Cylchgronau Cymru

I. WALES, so 'it is said, discovered her soul in the eighteenth century, and her mind in the nine- teenth. Where the two periods of discovery overlapped. Islwyn appeared. He was a direct descendant of the Methodist Revivalists, with Williams Pantycelyn at their head. Islwyn's soul had already been discovered for him. He comes, then, at a period when the Awakening was in its first flush so we find him struggling to discover his mind. This was shewn clearly by the young martyr, Ben Bowen, in his Williams Pantycelyn. Ben Bowen was right as usual. This fact has to be grasped if lslwyn poetry is to be fully understood and rightly appreciated. The religious tradition of the Methodist Revival with its dis- covery of the Welshman's soul impressed Islwyn with the great mystery of Salvation and the wild wonder of Eternity the first gleams of the Awakening that gave the Welshman mental vision, gave Islwyn a love of the natural beauties of his native land and a philosophy of nature. Islwyn was a Methodist preacher and a Welsh patriot. Broadly speaking, Calvinism, with its philosophy of religion, and love of Motherland, with its philosophy of nature, gave him his themes-and his inspiration. Up bringing, the Eisteddfod and personal experiences modified and coloured them, but in the main the two great forces stand as the ruling ones in Islwyn poetry. His profes- sion even gave him his style and method of treatment his personal experiences gave him his atmosphere. Hence his rhetoric, his didacticism, and his melancholy pathos. The remark made by one of Ben Bowen critics, and inscribed on that poet's tombstone, that he wrote at too great length of Wales and Eternity (" Sonia ormod am Gymru a Thragwyddoldeb ") might have been well applied by the same critic to Islwyn. But a poet has a right to write on any subject, earthly or otherwise, so long as he does so artistically and with inspiration that is spontaneous and not conjured up for the occasion. Islwyn has expressed his own views on poetry in prose and verse, and actually stated that the office of a poet is inferior to that of a preacher. He himself was both preacher and poet, but, not content with being a poet- preacher, as the species is described, he became a preaching poet. Islwyn was also a prose-writer, an editor, and a patriot, but we are concerned with him only as a poet. But one word about Islwyn the man. Some Welsh bard has written how glorious it would have been to Byw a gweled Ap Gwilym. Of the four or five poets of history whom we should like to have met, Islwyn is certainly one. Such sanctity of soul, tenderness of spirit, and largeness of heart-all in the same person-would have made life seem worth living after all. And to gaze upon that picture of lslwyn at twenty-seven inspires us with deep affection. But to come to his poetry. ISLWYN 1832-1878 T. H. Parry-Williams. II. Islwyn's longest poem, his magnum opus, is Yr Ystorm, The Storm." He undoubtedly meant it to be his masterpiece. It is certainly his longest piece. He may have been casting about for a long time for a fitting theme, a subject large enough to convey all his ideas and im- pressions of things, past, present and future. Life gave him his theme in a tragedy, the death of his young be- trothed, Ann Bowen. This seems to have been the immediate reason for the choice. The Storm would be his subject and no other it was one after his own heart. He would interweave the natural and the personal, work the subjective into the objective. A splendid idea In 1856 he launches on his great venture. The result was a poem of about 6,5CO lines, in fourteen cantos. Now let us consider this achievement. At the present day, we are prejudiced against lengthy long-winded poems, however artistic. They savour too much of effort. We cannot believe that inspiration can hold out for such lengths, because it comes in short-lived seizures or spasms, which come very rarely and only to a few fortunate, or unfortunate, persons. Even from the point of view of art minus inspiration, sustained effort is extremely difficult. It is easiest in descriptive or narrative works. But we will forget this in appraising The Storm. Leaving aside the natural descriptions, we find that Islwyn was obsessed by two things-a passionate sense of grief and disappointment, and the idea cf eternity, or perhaps a blend of both. The strange and wonderful thing is that, with all his sufferings of heart and soul, Islwyn did not become a pessimist. Perhaps he refused to become a pessimist. Let us hope that this was the case because it needs a great personality to become a pessimist. His religious training may have prevented him from becoming one but from an artistic standpoint it was unfortunate. It is greatly inartistic for a poet stricken with grief not to be a pessimist or a flaunting optimist. I His refusal to give way to grief and disappointment de- prived his treatment of the theme chosen by him of force and abandon. He does not kick against the pricks, he does not become a rebel, not even an optimist of the kind artistically desirable. He does indeed endeavour to per- suade himself that it is by enduring grief and disappoint- ment and failure that a man's soul reaches great heights, but it is a tacit and tame acceptance of things as they are, and a soothing self-persuasion that all is for the best,-a bloodless optimism at best. He is not even morbid or cynical. If his grief wa^an obsession, as we are led to believe by his description of it, we would expect to find its heavy crushing steps driving him into a mad frenzy of poetic effusion but through it all Islwyn's soul appears to be quite calm. It seems to have become a sweet and tender melancholy after all.the acidity of grief half- neutralised by the poet's Calvinism. Or was it patho- logical ?