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It is a wonderful painting. If you read Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt he describes how people lived in Ireland at the beginning of the XXth century. On 8/24/07, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > My grandparents behaved as if they had stepped out of the 18th > century. This is isn't a derogatory statement, for I loved them > dearly. However it appears to me now that they did not have much truck > with modernity beyond domestic conveniences. The decline of the > British Empire, the rise of Evolution theory, the decline of the > church. Post-colonialism, the bomb. Feminism. Quantum theory. > Relativity. Genocides. Even men landing on the moon did not figure > much on their radar. The bible and prayer to them was as "real" as > anything life could offer. They believed in the bible as a series of > literal facts. > > I was wrong about Dylan Thomas, who wrote much of his best stuff in > his early years and spent the rest of his life trying to get back to > that state. So, it seems to me that much of his stuff is written from > a small town in provincial South Wales, between the wars, almost > immune to history. Pretty much like my grandparents. A boy in a > bubble, whose reading consisted mostly of Shakespeare and the Bible > and he regurgitated/transformed these texts through a rare poetic mind > and a Welsh syntax in isolation. It looks nice, sounds pretty, but it > has it's price and associations, and I think it is always wise to be > aware of what they are. To me most of his poetry - with the notable > exception of the one quoted by Jon - seems to be written in a bubble, > looking ever inward at the metaphysical self, never outwards. Never > seeing things as they are, played upon the blue guitar. Maybe it is > you, Kasper, who is trying to hide from modernity. > > The apocalyptic tag attached to Dylan Thomas is, I think, misleading; > one assoiciates it with the various apocalyptic things happening at > the time. I think this is accidental. He reminds me of a painter > called John Martin who painted scenes from the christian Bible - not > the cutesy ones of Mary & Joseph - but the earth-shattering upheavals > of the heavens that the old testaments whang on about at length. These > scenes fit an era of apocalypses yet he was painting in the early 19th > century, a time of upheaval to be sure, but nothing like this > http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=9310&roomid=1384, > surely. I like Martin's paintings, but a better marraige of symbols > and time would be the dutch painters who painted the plagues as hell > on earth. > > Roger > >