpublished material
and provide original scholarship on this material but also develop cutting-edge
editorial presentation techniques that preserve as much information as possible
in an economical and accessible way. Also of note is the potential for the series
to explore collections pertaining to the relations between literary modernism
and other media (radio, television) or important cultural moments. The series
thus aims to be an enabling force within modernist scholarship.
It is becoming ever more difficult to read this extraordinary period of literary
experimentation in isolation from contextualizing archival material, sometimes
dubbed the ‘grey canon’ of modernist writing. The difficulty, we suggest, is
something like a loss of innocence – once obviously relevant materials are
actually accessible, they cannot be ignored. They may challenge received
ideas about the limits or definition of modernism; they may upend theoretical
frameworks or encourage fresh theoretical reflection; they may require new
methodologies or revise the very notion of ‘authorship’; likewise, they may
require types of knowledge that we never knew we needed – but there they are.
However, while we are champions of historical, archival research, Modernist
Archives in no way seeks to influence the results or approaches that scholars in
this area will utilize in the exciting times ahead. By commissioning a wide range
of innovative and challenging editions, this series aims to once more ‘make
strange’ and ‘make new’ our fundamental ideas about modernism.
Matthew Feldman, Erik Tonning
and David Tucker
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the generous help and support of Swansea

University, its College of Arts and Humanities (COAH) and COAH’s Research
Institute of Arts and Humanities (RIAH). They made this edition possible both
by purchasing the manuscript of Dylan Thomas’s fifth notebook and through
funding Adrian Osbourne’s PhD research and work on the notebook during
2015–18. The edition itself has been four years in the making and, as ever with
a Dylan Thomas project, many individuals, too numerous to name, offered help,
information, guidance and insight along the way. However, among those we
would like to single out for particular thanks are Siân Williams, Steve Williams
and the Archive team of Swansea University Library; Peter Davies of Swansea
University Engineering Department; the editorial and production team,
including Lucy Brown and David Avital, at Bloomsbury; Matthew Feldman and
Erik Tonning, series editors of Modernist Archives; Gabriel Heaton and Toby
Skegg of Sotheby’s; Hilly Janes; Hannah Ellis; Rob Penhallurick; Steve Vine;
and the research and postgraduate student community of COAH. Last, but
never least, we wish to record our thanks to our partners Nicola Goodby and
Shareena Hamzah-Osbourne. The epigraph to this volume is for them.
 ABBREVIATIONS

The four poetry notebooks held at the State University of New York at Buffalo
are commonly referred to in the critical literature as N1, N2, N3 and N4.
In accordance with this commonly accepted shorthand, we refer to the fifth
notebook as N5.

18P 18 Poems
25P Twenty-five Poems
CP52 Collected Poems 1934-1952 (1952)
CP88 Collected Poems 1934-1953 (1988)
CP14 Collected Poems (2016)
CL Collected Letters
CS Collected Stories
DTANL Dylan Thomas: A New Life, Andrew Lycett
DDT Discovering Dylan Thomas, John Goodby
DT Dylan Thomas, Paul Ferris
LVW Letters to Vernon Watkins
PITM Poet in the Making
QEOM Quite Early One Morning
TNP The Notebook Poems 1930-1934
TP71 The Poems (1971)
 Introduction
‘From the oracular archives’: The fifth
notebook of Dylan Thomas

In the evening, before calling on my new friend, I sat in my bedroom by

the boiler and read through my exercise-books full of poems. There were
Danger Don’ts on the backs.
Dylan Thomas, ‘The Fight’ (1938)

DISCOVERY
On 2 November 2014, Sotheby’s announced in its online catalogue the
forthcoming sale of a hitherto unknown notebook of autograph poems by
Dylan Thomas at their New Bond Street auction rooms. The sale was due to
take place on 2 December, and was being conducted on behalf of the relatives
of Louie King, a former servant at the home of Yvonne Macnamara, Dylan
Thomas’s mother-in-law, in Blashford, Hampshire. According to a scribbled
note to posterity on the paper Tesco bag containing it, King had saved the
notebook from being burnt as scrap paper over half a century before. The
notebook – which was, in fact, a standard school exercise book of eighty-
two pages, each ruled with twenty-two feint blue lines – contained sixteen of
Thomas’s poems in all (or fifteen and a half, strictly speaking, since it contained
only the first five sonnets of the ten belonging to the ‘Altarwise by owl-light’
sequence). These were set out as nineteen separately numbered items, largely
written on the right hand, or recto, pages. All had long been in print by 2014,
having appeared in Thomas’s first two collections – six in 18 Poems (1934) and
ten in Twenty-five Poems (1936).
2 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

Yet while it contained no unknown poems, the notebook nevertheless

promised to be of the greatest interest and value. Three poems in N5 – ‘Incarnate
devil’, ‘Foster the light’ and ‘The seed-at-zero’ – are reworked poems Thomas
had entered in two earlier notebooks, while another, ‘Do you not father me?’,
also existed in typescript. There also existed an unfinished autograph manuscript
(MS) of ‘I, in my intricate image’ almost identical to the N5 version. However,
in most other cases, there had been no previously existing MS versions or
copies of the poems N5 contained. In addition, thirteen of the items in it had
been revised and reworked, either as they were being written up or afterwards,
some extensively. Two of them, ‘The seed-at-zero’ and ‘I dreamed my genesis’,
included entire previously unpublished, and unknown, stanzas. Moreover, the
order of the poems in the notebook, which it was not unreasonable to suppose
was the order of their composition, differed in several cases to that proposed
by Thomas’s editors.1 All of this promised to shed a good deal of new light
on Thomas’s development as a writer and on his compositional processes. All
in all, the notebook was easily the most significant addition to the body of
Thomas MSS to have appeared since 1941.
It was in 1941 that Thomas had sold four similar exercise books containing
his early poetry, with another (known as ‘The Red Notebook’) of short stories,
together with some recent worksheets, to Bertrand Rota, a London book-
dealer. Rota was acting on behalf of the Lockwood Memorial Library at the
State University of New York, at Buffalo. Its director, Charles D. Abbott, was
forbidden by library regulations from buying MSS from a living author, but,
finding the prospect of acquiring Thomas material irresistible, he was prepared
to use a middleman to circumvent them.2 Like the better-known transatlantic
economic and political concessions being made at the time, the deal can be
regarded as a cultural example of the hard bargains the United States was able
to drive with cash-strapped, wartime Britain.

1
In the case of the most recent edition of the Collected Poems (2014), edited by John Goodby,
‘Should lanterns shine’ and ‘Grief thief of time’ are interpolated, probably wrongly, among the run
of N5 poems. While ‘All all and all’, ‘My world is pyramid’, ‘Especially when the October wind’,
‘Now’ and ‘How soon the servant sun’ are in correct sequence, the majority of Goodby’s guesses
are out. Thus, ‘Foster the light’ is positioned too early, ‘Do you not father me?’ too late, while ‘A
grief ago’ occurs before ‘I, in my intricate image’, not after it and so on.
2
Following an enquiry by Abbott to Thomas, Rota was contracted to take charge of the purchase. ‘I
cannot imagine,’ Rota wrote to Abbott, on 1 September 1941, ‘any collection of manuscripts which
illustrates better the genesis and development of poetic ideas, which I understand to be the aspect
which appeals to you particularly’. ‘According to all rules and regulations I cannot buy them,’
Abbott replied on 24 September, ‘but I want them so badly that I have … persuaded a private friend
to buy them for us. It is a transaction which is most unlikely to occur again.’ The ‘private friend’
who supplied the necessary $140.00 was Thomas B. Lockwood, the library’s chief benefactor. See
Ralph Maud, ed., Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas (London: Dent, 1968), 274.
INTRODUCTION 3

The four notebooks (N1, N2, N3 and N4) contained fair copies of 207 poems
by Thomas dating from 27 April 1930 (the first poem in N1) to 30 April 1934
(the final entry in N4). Nearly three decades after their sale, and over twenty
years after Thomas’s death, they were edited and published by Ralph Maud in
1968 as Poet in the Making: The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas. Maud noted that
the sequence of notebooks was incomplete; a gap existed between N2, in which
the final poem was dated 2 July 1932, and N3, in which the first poem was
dated 31 January 1933. He posited the existence of a missing notebook covering
the period, undiscovered or destroyed – speculation about the existence of lost
or undiscovered notebooks having long been part of Dylan Thomas studies.3
So where did N5 fit in the sequence of Thomas’s notebooks? The first poem
in it to be dated was ‘Three’, ‘Do you not father me?’, which was entered
on ‘Sept 30 1934’. (N5 also shows that he returned to it ten months later, in
summer 1935, revised it and re-dated it.) Since the last poem in N4 was dated
30 April 1934, the two poems preceding ‘Three’ in N5 – ‘One’, ‘All all and all’
and ‘Two’, ‘My world is pyramid’ – had to belong to the period between May
and September 1934. This was just two poems from five months. However,
although the gap between 30 April and 30 September 1934 was a lengthy one,
it was rather too short to have been occupied by an intermediate, still-missing
notebook, given the very small number of known poems of the period which
might have been recorded in it and the time it usually took Thomas to fill a
notebook. Moreover, the circumstances of Thomas’s life in summer 1934, as
we shall see, were highly likely to have contributed to a slow start. The new
discovery could therefore be legitimately regarded as the direct successor to
N4, a continuation of the N1-N4 sequence, with something of the mystique
of other additions to famous quartets – the archival equivalent, say, of the fifth
member of the Burgess-Maclean Cambridge spy ring or a fifth Beatle.4
The appearance of N5 was, as all of this suggests, both astonishing and, in
some ways, unsurprising. Thomas kept notebooks of this kind throughout his
life, and while many of them have been discovered, a substantial number have
not.5 The notebook missing between N2 and N3 has already been remarked

3
In assuming a missing notebook for this period, Maud printed what he called ‘collateral’ poems,
which Thomas had transcribed at a later date, but which had no existence or prototype in the
surviving notebooks.
4
The three poems are substantial enough to have occupied Thomas in May–September 1934,
especially since he spent much of summer 1934 preparing 18P for the press. The slowing of his
creative burst at this time is confirmed by a letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson of May 1934 in
which he lamented that ‘the old fertile days are gone, and now a poem is the hardest and most
thankless act of creation’ (CL, 156).
5
Prior to, and perhaps partly concurrent with, the N1-N4 notebooks are those held at the Harry
Ransom Center, University of Austin at Texas, known collectively as ‘the Walter Bram notebooks’.
Named after an imaginary poet invented by Dylan Thomas and Daniel Jones (the word ‘bram’
4 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

and, as Maud also observed, Thomas’s short story of 1938 ‘The Fight’ uses
three early poems (‘Grass Blade’s Psalm’, ‘Warp’ and ‘Frivolous is my hate’),
which it is reasonable to presume date from another unknown notebook kept
just before, or during, the period of N1. Thomas himself referred several times
to the many notebooks he kept, especially in his early years, in conversation
and correspondence. He wrote, for example, of the poems contained in
‘innumerable school exercise books’ to Geoffrey Grigson in Spring 1933, while
in May 1938 Henry Treece was informed of the existence of ‘about 10 exercise-
books full of poems’ (CL, 33, 345).
Moreover, as Thomas’s letters and Maud’s researches had showed, he was
in the habit of keeping his notebooks after filling them in order to quarry
the material they contained for new poems, sometimes for years. Given his
peripatetic lifestyle after he left Swansea at the end of 1934, this meant he was
also in the habit of carrying many of them around with him and of occasionally
mislaying them. And since 2014 was the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth,
and had seen a series of celebratory events, it was likely that anyone possessing
such a mislaid or lost notebook would choose to sell it at this juncture, when
the publicity surrounding Thomas meant that its market value would be highest.
(When its existence was disclosed, N5 did in fact briefly become a minor media
phenomenon, just missing an appearance on BBC 2’s Newsnight before featuring
on BBC1’s Breakfast, in front of eight million viewers, on 13 November.)6
Whatever the considerations of the vendors, the rediscovery and auction of
N5 was, for many, a fitting climax to the centenary year. As good luck would
have it, and as Thomas himself would surely have wished, it was Swansea
University, of his native ‘ugly, lovely town’, which made the successful bid of
£85,000.7 Swansea University naturally – if rather sweepingly – made much
of the fact that the notebook was ‘coming home’ (it contained poems written
in three other locations), and the university library had the MS digitized in
January 2015. The editors of this volume were duly tasked with beginning the
task of preparing a publishable version of the MS later that year.

means ‘fart’ in Welsh), these contain collaborations between the two. Their contents include
playlets, poems and sketches, usually dated to Thomas’s early- to mid-teens. They have little direct
bearing on the work contained in N1-N4, although they do include surrealist-style cadavre exquis
word-games.
6
John Goodby notes: ‘I was asked to authenticate N5, and was able to do so from a photocopied
sample. However, owing to the centenary, and hence a timetable crowded by Dylan Thomas himself
(a festival in Sheffield, an MLA panel in Pittsburgh), viewing the MS itself proved trickier. It seemed
briefly that BBC 2’s Newsnight might unite us, but its feature, proposed for 10 November 2014,
was displaced by a juicier story at the last minute. However, on 12 November, Sotheby’s asked if I
would discuss N5 on BBC 1’s “Breakfast” the following morning, and at Salford Quays – courtesy
of Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s in-house manuscripts expert and his colleague, Toby Skegg – I made
its brief acquaintance before Gabriel, N5 and I went on air.’
7
The total price to Swansea University, after auctioneers’ fees and taxes, was £104,500.
INTRODUCTION 5

ORIGINS, PROVENANCE AND PURPOSES OF N5

The story of the survival of N5, appropriately for a poet as flamboyant as
Thomas, is a dramatic one. Yet to understand how this particular notebook came
to be hidden, lost to view and rediscovered, it is necessary to understand the role
such notebooks played in Thomas’s writing more generally and the contexts
in which he compiled and used them. To do this it is also necessary to briefly
consider just how he created poems and recorded them. In both cases, to some
extent, it is therefore appropriate to consider the life of Dylan Thomas himself.
First and foremost, then, it should be said that the notebooks were intended
as a permanent record for completed poems. Once written down, the notebooks
were treated as a store, or bank of finalized work, to be sent out to journals or
kept in reserve for Thomas’s next collection of poems. This function is clear
from the fact that a brief author biography, in Thomas’s hand, suitable to be
sent with poems to journal editors, was found with N5. Second, the notebooks
also served as an aide-mémoire – a measure and summary of his development
and progress as a poet – and a prompt as to where his poetry might go next.
Keeping them and referring to them helped Thomas keep a grip on what he was
doing, in the face of his own unnerving precocity and potentially disorienting
success. In his letter of May 1938 to Treece, for example, he speaks revealingly
of ‘reading through’ all the notebooks he has to hand, and we can assume that
he referred to the notebooks fairly regularly in his early twenties and also that
this was creative rather than self-indulgent or a sign of immaturity, as some still
claim. Third, as noted already, Thomas used his old notebooks as a source for
new poems, up to the end of the 1930s.
By way of clarification, it should be said at this point that the poems in the
earliest notebooks were already very different from the conventional verse on
conventional subjects for which Thomas was noted by most of those who knew
him in his mid-teens. He had been writing poems of this kind – on nature, the
First World War dead, comic verse narratives – since he was a boy, keen to
amuse friends and impress adults. They were skilful of their kind, and were
published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine, and even occasionally in
newspapers such as The Western Mail. However, they were distinct in almost
every way from those he was already entering in N1 and N2. By his mid-teens,
Thomas was known for his poetry, but perceived by most as a very different
sort of poet to the one he was intent on becoming. Percy Smart, a school friend
who knew about both types of poem, noted:

He was writing at the time some delightful light verse, sparkling, bright and
clear, but he was of course already producing verse of a kind which many
people can’t understand, and I remember asking him why he did it: what was
the point of writing ‘privately’ in this way. But he couldn’t really understand
6 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

the question: he wrote, he said, what was in him, and it was really quite
irrelevant whether anyone else even read it.8

From April 1930, then – that is, from the age of fifteen and a half onwards –
Thomas was schooling himself, in semi-secrecy, as a consciously ‘difficult’
modernist poet, and the notebooks are the record of that enterprise, one which,
for a while, ran parallel with that of the versatile versifier. By Spring 1933, around
half the way through N3, Thomas was confident enough of the quality of this
‘private’ work to send it to national outlets. ‘And death shall have no dominion’,
his first publication in a London journal – the New English Weekly – dates from
the middle of April 1933. From this point onwards, the notebooks increasingly
have the appearance of a holding bay for poems before they were sent off to
journals. In N4, which runs from September 1933 to April 1934, we can trace
the arrival and consolidation of his mature ‘process’ style, the one with which he
would ‘hit the town of London’, as William Empson put it.9 The proportion of the
poems entered in the notebooks and subsequently accepted for publication now
increased: eight of fifty-three poems in N3 would be published, but eighteen of
forty-one from N4 were published, including every one of its last seven poems.
By the time he began N5, in summer 1934, Thomas’s mastery of the style was so
complete that none of the poems entered it would fail to find an outlet.10
As a whole, the notebooks are one of the most comprehensive records of the
progress from promising but undistinguished juvenilia to a fully fledged mature
style, which we possess for any major poet – perhaps the most comprehensive.
However, they are an incomplete record, insofar as they almost invariably
record the final product; worksheets, for this period at least, do not survive.
This was largely due to Thomas’s standard method of composition at the time,
according to which the act of actually sitting down and writing a first draft
would be preceded by a period in which he gathered material. This material
would have disparate sources and modes – it would comprise not only the
product of conscious thought and labour but might include fragments of
conversation, a dictionary definition, a piece of urban lore, a pun, a joke or a

8
Percy Smart, ‘“Under Milk Wood” – and Reminiscence of School Days’, The Spread Eagle, XXIX
(April 1954): 134, cited in PITM, 274. The overlap between the public versifier and the private
modernist can be seen in the fact that just three notebook poems were ever considered suitable
for the Swansea Grammar School Magazine: ‘The shepherd blew upon his reed’, which Thomas
deleted in N1, and IV and V in N2, both of which prompted the poet’s later marginal inscription
‘Ugh’. PITM, 275.
9
William Empson, Argufying, ed. John Haffenden (London: Hogarth Press, 1988), 387.
10
The exceedingly high ratio of published to unpublished poems of Thomas’s output is a striking
feature of his writing after April 1934; apart from comic pieces written for friends, usually in
letters, and around half a dozen uncollected poems (‘The Countryman’s Return’ being the most
substantial), he wrote none which were not later published and collected.
INTRODUCTION 7

piece of wordplay, slang, reworked idioms and clichés, dream scenarios. Some
or all of these might, at some point, cohere in Thomas’s mind to suggest the
metaphors, parallels, conflicts and paradoxes which could drive a poem forward.
Such material would be written on whatever came to hand – usually paper, but
also envelopes, cigarette packets, betting slips and so on. When it reached what
Thomas considered to be a critical mass, and he began to discern the shape of
the poem asking be coaxed from it, he would start trying to write, although
the writing, in the form of worksheets, might have begun while the material
was still being gathered. This kind of accretive, pre-compositional activity is
practised by many poets, of course. However, in Thomas’s case, and following
surrealist and modernist promptings to circumvent the conscious mind in order
to access the unconscious, it would seem the first fluid, incremental, associative
stages loomed larger with him than for most.
Once completed and fair-copied in a notebook, a poem’s form was generally
fixed for future use. The process of its emergence from an assemblage of odds
and ends, its haphazard and bricoleur-like origins, meant that the contributory
materials and worksheets were unlikely to survive. Indeed, Thomas’s account
of disposing of them once his compositional labours were done reads as if it
were part of the creative–destructive cycle which, in cosmic form, is the subject
of the poems themselves. What this means is that, except in very rare cases,
there is no documentation of the evolution of Thomas’s early poems before
they entered a notebook.11 Hence his reply to a former school friend, Charles
Fisher, who requested some MSS in early 1935 – that is, at the time when N5
was his ‘live’ notebook:

I’m very pleased and glad that you do want a manuscript of some poems of
mine, and I’ll try to let you have what you want. But my method is this: I write
a poem on innumerable sheets of scrap paper, write it on both sides of the
paper, often upside down and criss cross ways, unpunctuated, surrounded by
drawing of lamp posts and boiled eggs, in a very dirty mess; bit by bit I copy out
the slowly developing poem into an exercise book; and, when it is completed,
I type it out. The scrap sheets I burn, for there are such a lot of them that they
clutter up my room and get mixed in the beer and butter. (CL, 209)

This leaves the question of when N5 was actually begun and under what
circumstances. Its first two poems are undated, as already noted. However,
we can hazard a guess at the dates of their completion and entry in N5, and

11
Once Thomas realized his MSS were saleable, in 1941 (when the deal with Rota included the MS
of the recently completed ‘Ballad of the Long-legged Bait’), he naturally enough started to keep
some of his worksheets.
8 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

hence (roughly) the date the notebook was begun, from references in Thomas’s
correspondence. Thus, N5 ‘One’, ‘All all and all’, is mentioned in a letter to
Pamela Hansford Johnson of 20 July 1934, and ‘Two’, ‘My world is pyramid’,
in a letter to her of 2 August 1934. ‘Three’, ‘Do you not father me?’, was revised
in September 1934. The next poem, ‘Especially when the October wind’, dates
from 1 October, and two further poems were entered during that month. We
can surmise, then, that Thomas began N5 in July 1934, just over two months
after he entered the last poem in N4 on 30 April.
The initial delay and then slow use of N5 are best explained by the fact
that in summer and early autumn 1934 Thomas was much preoccupied with
preparing his forthcoming first collection, 18 Poems. There was, to begin with,
a good deal of uncertainty as to who would actually publish it. ‘The force
that through the green fuse’ had won a prize for the best poem published in
the Sunday Referee in 1933, and the prize was book publication; however, the
Referee would foot only half the bill, and Thomas had to seek out a co-sponsor,
Parton Books. In May 1934 he sent poems to Hamish Miles, an editor at
Jonathan Cape, presumably to try to interest him in publication, and as late as
November Faber & Faber were considering his MS (only a hesitancy on Eliot’s
part, which he later regretted, led to Thomas pulling out) (CL, 199–200).
Thomas was also under pressure because of his concerns about what
should go in the collection and a desire to make it as strong as he could. In
a letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson of 2 May 1934 he discussed the issue,
rejecting four of her suggestions and listing twelve poems he said he wanted
to include. However, he would later drop three of these and end up including
one of Johnson’s rejected suggestions, ‘The eye of sleep’ (which he rewrote
as ‘I fellowed sleep’). His chronic uncertainty at this point is registered in the
fact that his list of twelve omits four N4 poems, already written (though not
revised), which did make it into 18 Poems: ‘My hero bares his nerves’, ‘If I
were tickled by the rub of love’, ‘In the beginning’ and ‘When once the twilight
locks’ (which he revised in March and was published in New Verse in June
1934). The uncertainty about both potential publishers and the contents of his
collection as well as the pressures of editing, rewriting, and composing new
material before his November submission deadline would have slowed the flow
of poetry Thomas had enjoyed before May. Under the circumstances, the gap
between the entry of the final poem in N4, on 30 April, and the mid-July start
for N5, as well as the limited use of N5 before October, is hardly surprising.
At the same time, the 2 May letter to Johnson more or less seals N5’s claims
to be the direct successor to N4. In the same letter Thomas had noted that there
were ‘about six or seven others [poems] I am still in the process of pruning and
cutting about’. The first figure matches the six poems in N5 which, as we have
said, made it into 18 Poems, and completes the total of eighteen. Of these,
‘One’, ‘All all and all’, ‘Two’, ‘My world is pyramid’, ‘Four’, ‘Especially when
INTRODUCTION 9

the October wind’, ‘Five’, ‘I dreamed my genesis’ and ‘Seven’, ‘When, like a
running grave’, unmentioned in the letter, were either new poems or (in the
case of ‘Four’ and ‘Five’) radical revisions of older ones; while ‘Six’, ‘I fellowed
sleep’, was, as already noted, a revision of a poem Thomas changed his mind
about after telling Johnson it was ‘very bad indeed’ – albeit he had ‘rewritten
[it] entirely’, making it ‘a little better, though still shaky on its rhythms and
very woolly as to its intention (if any)’ (CL, 151). In other words, there are no
poems in 18 Poems unaccounted for in N4 and N5; moreover, N5 ‘Three’, ‘Do
you not father me?’, which had to be further revised the following summer,
before appearing in Twenty-five Poems, is the only exception to the rule that
successive entries in N5, from ‘One’ to ‘Seven’, went straight into 18P.
As this suggests, however, a poem’s date of entry in N5 is not to be confused
with some singular date or period of composition. While N5 datings may give a
rough indication of a composition period, or periods, these are unverifiable in
any absolute sense, in the absence of other evidence. This does not mean that we
cannot make informed guesses, of course. For example, where there are earlier
extant versions of poems, such as N5 ‘Five’, ‘Six’, ‘Sixteen’ and ‘Eighteen’, each of
which is derived from an earlier version in N3 and N4, we have some indication
of a revision period, and can at least chart some of the poem’s evolution. A
prototype for N5 ‘Five’, ‘I dreamed my genesis’, for example, first appeared as
‘Twenty Seven’ in N4, in October 1933. Its three stanzas were of eight, twelve
and ten lines, respectively; these had become eight quatrains by October 1934,
while its opening lines, relocated to the third quatrain in N5, disappeared when
that stanza was omitted in 18P. We know that Thomas sent a version of the
poem in quatrain form to Hamish Miles, an editor at Jonathan Cape, in May
1934, which seems to indicate that he had got it close to its final form in that
month (though we can’t be certain, because the poem he sent is not extant) (CL,
161–2). It could well be that he revised ‘Five’ for the final time in May, but did
not enter it into N5 until after he had heard from Miles.
Meanwhile he may have devoted most of the little time he had in summer
1934 to work on ‘Seven’, ‘When, like a running grave’, the longest and most
demanding poem among those he was working on at this time. There are no
earlier versions of this poem, and we feel it is likely that Thomas composed it
from scratch and that it constitutes his chief poetic labour for August–October
1934. However, we cannot know this for certain; no notes or previous versions
exist, but its gestation could have begun at an earlier date.

THE TRAVELS AND TRAVAILS OF N5

Thomas’s letter to Charles Fisher bears the address ‘5 Radcliffe Street SW10’,
and is dated by Paul Ferris to January 1935. At that point he had been in London
for about two months, having moved there in mid-November 1934, shortly
10 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

after confirming the forthcoming publication of 18 Poems, which he wanted to

see through the press. He spent Christmas in Swansea, but soon returned to the
task of trying to make his way in the metropolis; the last sentence of the passage
from the Fisher letter gestures comically towards the disorder of the digs he
shared there with Fred Janes, a Swansea friend who was studying at the Royal
Academy Schools in Piccadilly.12 Both the London address and the Swansea
recipient of the letter are a reminder that, while N5 was begun in Swansea
in summer 1934, it is not, unlike its four predecessors, a ‘Swansea’ notebook
as such. Part of the fascination of N5 is its peripatetic aspect; over half of the
poems it contains were entered into it (and in many cases probably composed)
in London, Cheshire and Donegal. In this sense it records the opening phase
of the footloose lifestyle Thomas would follow for four years after he left his
home town. However, a reader’s interest in this fact does not reside so much in
the fact that those other places were the subject of, or ‘influenced’, the poems
themselves; Thomas would not write a ‘place poem’ proper until ‘Poem in
October’, in 1944. Rather, they intrigue because they testify to his persistence
in exploring the implications of the ‘process’ style consolidated in N4, despite
the somewhat unpropitious circumstances – a point worth making, if only
because so many commentators have insisted that Thomas was completely
dissolute during this period, and only able write when he had a secure ‘home’
– invariably, it is claimed, a Welsh one.
The first seven poems in N5 were written while Thomas was still in Swansea,
since he did not leave for London until November. However, N5 ‘Eight’, ‘Now’,
is dated ‘December ’34’, making it possibly his first London poem (although it
could have been entered when he was home for Christmas). It is more likely
still that he was at Redcliffe Street when N5 ‘Nine’ ‘How soon the servant sun’,
and ‘Ten’, ‘A grief ago’, both dated ‘January ’35’, were written up. In February
of that year, Thomas moved, with Fred Janes and another Swansea artist friend,
Mervyn Levy, to new lodgings, in nearby Colherne Road. It was here that he
probably entered ‘Eleven’, the first of the three sections of ‘I, in my intricate
image’. This was followed in March by the second section, titled – as if Thomas
considered it a separate poem at this stage – ‘Twelve’.
Thomas’s first three years in London, 1934–7, have been presented,
and rightly, as a fairly chaotic period. Nevertheless, it would be misleading
to imagine they were aimless or completely dissolute. Thomas was wholly
serious about being a professional writer, and this meant that he assiduously, if

Dylan shared digs with Fred Janes at Redcliffe Street, in an area of London which Paul Ferris
12

describes as a ‘seedier adjunct to Chelsea’, between Old Brompton Road and Fulham Road (Ferris,
1978, 118). Hilly Janes gives more detail without Paul Ferris’s sour disapproval; see The Three
Lives of Dylan Thomas (London: Robson Press, 2014), 4–19.
INTRODUCTION 11

somewhat haphazardly, strove to court and forge contacts who might further
his career. In April 1936, seven months after the period covered by N5 had
ended, for example, he would tell Vernon Watkins: ‘I was in London for just
over a week and the same things happened there that always happen: I kept
roughly a half of my appointments, met half the people I wanted to, met lots
of other people, desirable and otherwise, and fully lived up to the conventions
of Life No. 13: promiscuity, booze, coloured shirts, too much talk, too little
work. … I left London with Life No. Thirteen’s headache, liver and general
seediness, and have by this time fully recovered’ (CL, 248–9). The point about
this passage – and it is borne out by reports of Thomas’s activity at the time –
is that the ‘appointments’ and ‘meetings’ were a regular occurrence, whatever
else went on. In the words of Fred Janes, who was trying to paint his portrait
at the time, with limited success owing to the elusive character of his subject,
Dylan was in and out of their digs ‘like a cat in a tripe shop’, ‘tremendously
restless’, with periods of relative calm often punctuated by ‘a furious burst
of work’, his behaviour characterized by ‘endless comings and goings … at
all times’13 (DTANL, 113). For all his boozing, it is clear that Thomas rapidly
and effectively expanded his network beyond the Swansea friends who had
also moved to London at around the same time (Janes himself, Levy, Daniel
Jones, Vera Phillips and Trevor Hughes among them) and built an enviable web
of allies and confrères. Among his contemporaries it included, for example,
Desmond Hawkins, Robert Herring, Michael Roberts, David Gascoyne, Rayner
Heppenstall, William Empson, David Archer, George Barker, Roger Roughton,
Stephen Spender, Geoffrey Grigson, Norman Cameron, Cyril Connolly and
John Lehmann – a formidable list – to which can be added a number of older
heavyweights, including John Middleton Murry, Herbert Read, T. S. Eliot,
Edith Sitwell and Edwin and Willa Muir.14
As Grigson noted, a little acidly, Thomas swiftly gained confidence in the
capital, playing up to, but also playing with, and manipulating its tendency to
see him as a brilliant, if obscure Celtic wunderkind. Turning the ambivalent
appreciation to his own advantage, he was able to position himself as a
successor to modernism and the Auden group. The process seems to have
begun as soon as he arrived. Thus, on 30 December 1934, The Sunday Referee
carried an interview with Thomas titled, mock-provocatively, ‘Our Literary
“Gangsters”: Young Poet Attacks Modern Writers’. Thomas opined: ‘Most
writers today move about in gangs. They haven’t the strength to stand and

13
Janes, The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas, 4, 11.
14
Indeed, Thomas seems to have concentrated on making new contacts to the point of neglecting,
and even annoying long-standing Swansea friends such as Daniel Jones, who was living in Harrow
at this time (DTANL, 114).
12 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

fight as individuals. But even as “gangsters” their machine guns are full, not
of bullets, but of dried peas’ (DTANL, 109). Similarly, in January 1935, J. D.
Williams, Thomas’s former editor at the South Wales Evening Post used his
diary column in the paper to praise 18 Poems, referring in it to a conversation
with Thomas. To Williams’s claim that he was a modernist, Thomas is alleged
to have replied, ‘Eliot! Pound! Auden! They are back numbers in the poetical
world’ (DTANL, 109). However calculated and clichéd these claims appear
now, they clearly reflect him attempting to position himself as the latest thing.
During his frequent outings into the daytime world of fellow-writers,
editors, publishers, agents and reviewers, and the night-time sorties into the
literary demi-monde, Thomas’s notebooks – which contained numerous
striking and as-yet-unpublished poems – were useful calling cards, a resource
his less precocious contemporaries often did not possess. As Ralph Maud
puts it, ‘The Notebook poems were the ammunition with which he began his
assault on London’ (PITM, 39). Of course, drink, promiscuity, horseplay and
his slowly disintegrating relationship with Pamela Hansford Johnson took their
toll. Thomas, we should not forget, was only just twenty when he moved to
London. As a result, over the next two years or so, he would yo-yo between its
excitements, which invariably ended up in excess and collapse (what he dubbed
‘capital punishment’), and the staid, but necessary recuperative comforts of
the parental home. In March 1935 he had to return to Swansea, from where
he wrote to Glyn Jones: ‘The trials of life have proved too much for me, the
courts have found me guilty, and, rather hollow-eyed and with little real work
to my credit, I’ve returned home for a few weeks’ holiday’ (CL, 213). Yet for
all the self-flagellation, N5 shows that he had actually completed the quite
substantial ‘real work’ of three poems and two-thirds of one of his longest, ‘I,
in my intricate image’, during his first stay in London.
In the second week of April 1935, Thomas took N5 with him when he
went north to stay with Alan (A. J. P.) Taylor, a lecturer in History at Oxford
University, and his wife, Margaret Taylor. Alan Taylor was a friend of the poet
Norman Cameron, a new London friend of Thomas’s who was attempting to
wean him off his dissolute lifestyle. He had persuaded Taylor to take Thomas
as a guest at the cottage owned by Margaret, in Disley, Cheshire (DTANL, 114).
Thomas’s sojourn there lasted for around a month, and during it he completed
and entered ‘Thirteen’ (‘Hold hard, these ancient minutes’) and ‘Fourteen’ (the
third part of ‘I, in my intricate image’). In the long run, Thomas made a better
impression on Margaret Taylor than her husband; in fact, she became infatuated
with him (and would became his patroness later in his career). However,
perhaps because the first signs of this affection were already apparent, Thomas
did not endear himself to Alan Taylor. They seem to have got on well enough
for a fortnight and then to have fallen out. Taylor would later complain about
Thomas’s over-consumption of his beer, and his bad manners, although tellingly
INTRODUCTION 13

he seems to have been incensed most of all by his gleeful explanation of how
he contrived to make things difficult for his readers, in what seems to have
been a severe case of the prosaic historian unable to grasp modernist parataxis.
‘Fourteen’ is dated ‘May’, with a ‘Disley’ byline, and is dedicated to ‘A & M’;
perhaps ironically so in ‘A’s case, given that this poem could easily have served
for Thomas to demonstrate his devices for readerly frustration.
By the end of May 1935 Dylan Thomas was back in London. His attendance
at a dinner party at Cyril Connolly’s Chelsea flat at that time, attended by
Evelyn Waugh, shows him still working at cultivating contacts. However,
several weeks later his drinking seemed to be getting out of hand once more.
Grigson and Cameron, concerned for his well-being again, persuaded him to
take a more drastic break from London’s fleshpots and watering holes. In July,
chaperoned by Grigson, Thomas set off for a relatively alcohol-free working
holiday at a remote cottage at Glen Lough, in County Donegal in Éire.15 There
he relaxed, grew a beard and lived on fish from the local lake, which Grigson
taught him to catch. Groceries were delivered by a local farmer, Dan Ward,
and washed down with the odd tipple of poteen or porter. Grigson returned
to London after a fortnight, at the end of July, leaving Thomas on his own.
He was seemingly content enough, if willing to complain for humorous effect,
as he did in a letter to Bert Trick about being ‘as lonely as Christ’ in ‘a wild,
unfrenchlettered country, too far from Ardara, a village you can’t be too far
from’ (CL, 217).
Again, as N5 reveals for the first time, Thomas accomplished a good deal
when Grigson was present and after he had been left to his own devices, both
revising older poems and writing new ones. ‘Fourteen’, for example, the third
part of ‘I, in my intricate image’, begun at Disley, was revised at Glen Lough
before Grigson left, if its July date is anything to go by, as was ‘Fifteen’, a
revision of the much fussed-over ‘Incarnate devil’, which he entered in N5
on 24 July. On 2 August, by which date Grigson had probably left, Thomas
copied up ‘Sixteen’, ‘The seed-at-zero’ and began ‘Altarwise by owl-light’. Parts
I and II of ‘Altarwise’ were entered in N5 as ‘Seventeen’. ‘Eighteen’ is a revision
of ‘Foster the light’, another poem which had been causing him trouble for
many months. Finally, he entered ‘Nineteen’, III, IV and V of ‘Altarwise’, in
N5. With the entry of these, the most radically experimental of all his poems,
N5 concluded.
Thomas, it seems, did not slacken in his networking and publishing efforts
while he was in Ireland, posting off poems from N5 for publication as and
when he completed them. On 3 August, he had sent ‘I’ in my intricate image’,

This former donkey-shed had been converted as a studio, and then abandoned, by the US painter
15

Rockwell Kent.
14 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

with five other poems to John Lehmann for consideration for the anthology
This Year’s Poetry (he also sent it to Grigson for journal publication in New
Verse, where it appeared in the August / September 1936 issue) (CL, 221–2,
226–7). A little later he sent another N5 poem, probably ‘A grief ago’, to Robert
Herring, the editor of Life and Letters To-day. He also sent Herring the short
story ‘The Lemon’ – a reminder that he was writing fiction as well as poetry
in Glen Lough; the letter to Trick also mentions working on ‘Prologue to an
Adventure’. One incidental aspect of Thomas’s Irish sojourn illuminated by
his promotional activity and the long letters he wrote to Bert Trick and Daniel
Jones is that his use of the verso pages in N5 from ‘Sixteen’ onwards was not
necessarily simply the result of a shortage of paper. Rather, it seems that once
he had started entering a poem in a notebook he wanted it to be completed
there, and to keep his revisions with the originals if possible. In Glen Lough, for
example, he rewrote ‘Grief thief of time’, ‘Five’ in N4, although N4 had been
filled over a year before he took it to Donegal, evidently planning to rework
this particular poem there. The new version was entered on the verso page next
to ‘Five’ with the note: ‘Written and copied in later, August 1935. Glen Lough.
Donegal’ (PITM, 322). This is another reminder that Thomas often worked on
several notebooks at once – and a reminder, given what was to happen, that
although the procedure was productive, it made it more likely that notebooks
would be lost.

THE LEAVING OF N5: ACCIDENT

OR ABANDONMENT?
When Thomas filled N5, in mid-August 1935, work still had to be done with it.
If all the poems in it had arrived at publishable form, or nearly, most had yet to
find journal publication, while the longest piece in it, ‘Altarwise by owl-light’,
was still incomplete. On returning to London he continued to place the N5
poems in journals. ‘How soon the servant sun’ and ‘A grief ago’, for example,
appeared shortly afterwards in Programme, on 23 October. Wishing to follow
up swiftly on the success of 18P, Thomas now worked during the winter of
1935–6 on a second collection, extending his Christmas stay at Cwmdonkin
Drive until February 1936 and continuing his labours into May.
His haste meant some ransacking of N3 and N2 for poems to bulk out the
more challenging work of N5, which was to be the backbone of 25P, just as the
N4 poems had formed the core of 18P. Most of these rewrites, among them ‘I
have longed to move away’, ‘Here in this spring’, Shall gods be said’, ‘Out of
the sighs’ and ‘Why east wind chills’, simply refine the originals; others, such
as ‘To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe’, are fully in the condensed N5
style and would have been written after N5 was finished. On 17 March 1936,
Thomas sent an MS of twenty-three poems to Dent to be published (this edition
INTRODUCTION 15

included only eight of the ‘Altarwise’ sonnets, such was his rush). However,
publication was delayed in part by his epistolary jousting with Richard Church,
his editor at his new publisher, Dent, concerning the admissibility of the more
obscure poems. Thomas used the time to revise existing poems and write new
ones, bringing the total count up to twenty-five. In a letter of 1 May to Church,
he stated, ‘I shall probably be able to let you have the other half dozen poems
you need: two new ones, completing the long poem of which you have the first
eight sections, and four younger ones selected and revised.’ The ‘two new ones’
were IX and X of ‘Altarwise by owl-light’, while one of the ‘younger ones’ was a
revision of ‘To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe’ and another, ‘Then was
my neophyte’, also in the dense N5 style and not deriving from any notebook.
Both were published in Purpose in July 1936.16 25P itself was finally published
on 10 September 1936.
During 1936 and 1937, the pattern of Thomas’s irregular to-ing and fro-
ing between London and Swansea altered. In December 1936 his father, D. J.
Thomas, retired, and Thomas’s parents let the house in the Uplands, Swansea,
where their children had grown up. In April 1937 they moved to a smaller
house in Bishopston, a Gower village just outside Swansea. In Paul Ferris’s
words, ‘Dylan, his childhood home gone, edged towards a home of his own’
(DT, 156). By 1936, too, most of Dylan’s old Swansea friends had left the
town, to find work elsewhere. Although he had recently met and befriended
Vernon Watkins, there was less and less to return to. In April 1936 Thomas met
Caitlin Macnamara for the first time in the Wheasheaf in London. Although
he would have other relationships in the following year, his letters show he
had his heart set on Caitlin from the start. In order to meet her, new locations,
such as Laugharne and Cornwall, now cropped up in his itinerary, altering the
Swansea–London axis and, to some extent, his lifestyle.
Thomas’s literary career was well under way by this point. His second
collection had appeared with a mainstream publisher; he had an editor (who
sometimes questioned, rather than deferred to him) and an agent, David
Higham. Following a rave review of his second collection by Edith Sitwell in
The Sunday Times, he had provoked a debate in its Letters Page which lasted
several weeks, as readers debated the merits and demerits of modern poetry.
Thomas had arrived, and it was partly on the basis of this success, on 11 July
the following year, he and Caitlin were married. However, the newlyweds had
no home, and in the first year or so they were forced to lodge with friends or
with their parents. Their possessions, which included the notebooks, became

There are no MSS for numbers VI-X of ‘Altarwise’, but the letter to Church shows the sequence
16

was finished in late Spring 1936; Thomas sent a copy of IX, recently completed, to Elfriede
Cameron on 25 April 1936 (CL, 251).
16 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

ever more liable to be left behind as they flitted from one temporary home to
the next. As we have seen, Thomas was in the habit of taking his notebooks
with him wherever he travelled; equally habitual was leaving them behind in
the places he stayed. As early as May 1934, a letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson
records that he had left one at her house in Chelsea (CL, 151).
In attempting to determine the date when Thomas left N5 at Blashford,
and exactly when it was almost destroyed, we are fortunate in having the
biographical note he left with it, and which (we must assume) was given at
the same time to Louie King for fiery dispatch. (Figure 1) Its amusing self-
deprecating humour aside, the significance of the note lies in the fact that it
lists The Burning Baby as among Thomas’s publications ‘in 1938’. However, no
such book as The Burning Baby was ever published by Thomas. In December
1937, desperate for money, and without consulting Higham, he had made a
deal with his acquaintance George Reavey, who owned the Europa Press, to
publish a collection of his early short stories under this title. This had the much-
desired effect of netting some hard cash; just before Christmas 1937 he and
Caitlin went to London to collect £15 of the £20 advance Reavey had agreed,
staying in Hampstead with his friend, the poet Anna Wickham. In January
1938, the Thomases received the final £5 instalment of the advance. However,
in February 1938, Europa’s printer, William Brendon of Plymouth, refused to
publish The Burning Baby on the grounds of obscenity. Reavey arranged for
another press, Obelisk, to publish the book instead. Unfortunately, their royalty
terms were less generous than Europa’s, and Thomas dug his heels in about
continuing with the project. Reavey made no further progress in getting the
book published with Obelisk, and in October 1938, after Thomas made his
peace with his agent over his earlier misdemeanour, Higham promptly annulled
the agreement with Reavey. In other words, the only time Thomas could have
believed that Europa would be publishing The Burning Baby would have been
between December 1937 and February 1938.
Thomas’s letters allow us to roughly date the often lengthy periods he and
Caitlin spent at Blashford in the early years of their marriage. There are three
of these: October 1937–April 1938, November 1938–March 1939 and January–
March 1940. This allows us to say with some degree of certainty that N5 was left
behind, along with the by-then inaccurate biographical note, when the Thomases
left Blashford in April 1938, following their first stay. Although there is an outside
possibility that the note was not disposed of by Thomas when it became invalid
and that it and N5 were left behind after one of the two later sojourns, it is most
likely that he wrote the note early during their first stay and left it behind then.
The crucial question, of course, is not so much when Dylan Thomas left
N5 behind or how he came to mislay it in the first place – it had happened
before and would happen again, as the record shows – but rather why he left
it and, most importantly, why, having left it, he did not try to recover such
INTRODUCTION 17

FIGURE 1 Dylan Thomas, brief biographical note, written ca. late 1937 to early
1938. Image courtesy of the Richard Burton Centre, Swansea University Library.
18 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

a consummate example of his meticulous record-keeping. When he mislaid

notebooks on other occasions, as we have seen, Thomas tried to recover them.
But this time he did not; there is nothing in any of his letters about its loss, no
record of him trying to recover it, not a trace of any complaint or bemoaning
of its fate, as we would expect if he had valued it at all.
This leads to the question of whether the near-destruction of N5 was simply
the result of malice. When N5 reappeared in 2014, and it was reasonably
suggested that it must have been Yvonne Macnamara, as mistress of the house,
who gave the order for it to be burnt, journalists were swift to scent the story
of a mother-in-law’s ire and quick to write it (‘Saved: the revelatory notebook
Thomas’s fiery mother-in-law sent off to be burned’, one headline ran).17 It
wasn’t difficult to imagine Thomas as the son-in-law from hell, of course, or
to find evidence of him being waspish about Mrs Macnamara. In a letter to
Charles Fisher of January 1939, he slates her and Blashford, and England into
the bargain:

This flat English country levels the intelligence, planes down the imagination,
narrows the ‘a’s, my ears belch up old wax and misremembered passages of
misunderstood music, I sit and hate my mother-in-law, glowering at her from
corners and grumbling about her in the sad, sticky quiet of the lavatory, I
take little walks over the Red Earth. Our baby should be born at the end of
next week, we wait and it kicks. Lack of money still pours in. (CL, 403)

This, however, as most readers of his letters will recognize, is standard Thomas
bellyaching for humorous effect, sharpened in this particular instance by having
a Welsh correspondent. Against it must be set the record of his appreciation of
Blashford and its surroundings; so, writing to Vernon Watkins on an earlier
occasion, on 25 October 1937, he had claimed:

This is a very lovely place. Caitlin & I ride into the New Forest every
day, into Bluebell Wood or onto Cuckoo Hill. There’s no-one else about;
Caitlin’s mother is away; we are quiet and small and cigarette-stained and
very young. I’ve read two dozen thrillers, the whole of Jane Austen, a new
Wodehouse, some old Powys, a book of Turgenev, 3 lines by Gertrude Stein,
& an anthology of Pure Poetry by George Moore. There are only 2,000
books left in the house. (CL, 301–2)

17
Or see this article in The Irish Times by Mark Hennessy, in which Thomas is described as an
‘unwelcome guest’, ‘loathed’ by Yvonne Macnamara, and the notebook said to be full of ‘near-
indecipherable scratchings’ and ‘often impenetrable thoughts and meanings’. https​://ww​w.iri​shtim​
es.co​m/new​s/wor​ld/uk​/dyla​n-tho​mas-n​otebo​ok-go​es-un​der-h​ammer​-1.19​99958​?
INTRODUCTION 19

Moreover, while he may not have been an ideal son-in-law, Dylan seems to
have behaved himself relatively well at Blashford, and to have been liked, and
even mothered to some extent, by Yvonne Macnamara; she was liberal and
bohemian by nature, and sometimes helped him out with small gifts of money
(DTANL, 160). Moreover, it is unlikely, given her awareness of the poverty of
her daughter and her husband, that she would have destroyed anything which
might help Thomas earn a living. Oversight cannot be ruled out as a reason,
of course, but it seems likeliest to us that Thomas had left the material in the
Blashford house because he no longer needed it and that Yvonne Macnamara
may well have been aware of the fact.
The question that follows is why, by early 1938, this might be so? To answer
it we have to bear in mind the nature of N5 and the point in Thomas’s poetic
career at which it disappeared from view. On the first point, we have seen that
N5 differs from all the other known notebooks in containing no unpublished
work. Moreover, we know that the unpublished poems in his other notebooks
were very much on his mind at the time. During his first stay at Blashford,
plundering N2, N3 and even N1 for poems for The Map of Love, as he had
previously for Twenty-five Poems, he managed to rewrite ‘O make me a
mask’, ‘The spire cranes’, ‘When all my five and country senses see’, ‘Not
from this anger’, ‘We lying by seasand’, and ‘How shall my animal’ (CP14,
98, 99, 27, 100). The revision of the first is dated ‘Nov 1937 Blashford’;
the fifth ‘January 1938 Blashford’; all but ‘How shall my animal’ were sent
to Poetry (Chicago), where they appeared in August 1938. To either side of
what we might call this ‘Blashford group’, in compositional chronology, are
‘I make this in a warring absence’, completed in November 1937, and ‘After
the funeral’, dating from March to April 1938. Like ‘How shall my animal’,
‘After the funeral’ was derived from N3; both, however, were major poems
in the new style.
They reflect the fact that Thomas felt he had reached an impasse with the
‘process’ poetry he had originated in 1933 in N3, and developed at breakneck
pace in N4 and N5. What we can discern in the poems written in the new style
is a major shift in outlook, less feverish and morbid than previously, and one
which would necessitate a change in attitude towards his first four notebooks.
The work derived from them for The Map of Love was a kind of clearing-out,
we might say. Even though he would continue to raid them (for ‘On no work
of words’, ‘The tombstone told’ and ‘The hunchback in the park’) and continue
to carry them around for another three years (he took a phrase here and a line
there for two still later poems, ‘On the Marriage of a Virgin’ and ‘Holy Spring’),
this activity was more or less desultory. The year 1938 marked the end of his
use of them in any significant way. Indeed, in ‘Once it was the colour of saying’,
written later in 1938, Thomas would thematize the process of saying farewell
not only to the earlier poetry but also, arguably, to these notebooks too.
20 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

But N5 was never part of this final process of extraction. It could not
contribute even to the diminishing returns to be had from N1, N2, N3 and N4,
and in that sense, nothing was lost by letting it go, once the poems in it had
been polished and published. By April 1938, that point was almost two years in
the past. More importantly, Thomas had turned the kind of self-consciousness
explored in ‘After the funeral’, ‘How shall my animal’ and ‘Once it was the
colour of saying’ into a new kind of writing. He had a new direction, one he
had been forced to take because he reached a stylistic impasse within a year of
completing N5. As early as April 1936 he had admitted to Watkins:

[P]erhaps, as you said once, I should stop writing altogether for some
time; now I’m afraid of all the once-necessary artifices and obscurities, and
can’t, for the life of me, get any real liberation, and diffusion or dilution or
anything, into the churning bulk of the words; I seem, more than ever, to be
tightly packing away everything I have and know into a mad doctor’s bag,
and then locking it up: all you can see is the bag, all you can know is that
it’s full to the clasp, all you have to trust is that the invisible and intangible
things packed away – if they could only be seen and touched – are worth quite
a lot. … I don’t fear … any sudden cessation or drying-up, and coming to the
end, any (sentimentally speaking) putting out of the fires; what I do fear is an
ingrowing, the impulse growing like a toenail into the artifice. (CL 249–50)

Two years later, in 1938, he would reflect back on a crisis which seemed to have
been resolved in favour of a rather more transparent style in letter to a former
school friend, Bob Rees:

I … think that I was always attracted to the idea of extremely concentrated

poetry; I could never like the poetry that allowed itself great breathing spaces,
tediums and flatnesses, between essential passages; I want, and wanted, every
line to be the essence of the poem, even the flourishes, the exaggerations.
This, naturally, I could never achieve, but it still remains an ideal for me. …
Later I realised that this essential writing, this writing without concessions –
I say ‘without concessions’ for I think that the only person allowed, in a
poem, to take a moment off is the reader – could avoid dullness only if it was
dramatically effective at the same time.18

There is an element of disingenuousness about this, of course. Few would argue

that ‘How shall my animal’ is an easy poem in any way, even if it is less mind-
bogglingly demanding than ‘Altarwise by owl-light’, say; Thomas’s shift to

Quoted in Dylan Thomas: Selected Poems, ed. Walford Davies (London: Dent, 1995), xxxvi.
18
INTRODUCTION 21

transparency was relative and far more marked in his prose than in his poetry.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that he had tired of the dark intricacies of his
first two collections. The stylistic turn of 1938 is not fully apparent in The Map
of Love (1939), the collection he was beginning to think about at the time he
left N5 behind at Blashford. Like 25P, it is a transitional work, assembling as
it does revised versions of early pre-‘process’ poems from N2 and N3, tough
pieces, of which ‘I make this in a warring absence’ is the most formidable, and
more straightforward recent poems such as ‘After the funeral’. The stylistic shift
would itself become one of the subjects of the stories making up A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Dog (1940). Unlike the seething, experimental prose of
the early short stories, some of which Thomas had also included in The Map of
Love, these tales were written in a style that was closer to his letters; discursive,
acidly comic and sentimental by turns, they were an episodic Bildungsroman
based closely on young Dylan’s Swansea childhood and adolescence. Since they
had been those of a precocious poet, the stories commented ironically on the
modernist pretensions of his earlier self. The reference to the ‘exercise-books
full of poems’ in the epigraph to this Introduction, taken from one of those
stories, ‘The Fight’, is part of this gentle sending-up.
The renunciation became a physical one, however, once Thomas was
approached by Rota and realized that there was money to be made from his
MSS. On 2 April 1941, from Bishopston, he wrote to Clement Davenport:

In the pink bedroom we slept and stored apples in and knocked about, you’ll
find unless they’ve moved a number of, I think, red small exercise books full
of my old poems and stories. Would it be a lot of trouble for you to send
them to me? I mean, will you? I’ve got a chance of selling all my mss, for
about the price of a two large Player’s after the next budget, and it’s easier,
and more honest too, to send the real mss rather than to copy out the copies
in different coloured inks and with elaborate and ostentatiously inspired
corrections. Will you send them here, and not to Laugharne as we haven’t
reached there yet … I’ve got to send them off in the next few days. Thanks
very much. (CL, 543)

By this point, of course, it was too late for him to add N5 to the bill of sale.
Thomas would have believed it to have been destroyed long before, at some
point around April 1938. He may well have thought If only I had known then
what I know now, but he hadn’t, and it was gone.
A profound symbolism has been detected in the sale of N1-N4 by Constantine
Fitzgibbon and other biographers. Dylan Thomas reached the age of twenty-
six in October 1940, Fitzgibbon notes, the age at which Keats died, and he
had drawn parallels between his writing career and Keats’s several times. He
had more or less used up whatever he could from the notebooks. The war
22 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

was well under way, and he had a family to support; he felt it was time, it
has been suggested, to finally abandon his past, and sever the umbilical cord
connecting him with his Swansea youth. It may be that the passive disposal of
N5 in 1938 had been his first tentative gesture in this direction. According to
Fitzgibbon, Thomas’s own comment on his sale of the notebooks to Rota was:
‘It’s lovely when you burn your boats. They burn so beautifully.’19 But Caitlin
Thomas was surely nearer the mark when she claimed that ‘[it] was the calm,
rational, literary Dylan who decided that he didn’t want to refer to them any
more. … “I’ve pretty well exhausted all the stuff in there; there’s nothing
more I want to use”, he told me.’ She also added, ‘The drinking Dylan may
have drunk those notebooks … but it was the creative Dylan who decided to
sell them.’20

THE CONDITION AND CONTENTS OF N5

The nature of N5 as a material object, along with its paratexts, or material
contexts, sheds light on its literary contents in a detailed and fascinating way.
After she had saved them from destruction, it would seem Louie King set N5
and its accompanying biographical note aside and forgot about them for fifteen
years or so, until she was reminded of them by news of Thomas’s death, in
November 1953. Thereafter, alerted to the status of the surviving members
of the Thomas and Macnamara families as a minor media phenomenon, she
occasionally added newspaper cuttings to the bag in which she kept them. With
what degree of secrecy she did this, and who, if anyone else, knew about N5,
we do not know; the sellers, presumably family members, disclosed nothing in
public on the subject at the time of the Sotheby’s sale. Evidently, she must either
have willed it to her heirs or left it to be discovered by them after her death
in 1984. She had kept the notebook in a small blue-and-white paper bag from
Tesco, bearing, in blue, the logo, ‘DELAMERE the symbol of quality and value
at TESCO’, with ‘Dylan Thomas’ written across the top, in blue biro capitals
(Figure 2). Into this bag, along with the notebook, Thomas’s note and her own,
she placed three newspaper cuttings.

i. Cuttings
The first cutting consists of all of page eight of The Daily Express for Thursday
29 May 1958. It carries an article headlined ‘DYLAN THOMAS’S WIDOW’S
SISTER …’, and is based on an interview with Nicolette Devas, Caitlin’s sister,

Constantine Fitzgibbon, The Life of Dylan Thomas (London: Plantin Publishers, 1987), 281.
19

Caitlin Thomas with George Tremlett, Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas (London: Secker &
20

Warburg, 1986), 83.

INTRODUCTION 23

FIGURE 2 Paper Tesco bag in which the fifth notebook was kept by Louie King.
Image courtesy of the Richard Burton Centre, Swansea University Library.
24 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

with a brief assessment of her thinly disguised autobiographical novel Bonfire.

The second item is page nine of The Daily Mirror for Friday 14 June 1963, and
it contains a scathing review by Marjorie Proops of Caitlin’s recently published
Not Quite Posthumous Letter to My Daughter, headlined ‘THE ECCENTRIC
MOTHER WHO PUTS MONEY BEFORE LOVE’. Finally, there is a much
smaller cutting (newspaper unknown) on the success of the BBC’s television
documentary ‘The Life of Dylan Thomas’ at the 1963 Cannes Television Festival.

ii. Notes
The first note, in what seems to be the same blue biro as that used on the
paper bag, is in Louie King’s hand, and is written on a slip supplied with
school exercise books on which pupils had to enter ‘School’, ‘Name’, ‘Subject’
(Figures 3a and 3b). It reads:

This Book of Poetry by Dylan Thomas was with a lot of papers given to
me to burn in the kitchen boiler. I saved it and forgetting all about it until
I read of his death. The photoes [sic] were given to me by Mrs Summers of
(Ferdown) Alas! time goes on I do nothing. With a Pathetic passionate voice
Oh! Caitlin these people that do believe they must have something.21

‘Mrs Summers’ is the painter and photographer Nora Summers, a well-off artist
and friend of the painter Augustus John and his family, who lived near Blashford,
at Fryern Court. The ‘photoes’ referred to were presumably some of those taken
by her of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas during their first visit to Blashford (Louie
King, or her heirs, had removed the photos before N5 came up for sale in 2014).
‘Ferdown’ is a misspelling of Ferndown, the house where the Summers family
lived. Yvonne Macnamara had separated from her husband, Francis Macnamara,
in 1919, and had moved to Hampshire in order to be near John, a family friend,
and the children of the Johns and the Macnamaras grew up, to some extent,
together. It was at the Johns’ house that Yvonne met Nora Summers, and they
became lovers. Yvonne’s children resented Nora, looking on her as a monster who
had stolen their mother from them. Nevertheless, despite Caitlin’s resentment,
Summers was a fine photographer; her photographs of Caitlin, at Blashford in
summer 1936, and of Caitlin and Dylan as a young married couple, taken in
1937–8, are among the best ever taken of either of them.
By way of contrast to its halting and ‘Pathetic passionate’ tone, the second
note in the Tesco bag, in Thomas’s own hand, as we have noted (see Figure 1),
is a brief, mildly rogueish biography of the sort he would have enclosed when
submitting work to journals:

The stray word ‘oven’, which follows the final sentence, may be a correction of ‘boiler’.
21
INTRODUCTION 25

FIGURE 3A AND 3B Sides 1 and 2 of note by Louie King enclosed with N5. Image
courtesy of the Richard Burton Centre, Swansea University Library.
26 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

Dylan Thomas. Born in Swansea, South Wales. No respectable occupation,

no permanent address. Contributor to many periodicals in England and
elsewhere, including the Criterion, Life and Letters Today, New Verse,
Contemporary Verse and Prose, Transition. ‘18 Poems’ (Parton Press) was
published in 1934; ‘25 Poems’ (Dent) in 1936; and ‘The Burning Baby’
(Europa Press) in 1938.

iii. Poems in N5
N5 contains the following poems. Unless otherwise specified, the dates when
they were entered in N5, and the places where they were entered, were
appended by Thomas at the end of the poem and are given in brackets.
1. ‘One’, ‘All all and all’. (No date; last half-stanza on missing page.)
2. ‘Two’, ‘My world is pyramid’. (No date; last stanza on missing page.)
3. ‘Three’, ‘Do you not father me?’. (Heavily deleted ‘Sept. 30. 1934’
after stanza 3 of first version; the revision, of the stanza which follows
it on the same page, plus an additional and final stanza on the facing
verso page, is dated ‘July 26. 35. Glen Lough’.)
4. ‘Four’, ‘Especially when the October wind’. (‘1 Oct 1934’.)
5. ‘Five’, ‘I dreamed my genesis’. (‘1934’.)
6. ‘Six’, ‘I fellowed sleep’. (‘1934’.)
7. ‘Seven’, ‘When, like a running grave’. (‘27 Oct 1934’.)
8. ‘Eight’, ‘Now’. (‘December ’34’.)
9. ‘Nine’, ‘How soon the servant sun’. (‘January ’35’.)
10. ‘Ten’, ‘A grief ago’. (‘January ’35’.)
11. ‘Eleven’, ‘I, in my intricate image’, I. (‘February ’35’.)
12. ‘Twelve’, ‘They see the country pinnacle’. (‘I, in my intricate image’
part II.) (‘March ’35’, at beginning and end of poem.)
13. ‘Thirteen’, ‘Hold hard, these ancient minutes’. (‘April ’35’ (Cheshire).)
14. ‘Fourteen’, ‘They suffer the undead water’. (‘I, in my intricate image’
part III). ‘(Disley. May)’ at beginning of poem; ‘July ’35 Glen Lough,
Donegal’.
15. ‘Fifteen’, ‘Incarnate devil in a talking snake’. (‘July 24. ’35. Glen Lough’.)
16. ‘Sixteen’, ‘The seed-at-zero’. (‘August. 2. 35. Glen Lough’.)
17. ‘Seventeen’, ‘Altarwise by owl-light’, I and II. (‘August 35 Glen Lough’,
in blue pencil – poem is in ink.) ‘(To be continued)’ at the end of the
entry, immediately after II.
18. ‘Eighteen’, ‘Foster the light’. (‘August. ’35. Glen Lough’.)
INTRODUCTION 27

19. ‘Nineteen’, ‘Altarwise by owl-light’, III, IV and V. (‘August 35 Glen

Lough’, in blue pencil after III; ‘August 35 Glen Lough’, in blue pencil
after IV; ‘Glen Lough’, in ink, after V.)

iv. Condition and contents of N5

N5 is the same kind of school exercise book as N1-N4; that is, of the kind with
brand names such as ‘The Zenith Exercise Book’, common at the time and still
manufactured today. They made provision for entering ‘Name’, ‘School’ and
‘Date’ on the front cover, and often contained useful reference material on
the inside of the front cover and the inside and outside of their back covers.
This material could include multiplication tables, a map of the British Isles and
lists of imperial weights and measures (chains, furlongs, poles, perches, etc.).
Thomas alludes in his stories ‘The Fight’ to the ‘Danger Dont’s’ that were often
printed on the outside of the back cover. These were a series of exhortations
intended to prevent children being involved in ‘street accidents’; they included
such injunctions as ‘Don’t follow a rolling ball into the road or street while
there is traffic about!’ (Figure 4).
N5 is centrally stapled, and its two original staples, slightly rusted, remain in
the spine, but it has lost its cover. It is also missing several sheets. What would
have been its third sheet (or pages five and six) has been removed, with the result
that the page containing the last three lines of ‘All all and all’ has disappeared.
However, the sheet has been cut out flush with the spine, so its continuation in
the second half of the notebook remains in place. The final stanza of ‘Two’, ‘My
world is pyramid’ is also missing. This could mean that what would have been the
sixth sheet in N5 (or pages eleven and twelve) has also been removed; if it has, the
continuation of the sheet in the second half of N5 (what would have been pages
seventy-seven and seventy-eight) has also been removed. However, it is impossible
to be certain that this is what happened, since we do not know what the original
number of pages was; it could be that ‘Two’ had not been finished when Thomas
entered it or that he simply decided not to add the final stanza. All we do know
for sure is that the total number of pages in N5 is eighty-two and that this number
is not divisible by four, whereas if the notebook were intact it would be, given that
each sheet making up the book has four sides or pages. It currently has a total of
forty and a half sheets, making eighty-two pages (verso and recto).
Three of the pages – thirty-seven/-eight; forty-seven/-eight; and sixty-five/-
six – have been partly torn out. Pages forty-three/-four and fifty-nine/-sixty
have been torn, but are otherwise fully intact. Overall, the physical condition
of N5 is good; its pages are slightly foxed, but otherwise undamaged by age
or use.
Thirty-one of the pages of N5 are completely blank, and fifty-one are
written on. Of the written-on sides, two are merely verso sides with pencil
28 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

FIGURE 4 Cover of Dylan Thomas’s Red Notebook, a school exercise book of the
same kind as N5. Image courtesy of the Lockwood Memorial Library, State University
of New York, Buffalo.
INTRODUCTION 29

scribbles unrelated to the poetry. The first of them, page four, has a smudgy,
pencilled calculation in the top left-hand corner. The second, page eighty-two,
has a pencilled address (‘Mrs Morgan Grimm’s Kitchen Abinger nr Dorking’),
a phone number (‘Wembley 2851’) and (upside down) ‘Michael Harrison c/o
Outham Bankes’. The other forty-nine written-on pages have been used for
poetry. Of these, forty-one are the recto pages Thomas preferred to use, and
eight are verso pages. The verso pages which have poetry on them are pages
twelve, sixty, sixty-two, seventy-two, seventy-four, seventy-six, seventy-eight
and eighty.
Thomas wrote in N5 largely in ink, but he also used at least one pencil and
a blue colouring pencil, particularly when revising poems on the verso pages.
As in N1-N4, he initially wrote only on the recto pages of N5. The verso pages
were used when Thomas returned to revise poems on the facing recto page (as
for ‘Three’, ‘Do you not father me?’), or when he began to run short of recto
pages near the end of the notebook.

‘STYLUS OF LIGHTNING’: THE

TRANSCRIPTION PROCESS
Various difficulties were encountered in transcribing the MS, but almost all
were minor and relatively easy to overcome. As already mentioned, three pages
and parts of several other pages were missing, but as far as we could tell this
only affected the first two poems in N5. It is unlikely that the missing parts of
these poems – entered at the start of N5 when Thomas was doing very little
in the way of on-the-spot revision – contained much if anything in the way of
rewriting. Thomas’s handwriting is usually legible, if rather small and crabbed
at times. There are, however, exceptions to the general pattern of clarity,
particularly where Thomas deleted lines and interlineated new ones in writing
that is even smaller than his usual hand. In some places, too, the ink has faded
or the pencil is faint, or has been smudged and blurred.
The main problem posed by the text was Thomas’s deletions. Starting with
‘Three’, ‘Do you not father me?’, these become more frequent thereafter. They
are not usually heavy, and can usually be deciphered with the naked eye (much
of the crossing-out is in pencil). However, a handful of part-lines and words
remained impenetrable. Digital image manipulation software was used on one
occasion, and while it resolved the opening line of ‘Altarwise by owl-light’ V,
other cases had to remain in limbo. These are recorded in the transcript and
notes; they are to be found in the second and fourth stanzas of ‘Eleven’, ‘I, in
my intricate image’, in stanza one of ‘Fifteen’, ‘Incarnate devil’, in stanza two
of ‘Eighteen’, ‘Foster the light’, and in ‘Nineteen’, ‘Altarwise by owl-light’ III,
‘First it was the lamb on knocking knees’. Detective work therefore awaits future
scholars; in the meantime, readers are encouraged to make their own guesses.
30 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

‘THE METRE OF THE DICTIONARY’:

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF N5
Dylan Thomas’s notebooks have a significance rare in the history of poetry. Most
poets destroy their juvenilia. Thomas is rare, among major poets, in his precocity
(‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ was written within
days of his nineteenth birthday), and in the fact that, partly as a result of this, he
preserved so much of his juvenilia for later use. Most of the poetry in N1, N2
and N3 is relatively weak and unrealized, of course, before ‘And death shall have
no dominion’ – Thomas’s first true ‘process’ poem – which was written in N3
in mid-April 1933. Coalescing several previously existing aspects of his poetry,
this marked the beginning of the development of his unique process vision and
voice and an astonishingly rapid development of his first mature style. In N4 in
particular, begun in September 1933, we witness his poetry evolving in richness,
subtlety and power on a weekly, if not daily basis.
N5 seems initially to be simply a continuation of N4, both in the obvious
chronological sense and in the fact that it, too, contains poems which would
go into 18P. It is clear that the first poem in N5, ‘All all and all’ is in the same
vein of confronting fears about the adult world and sexuality as is in ‘If I were
tickled by the rub of love’, which precedes it as the last poem in N4, and both
went into his first collection. Other themes and concerns of N4 continued to
be explored in N5, or are intensified. Thomas’s use of Hamlet, for example,
to explore the father–son bond crops up in ‘Now’, ‘I fellowed sleep’ and ‘I, in
my intricate image’. The related fascination with suicide and death, and the
resultant self-exhortations to avoid it, and shun morbidity, continue. However,
this does not mean that N5 is merely an adjunct to N4, just more of the same.
On the contrary, we would argue that N5 registers a formal shift, if not a
thematic one, a move towards a less symbolically coherent, more metapoetic
style, and its implications for understanding of Thomas’s poetic development
are almost as great as those for N3 and N4. Before discussing this change,
however, we will list a few of the more obvious ways in which N5 clarifies and
enhances our understanding.
One immediate impact of N5 is that it clears up some minor cruxes of Dylan
Thomas scholarship. In the case of ‘I dreamed my genesis’, for example, there
is a full stop at the end of the first stanza in its versions in 18P and CP52 –
that is, in the versions of the poem published during Thomas’s lifetime and
thus (apparently) with his authority. That full stop, however, leaves the second
stanza without a subject, as Ralph Maud observed; his solution, as early as 1963,
was to propose that it should be a comma. However, when Daniel Jones made
this alteration in TP71 there was strident opposition to his tampering with the
original punctuation, and Maud and Davies did not make the same change in
CP88, nor did Goodby in CP14. However, with no MS version of the poem
INTRODUCTION 31

against which to check these claims there could be no certainty on this score. N5
shows the original to have had a comma, powerfully implying that the full stop
is a compositor’s error which Thomas himself failed to spot before his death.
Another obvious impact lies in the changes N5 makes to the dating, and
thus the likely order of composition, of the poems. Maud and Davies argued in
CP88 for a Christmas 1934 date for the start of ‘Altarwise’, on the strength that
‘the first two sonnets are nativity poems’ and that they were likely to be the two
poems Thomas offered Grigson for New Verse in February 1935 (CP88, 210).
But the poems’ entry into N5 in August 1935 virtually proves that they were
composed at the height of summer, not in the depths of winter. Similarly, ‘Now’
and ‘How soon the servant sun’ could not have been composed in May 1935,
as Maud and Davies also thought, or even ‘early 1935’, as Goodby hazarded
of ‘Now’, since they were entered in N5 in ‘December ’34’ and ‘January ’35’,
respectively (CP14, 296). N5 also now makes it possible to chart the history of
the composition of a poem more accurately. The generally agreed range of dates
for ‘I, in my intricate image’ was between October 1934 and March 1935. Yet
N5 not only shows that the first part was not completed until February 1935,
with parts two and three added in April, but that section three was fully revised
at Glen Lough in July. Not all early guesses at dates are disproved: Paul Ferris’s
speculation that ‘My world is pyramid’ is the poem mentioned in a letter of 2
August 1934 to Pamela Hansford Johnson can now be confirmed (CL, 190).
In clarifying the order of composition, N5 also clarifies the relationships
between its poems in illuminating ways. It shows, for example, how material
was swapped between them, uncovering hitherto unsuspected links and
interactions. We now know that ‘salvation’s bottle’ in ‘Altarwise’ V began life as
a deleted line in the third section of ‘I, in my intricate image’, while the opening
line of ‘Altarwise’ IV, ‘What is the metre of the dictionary?’, was originally line
seven of a deleted section of the second sonnet in the sequence, ‘Death is all
metaphors’. There is no doubt that being able to compare the different contexts
in which these lines were used will allow readers to gain more purchase on
them. The same evidence can, of course, also help to eliminate fruitless lines
of enquiry. Maud and Davies ‘deduced’ in CP88 that ‘I, in my intricate image’
was a direct continuation of ‘When, like a running grave’; but, although both
poems include the ‘Cadaver’ figure, we now know that there was a four-month
gap between their entry in N5, making that deduction less likely (CP88, 195).
N5 also reveals more general trends; thus, while 25P has traditionally been
regarded as the Thomas collection most preoccupied with religion, N5 reveals
that he consistently worked to reduce its Christian element, deleting the last
two stanzas of ‘The seed-at-zero’, for example.
These two stanzas are some of the more substantial pieces of previously
unknown material N5 contains, and such material was one of the main reasons
for excitement at the time of its discovery in 2014. However, it is often the
32 THE FIFTH NOTEBOOK OF DYLAN THOMAS

smaller details – deleted phrases and even single words – which shed the most
valuable light on Thomas’s working methods and intentions. For example,
N5 tells us that the fifth line of ‘Altarwise by owl-light’ I originally began ‘Old
Scratch the fork-tail lurcher’. ‘Old Scratch’ is a jocular term for the Devil, and its
replacement by ‘The atlas-eater with a jaw for news’ seems therefore to be a case
of Thomas curbing his infernal allusions and inserting his alter ego (as youthful
journalist) more fully into the narrative. ‘Abaddon’, angel of the bottomless pit,
had already appeared in line three, so it may be that adding ‘Old Scratch’ two
lines later seemed like overdoing things. Nevertheless, the ‘gentleman’ to whom
‘Old Scratch’ is also syntactically related here is Christ, and as a good Blakeian,
Thomas viewed Christ and Satan – as in ‘Incarnate devil’, the poem preceding
this one – as twin victims of a tyrannical, Nobodaddy-like God-the-Father.
The Devil therefore lurks within the ‘gentleman’ (as the echo of Edgar’s ‘The
prince of darkness is a gentleman’ from King Lear hints), accounting for Old
Scratch’s appearance in the first place. Thinking about it, Thomas may well have
decided that the devilishness was better dispersed in the poem’s details, letting
‘scratch’ became the ‘scraped’ of line eleven, perhaps. Even so, the presence of
Old Scratch in the N5 original boosts those critics who detect a certain satanic
majesty in the ‘gentleman’ and undermines more straightforward Christological
readings of the sequence. A similar revision in ‘Altarwise’ II, where ‘The devil’s
grammar and the burning bibles’ was deleted, makes the same point.
The revisions in N5, then, have the potential to tell us much about Thomas’s
thinking and his compositional processes. In all, thirteen of its poems were
altered after or while they were being fair-copied, some substantially (there
are variant passages of up to eight lines), a much greater proportion than for
any of the other notebooks. This reflects the speed of Thomas’s development
at the time, of course, the pressures of his publication deadline for 18P and
the complexity and daring of the poems themselves. All of this increased the
need for on-the-spot revision, particularly in the two most radical and complex
pieces in the notebook, ‘I, in my intricate image’ and ‘Altarwise by owl-light’.
It is significant, we feel, that both of these poems were written and entered
into N5 after the final poem in it intended for 18P, ‘Seven’, ‘When, like a
running grave’. At that point, Thomas presumably knew that he had enough
poems of a sufficiently high calibre to complete his first collection, and it seems
to us that he made a point of registering the fact. The date he entered ‘Seven’
into N5, ‘26th October 1934’, with the year underlined, is given in unusually
full form at the foot of the poem, and – uniquely in N5 – a second longer, more
emphatic horizontal line, with two short vertical strokes delimiting its ends,
has been drawn in the centre of the page beneath the poem and the date. Given
that 26 October 1934 was the day before Thomas’s twentieth birthday, and
knowing the significance he attached to birthdays (sometimes marking them
with special stock-taking or summary poems), we feel it is likely that in doing
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 CORO
¿Tanto harás tú que sea mi poder?

ATENA
Levantaré hasta la cumbre de la fortuna a quien te rindiere culto.

CORO
¿Y me prometes que así será en todo tiempo?

ATENA
Yo no prometo jamás lo que no he de cumplir.

CORO
Siento que me ablandas y que desecho todo mi rencor.

ATENA
Corre, pues, a los que acabas de ganarte por amigos.

CORO
¿Qué bienes quieres tú que pida en mis cánticos para este pueblo?

ATENA
Cuanto sea nobles y leales victorias; y que la tierra y el cielo, y e
mar con sus aguas, y los vientos con sus blandas corrientes, y el so
con sus claros rayos traigan sobre este suelo toda suerte de bienes
Que la tierra abunde en frutos y rebaños; que vivan los ciudadanos en
prosperidad, jamás derribada a los golpes del tiempo; que se logren y
florezcan los tiernos retoños infantiles. Pero a los impíos ya puedes
exterminarlos con más furor que nunca. Yo amo a los hombres como e
hortelano a las plantas, y quiero que la semilla de los buenos no se
dañe con la mala hierba de los malos. Tal es lo que te incumbe. A m
toca no permitir jamás que esta ciudad vencedora deje de llevarse
nunca entre los hombres el honor y lauro del triunfo en los más
gloriosos combates.
 CORO
Sí; acepto habitar en compañía de Atena. No he de menospreciar yo
ciudad donde moran el omnipotente Zeus y Ares, y que es alcáza
fortísimo de los dioses, honor y contento de las deidades griegas y
baluarte de sus aras. A la cual mi amorosa voluntad le desea, le
predice que los espléndidos rayos del sol han de hacer brotar de la
tierra en abundosa copia cuantos frutos hacen afortunada la vida.

ATENA
Obra es de mi amor a esta ciudad haber hecho que en ella pongan
su habitación las potentes e implacables diosas cuyo destino es regi
todas las cosas humanas. Pues el que no se granjea a estos terribles
enemigos, no sabe qué calamidades le aguardan aún en la vida. Los
pecados de sus mayores le arrastran hasta ellas; la muerte llega en
silencio, y con sañuda crueldad le reduce a polvo cuando se jactaba de
su fortuna.

CORO
Oíd lo que mi amor os desea. Que jamás la furia de los vientos
pierda los árboles; ni los ardores del sol abrasen las plantas e impidan
que se abran lozanos los pimpollos; ni la triste y estéril sequía os
azote. Antes bien, que vuestros ganados se multipliquen, y a su tiempo
os regalen con dobles crías; y que los ricos tesoros arrancados a las
entrañas de la tierra honren la liberalidad de los dioses que os los
dieron.

ATENA (a los AREOPAGITAS.)

Ya habéis oído, custodios de nuestra ciudad, cuántas bendiciones
llaman sobre vosotros. Mucho puede en verdad la veneranda Erinna
con los dioses del cielo y con los que habitan las mansiones
subterráneas, y bien se ve cómo dispone de la suerte de los humanos
a éstos les da cánticos y alegrías; a aquéllos una vida de sombras y
lágrimas.

CORO
 Alejaos de aquí, azotes que malográis a los hombres con prematura
muerte. Dioses, de quienes penden los destinos de los mortales, dejad
que las tiernas y amorosas doncellas gocen de las dulzuras de
Himeneo; permitidlo vosotras también, oh divinas Moiras, hermanas
mías de madre, que a cada cual recompensáis según sus obras, sin
que haya lugar a que no asistáis, ni tiempo en que no hagáis sentir e
peso de vuestras justas leyes; diosas honradísimas de todos los dioses.

ATENA
Al oírte pedir para mi pueblo con tanto amor dichas y bendiciones
me lleno de alegría. ¡Oh atractivos ojos de la Persuasión, y cuán
merecedores sois de que yo os ame, pues que habéis velado por m
lengua cuando hablaba a quien con dura tenacidad se resistía a
escucharme! Venció por fin Zeus, dios de la elocuencia, y nuestra
causa, la causa del bien, alcanzó completa victoria.

CORO
Quiera el cielo que jamás se oigan en esta ciudad los rugidos de la
discordia, que no se sacia de males. Jamás se empape el suelo en la
sangre de los ciudadanos, derramada en fratricidas y vengativas
contiendas; sino antes con el deseo del bien común sean unas sus
mutuas alegrías, y unos también sus odios: que en la unión tienen los
hombres el remedio de sus mayores infortunios.

ATENA
¿No es verdad que, serena ya su razón, encontró por fin su lengua
el camino de las bendiciones? Tengo para mí que de estas diosas de
espantable catadura han de venir grandes ganancias a mi pueblo
Pagadles amor con amor; tributadles grandes honores, y la ciudad y
toda su comarca verán pasar los tiempos en gloria y en justicia.

CORO
¡Salve, salve; los dioses os den felicidades y abundancia! Salve
pueblo de Atenas. Palas, la bien amada hija de Zeus, os mira con amo
y habita a vuestro lado. Que no se desmientan nunca vuestras
virtudes. Zeus honra a los mortales que Palas acoge bajo sus alas.

ATENA
Salve, también vosotras. Yo saldré delante para mostraros vuestra
morada. Marchad al resplandor de las antorchas de ese religioso
cortejo y en medio de las sagradas víctimas que os serán ofrecidas en
sacrificio. Corred a vuestro templo subterráneo, y apartad de esta
tierra la adversidad, y traed sobre ella la bienandanza y la victoria. Y
vosotros, ciudadanos de Atenas, hijos de Cranao, guiad a las que
vienen a habitar entre vosotros. ¡Ojalá que la ciudad recuerde siempre
la memoria de tales beneficios!

CORO
Salve, salve, diré otra vez y otra; salve todos los que habitan en
esta ciudad de Palas, dioses y mortales. Honrad con vuestro culto la
vecindad que me habéis concedido y jamás tendréis que lamentar los
reveses de la fortuna.

ATENA
Vuestros votos me colman de contento. Que el resplandor de las
lucíferas antorchas os acompañe hasta los profundos lugares donde
tenéis vuestro templo subterráneo. Vayan también mis sacerdotisas
piadosas guardas de mi sagrada imagen. Y vosotras, gloria y
ornamento de la tierra de Teseo, cortejo insigne de doncellas y
matronas; y vosotras, ancianas venerables, llegad todas luciendo
vuestras vestiduras de púrpura y en las manos encendidas teas, y
tributad así a estas diosas públicos honores porque su estancia entre
nosotros se señale en las edades futuras con dichosa y perdurable
bienandanza.
(Vase.)

CORTEJO
Marchad a vuestra morada, poderosas y venerables hijas de la
Noche, castas vírgenes, acompañadas de este pueblo que os ama
Aplaudid, Atenienses.
Descended a esos antiguos y profundos antros donde recibiréis
insigne culto de honores y sacrificios. Pueblo de Atenas, aplaudid
todos.
Venid acá, venerandas diosas; sednos propicias. Mirad con amor a
nuestra comarca, y recibid el agasajo de estas encendidas antorchas
que arden en vuestro obsequio. Y nosotras acompañemos su carrera
con alegres cánticos y gritos de regocijo.
Por siempre jamás ofrecerá en tu templo la ciudad de Palas
libaciones y lucientes antorchas. Así lo concertaron la Providencia
infinita de Zeus, y la Moira. Rompamos en cánticos de alegría y
regocijo.
 LAS SUPLICANTES

(Aparecen el CORO DE DANAIDES, con ramos de suplicantes en sus manos, y DANAO.)

CORO
EUS que protege a los suplicantes, nos mire con piadosos
ojos al tomar tierra en este puerto. Hicímonos a la mar en
las arenosas bocas del Nilo, y dejamos aquella sagrada
región, vecina a la Siria. Venimos huyendo. No nos
destierra sentencia ninguna popular por sangre que no
hemos derramado: huímos de los hijos de Egipto, por escapar a sus
abominables, impías e incestuosas nupcias. Danao, nuestro padre, ha
sido nuestro consejero y nuestro guía; él quien entre los males
resolviéndose por el más honroso, determinó que huyésemos sin
tardanza, cruzásemos el mar y arribásemos a esta tierra de Argos, de
donde desciende nuestro linaje: porque nos gloriamos de venir de
aquel Épafo, a quien concibió con sólo el tacto de Zeus, con un soplo
suyo, la becerrilla perseguida del Tábano. Y ¿a qué pueblo que nos
fuese más amigo pudiéramos llegar en súplica con estos ramos
vestidos de lana, que ostentan nuestras manos? ¡Oh dioses, señores
de esta ciudad, y de sus campos y de las claras corrientes que los
riegan; oh dioses del cielo, y vosotros los que ocupáis las sedes
subterráneas, tremendos vengadores; y tú, Zeus, que guardas la
morada del piadoso, acoged todos a estas mujeres que os suplican, y
haced que las voluntades les sean favorables! Antes que la caterva
insolente de los hijos de Egipto ponga el pie en esta arenosa playa
volvedlos al mar, a ellos y a sus remeras naves. Y allí perezcan
asaltados por las olas embravecidas en deshecha borrasca de truenos
relámpagos y vientos, antes que hagan suyas a las hijas del hermano
de su padre, y profanen con impía fuerza lechos de que la ley los
rechaza.
Ven, novillo hijo de Zeus y de nuestra abuela la becerrilla que pacía
la verde hierba de los prados; ven. Tú que fuiste concebido con sólo e
tacto de Zeus, con un soplo suyo, cruza los mares y acude a nuestra
venganza hoy que te invocamos. ¡Épafo! Así te llamaron del origen de
tu nacimiento. Pasados los meses que pide la ley de naturaleza, Io te
parió, y tu nombre confirmó la verdad de tu origen.
Aquí le pronunciaré yo en estas praderas, antiguamente visitadas de
mi progenitora, y recordaré sus trabajos, y daré señales ciertas de m
linaje; las cuales bien que a los habitantes de esta tierra les parezcan
inauditas, pero al fin han de comprender, si me atienden, que digo
verdad.
Si pasa por aquí algún argivo que entienda el lenguaje de las aves, y
oye nuestras tristes quejas, se imaginará estar oyendo la voz de la
mísera esposa del pérfido Tereo; la voz de Filomela, perseguida por e
gavilán.
La cual, arrojada de los campos y ríos de su querencia, da suelta a
dolor en el lugar de su destierro, y junto con él llora la muerte de aque
hijo que entregó a sus manos homicidas el furor de una madre cruel y
despiadada.
Así doy yo suelta a mis ayes, remedando la triste canturia jonia, y
castigo este delicado rostro, que tostaron los aires del Nilo, mientras se
ahoga el corazón con el peso de tantas lágrimas. Mi angustia es
extrema; estoy temblando que mi huída de aquella serena región de
Egipto ha de empeñar más a mis deudos en perseguirme.
 Ea, pues, dioses de mi casa, escuchadme. Mirad por los fueros de la
justicia; no dejéis que la iniquidad se consume, y si es verdad que sois
aborrecedores de toda insolencia, sed justos con estas nefandas
nupcias. Hasta el vencido en la guerra, si se acoge a vuestras aras
encuentra un asilo contra la fuerza del vencedor, y la majestad de
vuestra divina grandeza le protege.
¡Quiera Zeus disponerlo así! ¡Inescrutable es tu voluntad, oh Zeus
mas a las veces muéstrase ella toda resplandeciente, aun en medio de
las tinieblas obscuras, para negra desdicha de la raza de los humanos!
Lo que la mente de Zeus tiene decretado que suceda, jamás se
tuerce ni se frustra, sino que llega a su fin por aquellos caminos
dilatados del pensamiento divino, envueltos en espesas tinieblas
donde el ojo del hombre no pudo nunca penetrar.
Él precipita a los mortales en la sima de su perdición desde las altas
torres de sus soberbias esperanzas, y sin hacer esfuerzo ninguno; que
todo es llano y descansado para los dioses. Sentada la Mente divina en
la cumbre del cielo, ejecuta desde allí todos sus designios sin moverse
de su trono de gloria.
Eche, pues, desde la altura una mirada sobre la insolencia de los
hombres. Vea a aquellos verdes mozos, cómo se encienden con e
lascivo apetito de mis bodas; cual los ciega y enloquece el aguijón de
su furioso y desenfrenado deseo, que no les deja un punto; y más, que
ya habrán visto que salieron burlados sus malos intentos.
¡Ahí está la causa de mis males; las penas que me afligen, y me
hacen romper en agudos gemidos, y derramar lágrimas! ¡Ay, ay de mí
En vida estoy celebrando mis honras con estos funerarios plañidos que
tan bien sientan a mi dolor. ¡Oh montuosa tierra de la Argólide, séme
propicia; yo te adoro! Escucha benigna mi lengua bárbara. Mira cómo
me precipito a hacer jiras estos linos que me visten, y este velo de
Sidón que cubre mi cabeza.
En los días de bienandanza, cuando la muerte se aleja de nosotros
ofrécense a los dioses sacrificios en acción de gracias por sus
bondades. Pero ¡ay de mí, ay de mí triste, que mis males no tienen fin
¿Adónde me arrastrará el mar de mis infortunios? ¡Oh montuosa tierra
de la Argólide, séme propicia; yo te adoro! Escucha benigna mi lengua
bárbara. Mira cómo me precipito a hacer jiras estos linos que me visten
y este velo de Sidón que cubre mi cabeza.
Cierto que el leñoso edificio que arman linos y remos me guardó de
las olas, y favorecido de los vientos me trajo aquí sin haber pasado po
los horrores de la borrasca. No me quejaré, pues, de mi fortuna. ¡Pero
quiera el Padre omnividente mostrársenos propicio hasta el fin, porque
esta numerosa descendencia de una madre veneranda pueda huír, ¡ay
de mí!, pueda huír el lecho de tales esposos como aquellos, y queden
libres y doncellas!
Casta hija de Zeus, tú cuya serena mirada no hay poder que la
turbe, míranos piadosa, y defiéndenos de los que nos persiguen
Virgen, sé el amparo de estas vírgenes, porque esta numerosa
descendencia de una madre veneranda pueda huír, ¡ay de mí! pueda
huír el lecho de tales esposos como aquellos y queden libres y
doncellas.
Donde no, si no hallamos amparo en los dioses del Olimpo, lazos
hay de qué colgarnos, y una vez muertas nos encaminaremos a
aquellas negras y profundas mazmorras, en que el rayo precipitó a los
hijos de la Tierra, y nos postraremos ante el Zeus de los muertos
huésped que a nadie rechaza, presentándole nuestros ramos de
suplicantes. ¡Ay, Zeus! ¡Ay, cólera divina que perseguiste a Io
Reconozco en mis males el furor de aquella esposa augusta que se
enseñorea de los cielos; que es muy poderoso el viento que
desencadenó esta tormenta.
Graves palabras tendría que sufrir Zeus, nada dignas de su
majestad, si menospreciando a las hijas de la becerrilla, después de
haber sido su primer padre, apartase ahora los ojos de nuestras
súplicas. ¡Oiga de las alturas donde habita, esta voz que le implora
¡Ay, Zeus! ¡Ay, cólera divina que perseguiste a Io! Reconozco en mis
males el furor de aquella esposa augusta que se enseñorea de los
cielos; que es muy poderoso el viento que desencadenó esta tormenta

DANAO
Obremos con prudencia, hijas; Pues que la experiencia de vuestro
anciano padre fué el fiel piloto que os encaminó hasta aquí, ya que
estamos en tierra, os recomiendo que seáis prudentes y grabéis mis
palabras en la memoria. Estoy viendo una nube de polvo, muda
mensajera de un ejército; oigo el rechinar de los cubos de las ruedas
que nada silenciosas giran sobre los ejes, y diviso multitud de peones
armados de escudos; y lanzas que se agitan; y corceles, y redondos
carros de guerra. Por ventura, serán los príncipes de la comarca, que
avisados de nuestro arribo, vienen a nosotros a verlo por sus propios
ojos. Ya vengan de paz, ya mueva a esa gente alguna cruel y airada
resolución, lo mejor será, oh hijas, que a todo evento nos refugiemos
en esa colina consagrada a los dioses públicos de este pueblo; que un
ara vale más que una torre: es un escudo impenetrable. Ea, pues, id lo
más pronto que podáis; ¡al punto! Mostrad reverentes en vuestras
manos esos ramos suplicantes, vestidos de blanca lana, alegría de
venerando Zeus; y a vuestros huéspedes respondedles lo que haya que
responder, con modestia y en tono que les mueva a lástima: en fin
cual conviene a quienes llegan a suelo extraño. Explicadles bien cómo
vuestra huída no fué por sangre ninguna que hubieseis derramado
Nada de arrogancia en vuestro acento: el semblante honesto, la
mirada apacible, y todo vuestro ademán dulce y mesurado. Mucho
comedimiento en las palabras, y nada de discursos prolijos: cosa a los
de esta tierra aborrecidísima. Acuérdate que hay que ceder; que eres
una extranjera fugitiva y necesitada, y que a los que están debajo no
les cuadra hablar con altanería.

CORO
Hablaste de prudencia, padre, a quienes saben tenerla
Procuraremos guardar en la memoria tus discretos consejos. ¡Mire po
nosotras Zeus, padre de nuestro linaje!

DANAO
No estéis ahí ociosas; apresuraos a poner por obra vuestro intento.

CORO
Quisiera estar ya a tu lado y sentada al pie de ese trono.

DANAO
 ¡Oh Zeus, compadécete de nosotros antes que sucumbamos a
nuestros males!

CORO
Él nos mire con ojos de piedad; que si él quiere, todo acabará bien.

DANAO
Invocad ahora a ese ave de Zeus.

CORO
¡Saludables rayos de Helios, nosotras os invocamos! ¡Casto Apolo
dios que en otro tiempo te viste desterrado de la mansión celeste
compadécete de nosotras como quien sabe lo que es tal desventura!

DANAO
¡Sí, él se compadezca de nosotros y nos acuda propicio!

CORO
¿Y a cuál de estos otros dioses invocaré además?

DANAO
Ahí tienes el tridente, atributo de Poseidón.

CORO
¡El que nos trajo con bien a esta tierra, nos reciba en ella piadoso!

DANAO
Este otro es Hermes, según le presenta la tradición entre los
Helenos.

CORO
¡Sea para nosotros mensajero de libertad y bienandanza!

DANAO
 Rendid culto a todos los dioses que tienen aquí un altar común
Acogeos al lugar santo bandada de palomas espantada por voladores
gavilanes, por enemigos incestuosos, afrenta de su propia raza. Ave
que devora a otra ave ¿cómo quedará pura? ¿Cómo quedar puro
tampoco quien fuerza a una virgen, y a pesar de ella y de su padre la
desposa? Quien tal hiciese, ni aun después de muerto en el mismo
infierno escapará al castigo de su temeraria culpa. Sabido es que ah
hay otro Zeus que juzga sin apelación los delitos de los que murieron
Considerad bien lo que os digo, y responded de esta suerte porque
tengáis buen suceso en este trance.
(Sale el REY con acompañamiento de guardias.)

REY
¿De dónde podremos decir que sois, extranjeras, que así venís tan
lujosamente aderezadas, con esas túnicas y esos velos a estilo
bárbaro? Porque ese no es el traje de Argos ni de ningún otro de los
pueblos de la Hélade. Pues cómo os habéis atrevido a llegar con
intrépida resolución a esta comarca, sin mensajeros que os anuncien
ni huéspedes que os amparen, ni guías que os encaminen, cosa es
también que verdaderamente asombra. Veo junto a vosotras unos
ramos de suplicantes, depositados en las aras de los dioses de nuestra
ciudad; sois, pues, suplicantes, y esto es sólo lo que Grecia afirmaría
que ha comprendido; pero en lo demás pudieran hacerse con razón
muchas conjeturas si yo no hubiese venido aquí y vosotras no tuvieseis
palabra que me explicara todo vuestro suceso.

CORO
Bien has dicho acerca de mi traje. Pero ante todo, ¿estoy hablando
con un ciudadano, o con algún sacerdote, custodio de los templos, o
con el Jefe de la ciudad?

REY
Por lo que a eso hace, descuida, y responde a mis preguntas
explícate sin temor ninguno. Porque yo soy Pelasgo, rey de esta
comarca, hijo del terrígena Palectón. El pueblo que posee esta tierra y
coge sus frutos, son los Pelasgos, que como es razón, toman su
nombre de mí que los gobierno. Domino en toda la región que
atraviesa el sagrado Estrimonio al poniente, y encierro dentro de mis
fronteras la tierra de los Perrebos, y las que hay más allá del Pindo
aledañas de los Peonios, y los montes de Dodona. De la otra parte
tengo por límites las aguas del mar. Tales son mis dominios. De antiguo
se llama a este suelo comarca de Apis, en honor del médico Apis, hijo
de Apolo, a la vez médico y profeta, el cual de las playas de Naupactia
vino aquí y limpió nuestros campos de aquellas alimañas que
devoraban a los hombres, las cuales había arrojado de sí esta tierra
manchada con antiguos delitos; y de las bestias fieras, y de la multitud
de dragones que nos hacían vecindad terrible. Y porque Apis con sus
remedios nos libró de nuestros males y exterminó los monstruos
mereció de los Argivos tributo de alabanza, y que siempre hagamos
memoria de él en nuestras preces. Ya que sabes de mí quién soy
puedes decirme tu linaje y proseguir tu historia; mas te advierto que
mi ciudad no es aficionada a discursos largos.

CORO
Breve y clara será la respuesta. Nosotras nos gloriamos de ser de
raza argiva; de la sangre de aquella becerrilla que tuvo nobilísimo hijo
Esta es la verdad, que estoy pronta a probar cumplidamente.

REY
¡Oh extranjeras! no puedo creer lo que decís sobre que sois de
nuestra raza argiva. Más bien parecéis mujeres de la Libia; pero en
manera ninguna de nuestro país. El Nilo debe haber sido quien crió
planta tal, porque tenéis todo el sello que en el molde de sus mujeres
imprimen a sus obras los maridos Ciprios. He oído también que los
Indios nómadas, que viven vecinos a los Etíopes, se valen de camellos
que a la vez les sirven de cabalgaduras y bestias de carga. Y aun s
fueseis armadas de arcos, de cierto que os tomaría por aquellas
Amazonas que dicen que viven sin maridos y se alimentan de carne
cruda. Pero vosotras me enteraréis de todo, y así podré saber cómo es
que sois de sangre y procedencia argiva.
 CORO
Se cuenta que Io, que fué en otro tiempo custodia del templo de
Hera, nació en este suelo de Argos; aquella de la cual habrás oído
tantas veces...

REY
Que mortal como era ella, Zeus buscó sus favores. ¿No es esto?

CORO
Sí, y por el pronto su comunicación fué a hurto de Hera.

REY
Y después, ¿en qué paró la celosa desavenencia del Rey y la Reina
del Olimpo?

CORO
La diosa de Argos convirtió a la mortal en becerrilla.

REY
Hecha una becerrilla y ceñida de cuernos su frente, ¿se llegó a ella
todavía Zeus?

CORO
Sí. Dicen que tomando la forma de un toro en celo.

REY
¿Qué hizo a esto entonces la severa esposa de Zeus?

CORO
Puso a la becerrilla guarda tal que todo lo viese.

REY
Y ese pastor omnividente, puesto para guardar una sola vaquilla
¿quién era?
 CORO
Argos, hijo de la Tierra, que fué muerto por Hermes.

REY
¿Qué otra cosa dispuso Hera contra la mísera becerrilla?

CORO
Esa mosca zumbadora que pica a los bueyes y los espanta, a la cua
llaman tábano en la ribera del Nilo.

REY
¿Y fué persiguiéndola desde su patria durante una larga carrera?...

CORO
Cabalmente; eso mismo iba a decir yo.

REY
Y llegó a Canopos, y hasta Menfis.

CORO
Y Zeus con sólo tocarla con la mano la hizo madre.

REY
¿Quién fué el que pudo llamarse novillo hijo de Zeus y de una
becerrilla?

CORO
Épafo, con razón llamado así del precio a que su madre se libró de
sus trabajos.

REY
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

CORO
 Libia, poseedora de la más grande porción de la tierra.

REY
Y ella ¿qué descendencia tuvo?

CORO
Belo, que tuvo dos hijos; uno de los cuales fué el padre de este m
padre que ves aquí.

REY
Dime el nombre de este mortal venerable.

CORO
Danao, y su hermano es padre de cincuenta hijos.

REY
Dime también su nombre.

CORO
Egipto. Y ya que conoces mi linaje, haz conmigo de modo que
saques de su miserable infortunio a esta familia argiva hoy perseguida.

REY
Ya veo que vuestro linaje procede de esta tierra. Cierto. Mas ¿cómo
os atrevisteis a dejar vuestra patria? ¿Qué golpe de fortuna os
sobrevino?

CORO
Rey de los Pelasgos; muchos y varios son los males de los hombres
¡Ojalá no veas jamás el infortunio tendiendo hacia ti sus alas! ¿Quién
se hubiese imaginado nunca esta huída inesperada, ni que habíamos
de arribar a esta tierra de Argos, de donde somos oriundas, po
escapar a unas bodas aborrecidas?

REY
 ¿Qué pides ahí postrada delante de los dioses de nuestra ciudad?
¿Por qué esos verdes ramos de suplicantes, orlados de blanca lana?

CORO
Por no verme esclava de los hijos de Egipto.

REY
¿Es que los odias, o que huyes de cometer un crimen?

CORO
¿Y quién ha de querer comprar con su dote un pariente para habe
de servirle después?

REY
Así se acrecienta entre los mortales el lustre y fortuna de una casa.

CORO
¡Y así a lo menos fácilmente se remedian los que no son bien
heredados!

REY
Pero, en fin, ¿qué he de hacer yo en pro vuestro para satisfacer a la
amistad?

CORO
Si los hijos de Egipto nos reclaman, no entregarnos a ellos.

REY
Grave es lo que dices; acaso provocar una guerra.

CORO
Pero la justicia sostendrá a mis defensores.

REY
Cierto, si desde luego estuvo con vuestra causa.
 CORO (señalando el altar.)

Teme a esta popa de la ciudad que coronan nuestros ramos.

REY
Tiemblo al ver esos ramos dando sombra a las aras de nuestros
dioses.

SEMICORO
¡Pesado es, en verdad, el enojo de Zeus; del dios que vela por los
suplicantes!

CORO
Hijo de Palectón, rey de los Pelasgos, escúchame con benevolencia
Mírame postrada ante ti, fugitiva y errante como vaquita perseguida
del lobo, que se sube a las rocas escarpadas, y desde allí avisa con sus
mugidos al pastor el peligro en que se halla, esperando que la acorra.

REY
Estoy viendo todas estas tiernas doncellas acogidas a la sombra de
esos verdes ramos con que imploran protección en nombre de nuestros
dioses tutelares.
¡Ojalá sea sin daño para nosotros la venida de estas oriundas de
Argos, que hoy solicitan su hospitalidad, y que no nos traiga alguna
guerra este improviso y no esperado suceso! ¡Que Argos no tiene
necesidad ahora de tales aventuras!

CORO
Vuelva a mí sus ojos la diosa Themis, patrona de los suplicantes e
hija de Zeus, distribuidor de todo bien; proteja mi huída que no
manchó crimen ninguno. Y tú, anciano, aprende lo que te avisa una
tierna doncella. Sé piadoso con quienes te suplican, y no padecerás
reveses de la fortuna; que siempre fueron aceptas a los dioses las
ofrendas de un corazón puro...
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
 REY
No es en mi hogar donde os habéis amparado suplicantes: no. S
aquí hay sacrilegio, será para toda la ciudad, y así al pueblo en común
toca procurar el remedio. Yo no puedo hacer promesa ninguna sin
comunicarlo antes con todos los ciudadanos.

CORO
Tú eres la ciudad; tú eres el pueblo; tú, que eres sumo juez a quien
nadie juzga, e imperas en el altar, hogar común de la patria. Con sólo
tu voto, a una seña tuya, todo lo decides desde lo alto de tu trono
donde no hay más cetro que el tuyo. ¡Guárdate de un sacrilegio!

REY
¡Recaiga el sacrilegio sobre mis enemigos! No puedo daros auxilio
sin daño para mí, ni despreciar vuestras súplicas sin tocar en lo
inhumano. No sé qué hacer, no sé qué partido tomar, y el alma se llena
de temor lo mismo si quiero concederte lo que pides, que si quiero
negártelo.

CORO
Piensa en aquel que desde lo alto está velando por nosotras; en
aquel custodio de los mortales atribulados que acuden a sus prójimos y
no consiguen ser oídos en sus justas súplicas. Nada hay que aplaque la
cólera de Zeus, protector de los suplicantes, encendida con los
lamentos del que padece.

REY
Pero si los hijos de Egipto alegan derecho sobre ti por las leyes de
su pueblo, a título de tus parientes más próximos, ¿quién querrá
oponerse a su demanda? Preciso que será que excepciones con las
leyes de Egipto, probando que conforme a ellas no tienen sobre t
autoridad ninguna.

CORO
 ¡Jamás me vea yo en manos de esos hombres! Por huír de tan
odioso himeneo me aventuré a esta larga travesía y me puse a merced
de las estrellas del cielo, que me guiaron. Toma, pues, por aliado a la
Justicia, y decreta como pide la piedad que se debe a los dioses.

REY
La causa no es tan fácil de juzgar. No me tomes por juez. Ya dije
antes que yo no haría nada sin el pueblo. Cuando tuviera potestad
para ello, no querría yo que el pueblo pudiese decir nunca, si teníamos
algún desastre: por favorecer a unos extranjeros has perdido a Argos.

CORO
Zeus es el juez de esta causa entre mis parientes y yo; Zeus, que se
inclina siempre del lado de la justicia, y a cada cual le da lo que se
merece: castigo a los inicuos, y premio a los justos. Siendo la balanza
igual para todos, ¿qué mal temes tú que te avenga por hacer justicia?

REY
Negocio es éste que pide reflexión profunda. A modo del buzo que
desciende al fondo del abismo, necesito yo un ojo perspicaz y nada
turbado de la embriaguez, porque estas cosas sin daño para la ciudad
ni para nosotros felicísimamente se rematen. No quiero que las
reclamaciones de los Egipcios nos traigan una guerra; pero tampoco
que por entregaros a vosotras, después que habéis buscado asilo en
las aras de nuestros dioses, nos granjeemos el tremendo castigo de
aquel dios vengador, huésped terrible que no se aparta del culpado n
en la muerte, sino que le persigue en el seno mismo del infierno. ¿Os
parece, por ventura, que no necesito considerarlo para llegar a una
buena resolución?

CORO
Mira solícito por nosotras; sé nuestro piadoso patrono, como es
justo.
No hagas traición a una fugitiva a quien una impía violencia ha
sacado de tan lejanas tierras.
 ¡Oh, tú, absoluto señor de esta comarca, no quieras ver que me
arranquen de las aras de todos estos dioses a cuya sombra busqué un
asilo! Reconoce la insolencia de aquellos hombres, y guárdate de la
cólera del cielo.
No sufras que a tus ojos esta suplicante sea arrancada del pie de
estos divinos simulacros, con agravio de la justicia, y que tiren de m
como de una yegua, asiéndome de las cintas que adornan mi frente y
de los velos que me cubren.
Porque ten por cierto que, según como obrares, así les aguardará la
recompensa a tus hijos y a tu casa. Tales son los justos juicios de Zeus
Considéralo bien.

REY
Ya está considerado; ahí vienen a dar todos mis pensamientos: o
pelear con los hijos de Egipto, o pelear con los dioses. Fuerza es lo uno
o lo otro; no hay salida. Ya está claveteada y carenada la nave, y rueda
sobre los rodillos. Dondequiera que me vuelva me he de encontrar con
el mal. Puede el que perdió su casa y su hacienda, levantarse a mayo
fortuna que antes tuvo y juntar grandes riquezas, si así place a Zeus
dispensador de todo bien. Las heridas que abrió en el ánimo una
lengua indiscreta, ella misma puede curarlas; conque una palabra
vendrá a ser el bálsamo de otra palabra. Pero que corra la sangre de
los nuestros... calamidad como ésta es necesario que no suceda
Hagamos espléndidos sacrificios; ofrezcamos a los dioses miles de
víctimas, que éste es seguro remedio contra los males. Quizá me
engaño por completo acerca de esta contienda; pero quiero más bien
ser agorero ignorante que no sabio previsor de desdichas. ¡Ojalá
contra mi juicio tengamos buen suceso!

CORO
Escucha una palabra para fin de tantas súplicas.

REY
He escuchado hasta ahora. Puedes hablar, que no desoiré lo que
digas.
 CORO
Mira estos ceñidores con que sujeto mi túnica a la cintura.

REY
Muy propios de los arreos femeniles ciertamente.

CORO
Pues ten entendido que ellos serán excelente recurso.

REY
¡Explícate! ¿Qué quieres significar con eso?

CORO
Si no das una seguridad a estas fugitivas...

REY
¿Para qué te servirá entonces el recurso de esos ceñidores?...

CORO
Para adornar a esas imágenes con ex-votos nunca vistos.

REY
¿Qué enigma es ese? Habla claro.

CORO
Al punto nos colgaremos de esas imágenes.

REY
¡Oh, qué palabras que me han herido en el corazón!

CORO
¿Comprendiste?... ¡Bien claramente me he expresado!

REY
 ¡Cuánto imposible! ¡Multitud de males viene sobre mí como torrente
que se desborda! ¡Heme aquí en este mar sin fondo de la desgracia
donde me anego sin poder ganar la orilla, ni hallar puerto que me
abrigue contra mis desventuras! Porque si no accedo a lo que deseas
me amenazas con una resolución de cuya mancha jamás podríamos
lavarnos; y si he de venir a trance de batalla con los hijos de Egipto
tus deudos, delante de nuestros muros, ¿cómo no sernos amargo, que
por defender a unas mujeres hayamos de ensangrentar el suelo de la
patria con la sangre de sus hijos? Y con todo, ello es fuerza temer la
cólera de Zeus, patrono de los suplicantes; que no hay para los
hombres más formidable temor. Anda, anciano, tú como padre de estas
vírgenes toma en tus brazos esos ramos, y al punto llévalos a las aras
de los otros dioses de nuestro pueblo, para que todos los ciudadanos
puedan saber la razón de vuestra llegada. Así no hablarán contra mí
que el pueblo es de suyo amigo de culpar al que manda. Al ver esos
ramos fácilmente se moverá a piedad, y todos los Argivos se pondrán
de vuestra parte con más empeño aún en odio a vuestros insolentes
perseguidores. No hay uno entre ellos que no se incline a favorecer a
débil.

DANAO
De grande estima es para nosotros el haber encontrado patrono tan
respetable. Pero manda conmigo gentes del país que me acompañen y
me enseñen el camino a fin de que podamos dar con las aras, que se
alzan fronteras a los templos donde moran vuestros dioses tutelares, y
discurramos seguros por la ciudad. Porque nuestro aire y porte no es e
mismo que el vuestro. La raza que cría el Nilo no se parece a la de las
riberas del Ínaco. Guarda, no sea que la demasiada confianza nos dé
qué temer. Ya se ha visto al amigo matar por ignorancia al amigo.

REY
Acompañadle, guardias. Dice bien el extranjero. Guiadle a las aras y
templos de los dioses de la ciudad. Y poco hablar con los que os
encontréis al paso: que vais acompañando a un extranjero, que llegó
por mar, y quiere postrarse en el santuario de nuestros dioses.
(Vase DANAO acompañado de algunos guardias.)
 CORO
Tú te has dirigido a mi padre, y ya sabe él a qué ha de acomodar su
conducta; pero yo ¿qué haré? ¿Cómo proveerás a mi seguridad?

REY
Deja ahí esos ramos, ese emblema del dolor.

CORO
Y bien, ya los dejo, obediente a tus palabras y autoridad.

REY
Ahora retírate a aquel dilatado bosque.

CORO
¿Y qué defensa puede ofrecerme un bosque profano?

REY
No te entregaremos ciertamente a las aves de rapiña.

CORO
¿Y qué, si me entregas a hombres más aborrecibles que los crueles
dragones?

REY
Hable bien el que es bien tratado.

CORO
No es maravilla que el temor que se alberga en nuestro pecho nos
haga poco sufridas.

REY
Pero siempre se desconfía demasiado de los reyes.

CORO
 Devuélvenos tú la alegría con tus palabras y con tus acciones.

REY
Vuestro padre no os dejará solas mucho tiempo. Yo convocaré a los
Argivos y trataré de persuadir a la ciudad, y de ver cómo puedo
ganarla en favor vuestro. Ya advertiré a tu padre lo que debe decir. Po
tanto, espera aquí. Eleva tus preces a los dioses de Argos, y pídeles
que se logren tus deseos. Yo marcho a disponerlo todo. ¡Asístanme la
Persuasión y la Fortuna para alcanzar feliz suceso!
(Vase con su acompañamiento.)

CORO
¡Rey de reyes, santo de los santos, potestad altísima sobre todas las
potestades, bienaventurado Zeus, escucha mis votos y haz que lleguen
a cumplimiento! Aleja de nosotros a aquellos hombres insolentes
muéstrales tu justo enojo; hunde en las purpúreas olas del mar la nave
fatal y sus negros remeros.
Mira por estas mujeres; mira por nuestro antiguo linaje
descendencia de una mujer que te fué cara. Renueva la memoria de
tus amores; acuérdate bien cuando tu mano acariciaba la frente de
aquella Io, por la cual nos gloriamos de ser oriundas de esta tierra
donde nos amparamos hoy.
En ella estamos ahora marchando sobre los mismos antiguos pasos
de mi madre. Aquí en los floridos campos y herbosos prados donde ella
se apacentaba, siempre bajo los ojos vigilantes del pastor Argos; aqu
de donde, perseguida por el tábano, huyó furiosa, atravesando pueblos
y pueblos. Sumisa a su destino, pasa a nado el undoso estrecho, y
demarca así entrambos continentes.
Echa por Asia; atraviesa la Frigia, en rebaños abundante, y la ciudad
misia de Teutras, y los valles de Lydia, y los Cilicios montes; deja atrás
con precipitado curso la tierra de los Panfilios, y los ríos de perenne
corriente, y la región de la opulencia, y el suelo consagrado a Afrodita
liberal en doradas espigas.
Aguijada por el dardo del alado boyero, llega a los feracísimos
campos de Zeus, a aquellos prados que las nieves fecundan cuando
contra ellos se desata la cólera de Tifón, el Nilo de saludables y no
contaminadas linfas. Ahí se lanza Io fuera de sí con el azote de los
afrentosos trabajos y agudos dolores que la hace padecer la furibunda
Hera.
Los hombres que habitaban la comarca por aquel entonces
palidecieron y comenzaron a temblar al ver aquella extraña figura
aquel bruto espantable y semihumano, mitad mujer y mitad vaquilla
quedáronse estupefactos del prodigio. ¿Quién fué el que endulzó
entonces las penas de la errante y sin ventura Io, y la libró del tábano
que la acosaba?
Zeus, el rey que reinará por siglos de siglos...
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Con su poder incontrastable, con su divino aliento pone fin a aquella
violencia. Io, así que recobra la razón, siente que los encendidos
colores de la honestidad asoman a su rostro, y se deshace en lágrimas
considerando sus desventuras. Pero ya había concebido en su seno e
fruto de los divinos amores. Así fué en verdad, que luego parió un hijo
sin tacha.
El cual gozó de felicidad colmada por toda su larga vida. De donde
toda la tierra dijo a una voz: “¡Vivífica descendencia! ¡de Zeus es a no
dudar! ¿Pues quién otro hubiese podido poner fin a los males causados
por el rencor de Hera? ¡Obra de Zeus es ésta!” Y nosotras, la
descendencia de Épafo. Proclamándolo así no digo más que la verdad.
¿A qué otro dios pudiera yo invocar con más justos títulos que a
aquel padre, primer autor de mi linaje; a aquel poderoso señor que
con sola su mano fecundó a Io, y fundó larga descendencia; a aque
Zeus por quien viene todo remedio en los trabajos?
No hay potestad alguna sobre él. En grandes y pequeños, en todos
reina como señor altísimo. Nadie se sienta en más encumbrado trono
ni puede alegar títulos a su acatamiento. Habla, y se sigue la obra, y a
punto se cumple lo que decreta su mente.
(Sale DANAO.)

DANAO
 Ánimo, hijas. Nuestras cosas con los Argivos van bien. El pueblo
todo ha votado por nosotros.

CORO
¡Salve, anciano padre mío, que tan gratas nuevas me anuncias! Pero
dinos qué se ha decretado; qué resolución se llevó la mayoría de
pueblo.

DANAO
Allí no hubo pareceres, sino que de modo fué que sentía yo
remozarse mi vieja alma. El aire apareció como erizado de diestras que
se alzaban de todo el pueblo argivo entero que a una voz sancionaba
el decreto. Podremos vivir aquí libres, y sin que mortal alguno pueda
reclamarnos, gozando del derecho de asilo: nadie, ni ciudadano n
extranjero, nos arrancará de estos lugares. Notado de infame será y
desterrado por el pueblo, cualquier argivo que no acuda en nuestro
socorro, si por ventura se tratase de usar de la fuerza. Tal fué la
sentencia que en pro nuestro obtuvo el rey de los Pelasgos con su
persuasiva palabra. “Cuidad, les decía, no amontonéis para lo porveni
sobre la ciudad de Argos la tremenda cólera de Zeus, que protege a los
suplicantes. Ved que dos veces los agraviaríais por huéspedes y po
ciudadanos, y que sería esto afrenta manifiesta de nuestra ciudad, y
principio de males sin remedio.” Lo cual, así que el pueblo lo oyó, sin
aguardar la voz del pregonero, todos los Argivos levantaron las manos
confirmando y ratificando lo que el rey decía. Los Pelasgos se dejaron
mover de la palabra persuasiva que les hablaba; Zeus consumó la
obra.

CORO
Ea, pues, respondamos con votos de bendición al bien que nos
hacen los Argivos. Zeus hospitalario atiende a la verdad con que la
lengua de esta huéspeda agradecida le ofrece tributo de honor y
alabanza, para que nuestros votos todos alcancen cabal y felicísimo
suceso.
Vosotros también, dioses hijos de Zeus, escuchad las preces que po
este pueblo os dirigimos. Nunca jamás se vea presa de las llamas la
ciudad de los Pelasgos, ni oiga el bárbaro y desapacible clamor de la
pelea. Vaya Ares a segar hombres a otros campos. Porque se
apiadaron de nosotras, y nos dieron voto favorable, y tuvieron respeto
para estas suplicantes de Zeus, para este mísero rebaño.
No han desoído la demanda de unas débiles mujeres por sentencia
a favor de sus perseguidores, sino que pusieron la consideración en
aquel vengador divino, celador de toda obra, en sus castigos
inevitable. Imposible que techo ninguno pudiera resistir el peso de la
divina venganza; ¡que es abrumadora pesadumbre! Pero han
respetado nuestra sangre; han respetado a las que suplicaban en
nombre de Zeus santísimo, y sus sacrificios serán puros y aceptos a los
dioses.
Salgan, pues, de mi boca sombreada por estas coronas de olivo
palabras de bendición y dicha. Nunca jamás la peste deje a esta ciudad
yerma de sus hijos, ni guerras intestinas ensangrienten su suelo. Viva
intacta en su tallo la flor de tu juventud sin que el amante de Afrodita
sin que el enemigo mortal de los hombres, Ares, venga a cortarla en su
gallarda lozanía.
Véanse rodeadas las aras humeantes de sus dioses de ancianos
venerables con que la república esté siempre bien y sabiamente
regida. Rinda el pueblo continuo culto de adoración al gran Zeus
altísimo amparador de la hospitalidad, que con antigua ley dispone e
destino de los humanos. ¡Jamás se extinga la raza de los fieles
celadores de esta tierra! ¡Dígnese Artemisa Hécate asistir al parto de
sus matronas!
Lejos de aquí las discordias civiles que pierden a los hombres, y
arruinan las ciudades, y ahuyentan los músicos apacibles coros, y
arman el brazo de Ares, fiero provocador de lágrimas para los pueblos
y de voces lastimosas. Fuera de aquí el enjambre enfadoso de las
enfermedades; vaya a posarse lejos de la cabeza de estos ciudadanos
Apolo Liceo vele amoroso por toda la juventud argiva.
Haga Zeus que en todo tiempo y estación produzca la fecunda tierra
frutos sazonados, y que los rebaños pueblen la pradera herbosa de
numerosas crías. ¡No haya bien que Argos no reciba de los dioses
Rompan las musas, diosas del saber y del canto, en himnos de
bendición y alegría, y acompañe la cítara los acentos de su boca
sagrada.
¡Ojalá que el pueblo, que es el soberano de la ciudad, guarde sin
mancha ni menoscabo el honor de sus legítimos derechos, y que los
que le manden provean siempre solícitos al bien común! Con e
extranjero antes sean prontos a entrar en pláticas que a declarar la
guerra, y quieran más satisfacer de justos que de vencidos.
Honren siempre a los dioses tutelares de la comarca con aquellos
homenajes que les tributaban sus antepasados. Ofrézcanles víctimas
de bueyes, y coronen de laurel sus altares. Así honrarán también a los
que les dieron la vida; que es otro de los tres preceptos que están
escritos en las leyes de la Justicia suma y perfectísima.

DANAO
Alabo esos buenos deseos, hijas mías. Pero escuchad ahora sin
alborotaros la inesperada nueva que tiene que daros vuestro padre
Desde la atalaya de esta colina, asilo de nuestras súplicas, diviso un
navío: se ve harto bien para que me engañe. Distingo todo el aparejo y
velamen de él, y los parapetos con que se cubren sus remeros y
hombres de guerra. Allá veo la proa que sigue su derrota mirando
hacia nosotros; ¡demasiado obediente el timón, que desde popa le
rige; porque no es ninguna nave amiga aquélla! Las blancas túnicas de
los marineros hacen resaltar lo negro de sus miembros. He allí que
aparecen bien claro las demás naves: toda la escuadra está a la vista
La capitana ha amainado velas, y forzando remos vira hacia la playa
Miradlo con calma. Prudencia, y no olvidaros de estos dioses, que es lo
que importa. Yo parto en busca de defensores que tomen sobre s
nuestra causa, y vuelvo al punto. Quizá venga algún heraldo o alguno
de los príncipes queriendo poner mano en vosotras y llevaros consigo
pero nada harán. No tembléis al verlos. No obstante, por si se retarda
el socorro, lo mejor será que no os olvidéis nunca de que en esas aras
está vuestra defensa. ¡Ánimo! Al fin, a su tiempo y día el mortal que
menosprecie a los dioses paga la pena que merece.

CORO
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookultra.com