Auden and Christopher Isherwood set sail for the United States, the so-called
'All the fun' age ended. Auden's generation of poets' expectations came to
nothing after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and they, disillusioned, left
the European continent for good. In the late 1930s the school of Surrealism
reached England, and Dylan Thomas was one of the few British authors of the time
who were followers of this new trend in the arts. He shared the Surrealist
interest in the great abstracts of Love and Death, and composed most of his work
according to the rules of Surrealism. His first two volumes, Eighteen Poems and
Twenty-five Poems were published in the middle of the decade and of this short
surrealistic era as well. Dylan Thomas was declared the Shelley of the 20th
century as his poems were the perfect examples of 'new-romanticism' with their
'violent natural imagery, sexual and Christian symbolism and emotional subject
matter expressed in a singing rhythmical verse' (Under Siege - Robert Hewison,
1977.). The aim of 'new-romanticism' was setting poets free from W.H. Auden's
demand for 'the strict and adult pen'. In 1933 Dylan Thomas sent two of his
poems to London, one of which was an earlier version of his famous poem, And
Death Shall Have No Dominion. It was dated April 1933 in Thomas's notebook and
was published for the first time in the 18 May 1933 issue of the New English
Weekly. After its first publication, the poem was altered several times and got
its final form in Twenty-five Poems, even though Thomas was not particularly
proud of this work of his, and was not sure about publishing it for a second
time. The Poem Immediately in its title, the poem has a reference to the New
Testament, which was one of Dylan Thomas's main sources of metaphor. The title
(and the refrain of the poem as well), 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion' has
been taken from the King James Version of the Scriptures, which, with its
flowing language and prose rhythm, has had profound influence on the literature
of the past 300 years. 'Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no
more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto
sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also
yourselves dead to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord.' Romans 6:9-11 There is another line in the poem, 'Though they
sink through the sea they shall rise again;' which resembles a line from the
Scripture: 'And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell
delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man
according to their works.' Revelation 20:13 The assertive optimism of the poem
can also be brought into connection with the traditions of evangelical hymns,
which is best reflected in the lines 'Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost
love shall not, And death shall have no dominion.' It seems, that it is this
assertive optimism Dylan Thomas is trying to impose on the reader, and, perhaps
on himself as well in this poem, maybe in order to keep his sanity. Being one of
the least obscure of Dylan Thomas's poetry, it was evident, that of his earlier
woks, beside Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and The Force That through
the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, And Death Shall Have No Dominion would catch
public imagination quite easily. The thing in this poem that drew the attention
of the everyman was the constancy of hope coming from the notion that everything
is cyclical: though the individuals perish, 'they shall rise again', and, though
particular loves are lost, love itself continues. The tone of this poem is quite
sermon-like, and its atmosphere is rather Christian; yet, the central theme in
it is not religion, nor the religious beliefs concerning death but the
relationship between man and nature. Thomas claims in the second stanza that
deliverance from death is not through religious faith as 'Faith in their hands
shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through;' but he declares
man's unity with nature at death: 'Dead men naked they shall be one With the man
in the wind and the west moon.' The frame of the poem is the title, the first
line, the refrain from the Bible, repetitive and insistent at the beginning and
the end of each stanza. Between these lines the poem is full of vivid imagery,
of which probably the most significant can be found in the above-mentioned line
('With the man in the wind and the west moon;'). Here Dylan Thomas uses one of
his most characteristic devices: the transferred epithet, to create a new image
form 'the man in the moon and the west wind'. Beside his sophisticated use of
poetic devices, Thomas's poems are full of lively images, such as 'When their
bones are picked clear and clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and
foot;', or 'Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet
they shall not break;' which sometimes seem to be a completely meaningless
confusion of images. This is one characteristic of Surrealist poetry. In the
case of And Death Shall Have No Dominion this 'confusion' is counterbalanced
with the repetition, therefore the meaning, the feeling of the poem is
homogeneous, even despite the rather nothing-to-do-with-each-other images. The
significance of this poem lies in its being simple and subtle at the same time.

Bibliography1. A Dylan Thomas Companion - John Ackerman, 1991 2. All references to the
Bible from the Bible Gateway (www.gospelcom.net) 3. Dylan Thomas - Paul Ferris,
1977 4. The Ironic Harvest - Geoffrey Thurley, 1974 5. The King James Version (KJV)
of the Bible, 1611 6. The Norton Anthology of English Literature 7. The Oxford
Illustrated History English Literature - ed. Pat Rogers, 1987 8. The Penguin
History of Literature, The Twentieth Century - ed. Martin Dodsworth, 1994 9.
Under Siege (Literary Life in London 1939-1945) - Robert Hewison, 1977