THE CLAMOUR OF DREAMS: THE POETRY OF HEDD WYN - A SHEPHERD

Hedd Wyn, a ‘Son of the Daughter of Dragons’, was killed on the 31st July 1917, which was the first day of the appalling Battle of Passchendaele – clearly a victim of the insensate compulsory recruitment of men who, at that stage of the War, were pretty much untrained for battle. My interest in Hedd Wyn and his life and Poetry arose in the early 1990’s, when I was working intensely on the life-story and Poems of Wilfred Owen. My Owen work had expanded into the study of the huge numbers of other ‘war poets’, who had shared in giving written expression of that grotesque event, as was the First World War. I was unable to do the same in respect of Hedd Wyn because of language’s then impenetrable barrier. Now, in this age of Artificial Intelligence, that barrier, though not completely, but to a large degree, has been penetrated. The result is the humble offering of this book’s collection of the Welsh language Poems of Hedd Wynn with transliterations into English. First impression seems to indicate that English is a more prolix language than Welsh – Hedd Wyn’s crisp lines seem to be somewhat extended when transliterated into English. My always-aim is the ‘teasing out’ of meaning – so often difficult in the case of Poetry – even more so when such is in another language. My only experience in participating is such a project was in a collaboration, with a native French speaker, in the translation of some of Wilfred Owen’s Poems into French. The ‘art’ of textual expression, that is the graceful rendering into words into the transliterated language, only then follows on that first ‘teasing out’ of meaning. Certainly, one has great feeling for Hedd Wyn, this ‘wayward’ man of so many conflicts and convergences. His Welsh identity is very dominant – with a very particular attachment for the land of his home in North Wales – the monumentally beautiful Snowdonia. There is also to be found, in his Poetry, strong undercurrents of justified grievances, such Wales’ ‘subjunct’ status as a province of the United Kingdom, suppression of its identity and its peoples, the gruelling hardships of the times and the ever-presence of premature death in that age of neglect of the poor. – all of which were emphasized in the Wales of that era. Taking this as it is here – (even though, in our own era, when ‘religion’ is not so reverentially followed as it once was – [or at all in its true sense?]) - and referencing his own deep commitment to The Christ – One should consider him to be a potential subversive - as Christ was considered to be - by the Romans and by the established priesthood of the Temple of Jerusalem, the driving out of the money changers. This ‘subversive’ Christ is, clearly, Hedd Wyn’s Christ – and this aspect of his personality seems to go as far as to martyrdom – which was, indeed, Hedd Wyn’s actual fate – this in the circumstances of his compulsory drafting into the British Armyin tempore belli and his, almost immediate, resultant death in that War, All which seemed foreshadowed in very many of his Poems. I hope the more prolix (!) English transliterations in this book may have penetrated, somewhat, his poetic opaqueness and that they may give acceptable interpretations of his parables and metaphors.