The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas

Annotated Manuscript Edition

Dylan Thomas, John Goodby, Adrian Osbourne, John Goodby, Adrian Osbourne

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350103849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Between May 1930 and August 1935, Dylan Thomas kept numerous notebooks of poems. They contain the drafts of almost all of the work that would form his first two reputation-making collections, 18 Poems (1934) and Twenty-five Poems (1936), and many of those in his third collection, The Map of Love (1939). Thomas sold four of the notebooks, spanning May 1930 to May 1934, to the University of Buffalo in 1941. However, the existence of a fifth notebook, covering the period June 1934 to August 1935, was unknown until 2014, the centenary of his birth. The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas makes this newly-discovered text available to readers and researchers for the first time. It contains the only existing MSS versions of Thomas's most challenging poems, 'I, in my intricate image' and 'Altarwise by owl-light', and fourteen other early poems. It contains facsimiles and full transcripts of the originals, is annotated throughout, and has a full scholarly introduction. Exploring the contexts of these brilliant and experimental lyrics – many with substantial reworkings and variant passages – this landmark publication sheds new light on the creative practice of one of the most important and well-known poets of the twentieth century.

Facsimile of the fifth notebook with facing transcription

One.

.I.

All all and all the dry worlds lever,

Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,

All from the oil, the pound of lava.

City of spring, the governed flower,

Turns in the earth that turns the ashen

Towns around on a wheel of fire.

How now my flesh, my naked fellow,

Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,

Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.

All all and all, the corpse’s lover,

Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,

All of the flesh the dry worlds lever. CP14, 63 – All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever

.II.

Fear not the working world, my mortal,

Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,

Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.

Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,

The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,

Nor the flint in the lover’s mawling. CP14, 63 – mauling

Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,

Know now the flesh’s lock and vice,

And the cage for the scythe-eyed raven.

Know, o my bone, the jointed lever, CP14, 64 – O my bone,

Fear not the screws that turn the voice,

And the face to the driven lover.

.III.

All all and all the dry worlds couple,

Ghost with her ghost, contagious man

With the womb of his shapeless poeple. CP14, 64 – shapeless people.

All that shapes from the caul and suckle,

Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,

Square in these worlds the mortal circle.

Flower, flower the poeple’s fusion, CP14, 64 – the people’s fusion,

O light in zenith, the midnight bud, CP14, 64 – the coupled bud,

And the flame in the flesh’s vision. [End of poem in N5; next page

removed. CP14 concludes with the following three lines:

Out of the sea, the drive of oil,

Socket and grave, the brassy blood,

Flower, flower, all all and all.]

Two.

.I.

Half of the fellow father as he doubles

His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,

Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles

To marrow’s diver in her horny milk, CP14, 64 – Tomorrow’s diver

Bisected shadows on the thunder’s bone

Bolt for the salt unborn.

The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled

Corrosive spring out of the iceberg’s crop,

The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled

The swing of milk was tufted in the pap,

For half of love is planted in the lost, CP14, 65 – was planted

And the unplanted ghost.

The broken halves are fellowed in a cripple,

The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,

L...