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Once More a Sense of Nationhood
Gruffydd plays a central role in Welsh literary life of the first half of the century. At one time, in Y Llenor, in response to the statement of the first Archbishop of Wales (A.G. Edwards) that "There is no room in the world for small and snarling nations:, Gruffydd responded: "There is no room in Wales for small and snarling prelates." His poetry, full of sensitivity and color, owes a lot to his love of English novelist Thomas Hardy.
Gruffydd praised the simple, hardworking "gwerin," the ordinary folk of his native district in Gwynedd (a theme later to be developed in the novels of Kate Roberts). He also made two important contributions to Welsh scholarship in his history of Welsh literature in two volumes: Llenyddiaeth Cymru (Welsh Literature) and published numerous works dealing with the construction and content of the medieval Welsh classic, the "Mabinogion."
Yet another prolific author with humble beginnings was Thomas Gwynn Jones, (1871-1949), from Abergele, Clwyd. After working on many Welsh newspapers, he became interested in foreign languages and literature, but especially in medieval Welsh poetry, in which his studies, coupled with his fast-growing reputation as a poet, scholar, translator, dramatist and journalist created for him a new chair at the now-prestigious University of Aberystwyth.
Gwynn Jones' published a host of works, including volumes of poetry, translations of Ibsen and Goethe, literary criticism, satirical verse, plays and novels, and historiographies. He is best known for his narrative poems on traditional Celtic themes, many of which deal with the quest for the return to Paradise. In them, it was easy to see his concern with the loss of Welsh culture in the face of what he saw as "modern barbarism."
In 1902 Jones won the chair at the National Eisteddfod with his poem entitled Ymadawiad Arthur (The Departure of Arthur). The first in a series of major poems dealing with Celtic legends, the poem has been considered a landmark in the history of Welsh poetry in the twentieth century. Jones was convinced that the forces of materialism were destroying the ancient time-honored values, and in these historical poems and in another series entitled Y Dwymyn (The Fever), he condemned the frantic pace and mindless direction of modern life.
The next influential poet of the generation was R. Williams Parry (1884-1956) yet another native of the North Wales quarry region. As those who have been to this area will testify, it is a desolate, bleak and scarred land, horribly defaced by the slate industry. It is a landscape that Williams Parry turned away from.
Williams Parry's prize-winning poem of the 1910 Eisteddfod praised the joys of summer (Yr Haf); seen in retrospect it is a paean to the joys of love and nature, looking back to the carefree days of the pre-war period. Like many of his colleagues, Williams Parry had much to lament. Great changes had been taking place in his beloved Wales that were part of the transformation of Great Britain itself, many of these totally due to World War I. The struggle to survive had an added dimension.
Chapter 22: First World War
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