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in this issue
Three Names, One Tradition
Bobi Jones
Bobi Jones (1929-) was born and brought up in Cardiff. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. A repected literary critic, he is also author of a large body of poetry, notably Hunllef Arthur (Arthur's Nightmare), a modern poem of epic proportions.
'Why I write in Welsh?'
Read Cacynen (Wasp) below, a poem by Bobi Jones.
You learned Welsh as a teenager in Cardiff in the 1940s. Why? And why didn't you want to write in English?
The initial instigation (at 11 years of age) must have been what some would call 'accidental', an adjective I don't usually recommend in a serious context. This was followed by being devoured as an adolescent by the wonders of Welsh literature. Then the social situation became clearer. Despite my Valleys connections (my father went down the pit when he was fourteen), that is to say, despite my 'Anglo-Welsh' roots in that area, which were a sheer delight for me, the further discovery of a Welsh-speaking Wales for a Cardiffian was even more extreme and socially enthralling. I was also perhaps morbidly intrigued by the inadequacy regarding Welsh consciousness suffered, explosively sometimes, by some non-Welsh-speaking Welsh people. This should have kept me Anglo- Welsh, as the materials at both a literary and extra-literary level were profuse. But there was not infrequently an interesting corresponding experience of inadequacy amongst Welsh speakers themselves whenever their education in their own language had been at fault. This psychological turmoil I found most exciting and later I tried to follow it up academically.
The three leading English language literary magazines in Wales - Poetry Wales, Planet and New Welsh Review were created to reflect Anglo-Welsh culture and present it in a variety of contexts. But does that culture really exist - and is there a distinctive 'Anglo-Welsh literature'?
'Anglo-Welsh literature', as contrasted with mere 'English literature in Wales', despite or perhaps because of its neuroses, certainly has existed, and still has a significant potential. It has a complicated but entrancing identity. At present, the writers, I believe, are still too often London-orientated culturally. English recognition seems to worry them overduly. But the achievement is there, in Dylan and R.S. Thomas, particularly the latter. The talent is obviously there still, and is I believe underestimated elsewhere, for traditional reasons; but that shouldn't surprise or bother anyone. I think, if there were a more discriminating consciousness amongst the writers themselves of the individuality and vitality in the wholeness and depth of the Welsh predicament, in all its richness and sensitivity and background, Anglo-Welsh literature could be transformed into what it ought to be, and abandon what I sense as a sort of temporary doldrums. I think M. Wynn Thomas has given an invaluable lead in this direction. Jane Aaron and Meic Stephens and others particularly in Swansea, Pontypridd and Bangor are thinking through the new possibilities, and are so well equipped for the whole process. I just wish these developments well, though still with trepidation.
Everyone brought up in Wales will be familiar with claims that the Welsh language is in a state of 'crisis'. It seems to me that with in-migration, massively increased property prices, and the atomisation of the language, that crisis is now desperately severe. Is there a future for Welsh as an everyday language of the community?
I see one central factor that has been criminally neglected. What is needed is a popular movement amongst enthusiastic native Welsh adult speakers to lift themselves out of their one-sided protest culture and conservation politics, and do something purely positive. Only a popular movement of conscious positive revival amongst adults can guarantee the future. And that has to depend on the two sides of the language divide.
The effort itself for mature Welsh speakers to do something themselves with the learners (such as just talking to them), and to be personally involved in restoration, is still an exciting and exuberant experience. Too much escapist emphasis is now placed on politics. This is an absolute opting-out of responsibility. Personal restorative action has to be central, unfortunately - or fortunately.
What about the dire need of the heartlands?
I do not accept the concept of 'heartlands' (or gaeltacht). This is a repetition of the Irish error. And the Irish failure is being slowly imitated by Wales, with its post-1916 bias towards children rather than adults, as well as the erroneous dependence on the idea of 'official language' and 'language administration'. The divide is not basically geographical at all. Our Offa's Dyke, linguistically and psychologically, runs through a heartland within every Welsh personality without exception, whether he or she lives in Cwmbran or Llanuwchllyn, whether first-language or second-language Welsh. It is a personal unifying divide.
The language revival has to be inherently voluntary and willed by a nation that initially has regained self-respect and a creative perception of its contribution to modern world culture. A cohesive revival vision is needed instead of the piece-meal amateurism, administratively orientated, and non-dynamic conservation approach that is dragging us down at the moment. Boards and committees have sometimes little vision and no heart. Their virtual denial in Wales of the central thrust of language restoration may be very Irish, but it will loom large in their own post mortem examination.
I hope you won't find this offensive - I know that Welsh language poetry has an almost unmatched longevity in Europe, but what's it like to be a big fish in a little pond?
Again, I do not of course accept your presupposition. That little pond you mention, I really can't recognise. For me it's just something more than a complete world. I too hope not to be offensive if I suspect that worrying about being a sizeable fish in a sizeable pond is rather an English and post-imperialist complex. What surprises me is the proliferation of fish in the pond. I don't think you have quite realised what, within the Welsh context, is the significance of verse in cynghanedd.
At the moment, although you yourself have fluffed this particular problem in translation, cynghanedd rules in Welsh Wales, and my use of cynghanedd or cynghanedd's use of me has been limited. The unique relationship between sound and sense in cynghanedd, the kick and vitality of its presence at the moment, and the quality of a number of the poets in the recent flourishing, were quite unexpected and unprecedented. That is where our strength is, these days. And as Twm Morys has rightly claimed, it cannot be translated, simply because the relationship between sense and senses is at the heart of this particular form. Its intricacy is unsurpassed and centres on subtle accentuation of meaning and the wonderful system of beiau gwaharddedig. Its revival since the 70s is one aspect of the national revival generally. Yet, despite the impossibility of translation, I was glad that Joseph Clancy and Tony Conran have both brought forth truly beautiful possibilities in tackling these strict metres, conveying not only most of the sense, but even much of the spirit and charm of this huge if difficult body of verse.
I can understand there being a mis-perception regarding the over-importance of my own work, such as the one you mention, particularly from the outside, as a selection of my early poems had been admirably translated by Joseph Clancy some time ago, and others have appeared here and there since. But from within the perception of Welsh readers generally, if I exist at all, I am simply a tadpole in the corner of the pond, absolutely marginal. This confession does not stem from much-desired humility. It is just that I do not fit into the Eisteddfodic mode; I am bête-noire in the Books Council; and although admiring our youthful performers, that is not really my line; generally, and rightly so, I am judged beyond the pale.
Within the Welsh context, the idea that there may be published such verse as I have perpetrated is almost a betrayal of the language in a time of crisis. But we're always in crisis, and always have to play normal. Crisis itself is normal. In order to survive, it is supposed sometimes that the language really has to concentrate exclusively on popular and 'accessible' work. Short poems, obviously rhyming, not too thoughtful, such a staple diet nowadays depends so strongly on 'image' and 'performance' and is unconsciously or consciously demanded. You can imagine that my view would be somewhat tamely in favour of catholicity. For me, if the realisation of a full spectrum is not there, we might as well pack it in. The full spectrum is not generally accepted of course. Although censorship and banning are not yet blatantly proclaimed, I have had an occasional whiff. For the moment I can live with it.
How have American poetics influenced your work?
I have great respect for the vigour, breadth and sheer immensity of American poetics and have enjoyed reading in the field. But my main interests have been elsewhere.
For me, American poetics tends to divide itself into factions - one denying or ignoring the other, one against the other. This actually loses sight of the fullness of the phenomenon of literature; and the answer lies not in a list of types of literary criticism but in a coherent complex. What really has been lost in the fragmentation of post-modernism is the holistic view - the sequential relationship, the fellow conditioning and the co-ordination and cohesion of the necessary aspects of literature.
Holistic criticism in contrast to American poetics is not based merely on the 'whole' at the expense of the 'part' or vice-versa, or on the 'positive' instead of the 'negative'; on 'cohesion' rather than 'fragmentation' or on the 'universal' ignoring the 'particular'. Those mutual reactions are a diversion. It derives from recognition of the essential process of understanding and language itself. Here unity is always constructed by diversity. But vice-versa too. Based on the patterned necessities of understanding and language, the structure of holistic criticism leads to a recognition of the composite relationship from Tongue (langue) to Discourse (parole), and vice-versa, also to the inevitable link between Value, the appeal to Order and Purpose. It faces up to why as well as how.
This, my own limited survey of literary form and order, is not centrally literary criticism at all as such, but a broad index of what has to be included within the 'definition' of literary criticism (and therefore of literature), and describes how the various aspects of literary criticism are necessarily linked to each other. Kierkegaard, if I remember correctly, has - somewhere - a parable about a man passing a shop window and seeing a notice 'For Sale'. He goes in and enquires of the manager how much he is asking for his shop. And the manager explains that he is not selling his shop at all, he is just in the business of selling 'signs': the sign 'For Sale' - not the shop - is for sale. So too, I have not primarily aimed at writing literary criticism but at putting up signs, defining what literary criticism is and does, how it (and literature itself) has to be structured, and why such a process has to be - in its entirety - inclusive and cohesive.
As far as I can see, in American poetics - people like Scholes, like Culler in England - had given up on Structuralism before analysing many of the necessary structures, and before relating them effectively either to Discourse or Motivation. The whole field of evaluation and motive as such, apart from Burke, did not develop into a holistic concept of the parameters of criticism. It certainly failed to relate in principle to Structuralism. And then the panorama of Post-modernism itself cut loose, and floated away from the main process of literature.
Your poem Hunllef Arthur is 21,000 lines long and is described by one critic as a 'European masterwork'. Can you outline its scope and describe why you wrote it?
The structure is very simple. As you know, the central character, Arthur, who is asleep in his cave, has a nightmare which is simply the history of Wales. He goes through a series of metamorphoses, but, as the poem is autobiographical (inevitably to a certain extent) and also about one central developing experience (the experience of Wales itself), the subject himself also wears a number of consistent formal characteristics which underline the poem's unity. Arthur's changes are also his stability, just as tradition can only be maintained by renewal, and continued only by diversity. It is an anti-epic with variations and contrasts, ebb and flow, written in a metre I would call 'y mesur cyrch'. This may seem to be blank verse, and is indeed on the one hand a supple iambic pentameter, but with internal 'rhyme'. The 'rhyme' itself varies from ordinary rhyme to generic rhyme to proest to cynghanedd. But more importantly, as the internal 'rhyme' itself can be varied in location, this also means we have two 'line' lengths as it were coinciding - one, the good old pentameter, our battle weary warhorse trudging on; the other, hidden line, weaving throughout governed by 'rhyme', irregular in length and tension, and a potent combination. I found it a most effective instrument for a long poem.
Why write such a thing? Why indeed? Why write anything at all? To praise. But why so long? It was certainly not thought of in the terms of a 'European masterwork' or any of that sort of thing. I write for a tight band. That is my simple aim in publishing, though not in writing. My potential audience is miniscule, though I vainly hope the potential equipment is at any rate versatile, and the subject somehow universal. Indeed, I hope too that the contribution within the spectrum is necessary.
I should just mention very briefly that Hunllef Arthur is merely one part of a tripartite project. For me, the complex experience of Wales (and every nation) must be time working through a unit of space via people. Hunllef Arthur is first of all the experience of Welsh time. A second long (though less long) poem, Chwythu Plwc, was published in Canu Arnaf pp. 270-461, and conveys the experience of Welsh space. The third part of the programme consists of Portreadau ('My People' to coin an Anglo-Welsh phrase). A list of some fifty of the early portraits in this comédie humaine or rogues' gallery appeared in Gwlad Llun 1976: since then I must have written over 60 such things. So we trundle on. That, therefore, is the 'scope' of this quite elementary project you mention. Hunllef Arthur therefore sings in a trio, and may be understood within that context.
If you were a teenager today, would you be learning Welsh? And would you wish to become a poet in the language?
As for learning Welsh, and forgetting for the moment how appropriate it is to have a basic civilised education, confident in one's own identity, interested in the roots of one's own country, its recent society, the explanation of so much in the national psyche and history, the environment of places and their names, the practicality of living in a bilingual nation, the marvellous literature, and resisting the pressures of uniformity that prevent a key to understanding this multiform international world of relationships, forgetting all such obvious minutiae, and just considering an eccentricity such as mastering the wonderful craft of cynghanedd as a key to reading, thinking through the intricate artistry of Cerdd Dafod (the art of poetry) from the inside, feeling the fullest music of poetry, the music in the mind of cynghanedd, I can recommend it as a great help in tasting the full reading process as a relationship between signs and significance. And so many Welsh people miss out on it, suffering not only because of cultural deprivation (our great national pastime), which is criminal, but from not enjoying the thrill of being in the middle of a revival of our culture. I sometimes think that the full blast of simply regaining and restoring the language is as valuable and as inspiring as the language itself. First language Welsh people miss a lot, despite their many advantages. The full discovery can be breathtaking.
To get back to your question. If a teenager can possibly leave verse-writing itself well alone, do so. If you are driven to it, we
Cacynen
I sisial sen yn erbyn popeth
y cylcha hi'r waliau. Llusga ager sarff
o'r awyr swrth. Mae wrth ei bodd yn lladd
awyrgylch. Disgyn injin ei godidowgrwydd
fel dyfyniad o boer neidr o dan lenni.
Hi yw crafanc y ffenest, ffenest, ffenest.
Yn brif lodes dywyll y pryfed, yn ei mwclis
ambr yr heua anfoes ar oleuni.
Does dim un man i deigres fynd fan hyn ond i mewn
a si ei danadl. Dyna hi'n gaeedig
chwil yma wrth chwilio acw; heb ond
chwant, meddw yw ei methu maith.
Dim mel, dim dwli, dim ond
ffiws yw yn tanio ymysg sosbenni
ar hyd gwifren teleffon haul
gwydr, yn daflegryn o sgrech rew
drwy dwnnel tranc, a'i llygaid
yn saethu chwarel pob dwrn o ffenest, ffenest.
Wrth rowndio'r gegin a'i larwm galarus,
for-leidr y gwenyn, metel-tawdd,
all hi byth ddweud mor anhapus yw hi.
Paentia'r nenfwd a'i braw. Un, dwy, tair,
pedair wal. Baban wedi cydio mewn nodyn
ac yn hwylio lefain adref.
Ynghau o fewn hud ei ehedeg ei hun,
mileinig yw am oleuni. Ac amheua,
bwria'i hamheuaeth ar wydr. Fel llu
melltithia'r gwynder na all ei gyrraedd.
Ffwrn yw'i chot gen ar ganol haf.
Yn ei llwnc undonog dan, try'n
bentewyn mewnblyg mewn mwstard
mwys. Mae'i bwled yn bythol refrio
ar donfedd gaethwag...Diflanna
wrth lanio, yn goelcerth dalfyredig,
yn y distaw paid; ni fodola yn yr aros,
ac yn anghred yr aeth wedi soddi mewn saeth.
Paid. Ble mae? Ust! Acw erys eco'i rheg
yn ddidrugaredd ddwys ar bwys y switsh.
Ai ceisio diffodd byd y mae?........
Ie, yn ei hoen cyfyd -
dacw'i ffroen yn llofruddio gwagle drachefn....
Wasp
How she disapproves of walls.
She's a steamsnake that crawls about
the glowering air, doing what she does best -
murdering a mood. Follow her self-important trail
like quotation marks of snakespit under the drapes.
She's a talon trapped and tapping on the glass.
This dark madonna of crawling things, count
how many temptations make her amber rosary.
But where else can a tigress go
with her nettle tongue, or a nasty drunk
who's lost the plot
but long ago learned the failures of desire.
No honeying foolishness for her,
only her fuse alight amongst kettles and pans,
a telephone wire through the patio doors.
Her scream's trajectory
will carry extinction's tunnel, her eyes
blast a crater every time she touches the pane.
A hot-metalled buccaneer of the bees,
all around the kitchen her voice is a smoke alarm.
Yet what was ever as unhappy as she
who sweeps the ceiling in her frustration
and the one, the two, the three, the four walls?
For here's a baby that rocks herself with rage,
sailing home on a lament.
But wherever she flies she's shuttered by spells,
this brassed off barbarian. Always in her doubt
she's dousing at the glass. Just like lightning
she arrives from nowhere while going nowhere.
Midsummer, she's incendiary in her stripes,
in her throat a burning syllable, an obsessive-
compulsive who hears only her own music,
its endless reverb down a dead wavelength.
But at rest, it disintergrates, like a bonfire
kicked to bits. And silence disallows her.
Ah, the pointlessness of patience!
Her life only lasts while the missile's mid-air.
But stop. Where is she? Hush. Her oath's
a black hole that obliterates mercy.
See? She's poised over the switch.
Does she want to turn off the world?
Here's a zealot come to assassinate empty air.
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