gerwyn wiliams
awaits us in Wales, to be discovered and cultivated and claimed, so as to extend
theboundaries of Welsh culture.’^6 His was an unashamedly modernizing agenda
as he sought to locate the discussion of Welsh literature within the wider context of
current developments in architecture, visual arts, music, theatre, and cinema, as well
as influential scientific matters. His approach was combative rather than defensive:
only three years after Saunders Lewis’s gesture of cultural separatism which saw him
defining and promoting a Welsh literary canon in hisBraslun o Hanes Llenyddiaeth
Gymraeg (‘An Outline of the History of Welsh Literature’) (1932), Llywelyn-
Williams had no qualms about suggesting that contemporary Welsh poetry had a
lot to learn from contemporary English poetry, and in particular the left-wing verse
of W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Rex Warner. He was highly
critical of the direction in which current Welsh poetry seemed to be going—towards
conservatism, classicism, and medievalism: ‘classicism has throughout the ages been
associated with conservatism and reactionism and oppression and intolerance.’^7
This put him at odds full-frontally with the highly influential right-wing vision of
Saunders Lewis, whose survey of Welsh literature had drawn to a close in 1536; one
of its opening claims had been that ‘For a Welsh writer today the Middle Ages, and
primarily the period between the twelfth and the sixteenth century, are significant
for him, they have an effect on him and they steer his work, in a manner that a
writer in France or Germany or England could not comprehend.’^8
But Llywelyn-Williams’s promotion of the Auden generation should not be inter-
preted as part of an Anglocentric vision, forTir Newydd’s outlook was positively
internationalist, and this was another attitude that would help him as a soldier-poet
involved in the War on mainland Europe. The fact that Llywelyn-Williams was in
Berlin following its downfall in 1945 placed the Welsh language in a challenging
position; in his poetry, it was forced to face up to a situation of immediate and
immense political, social, and historical importance beyond its usual geographical
and cultural concerns. This in itself invests his war poetry with a significance which
extends beyond the scope of Second World War studies.
When war finally broke out, the wartime rationing of paper meant thatTir
Newyddcould not survive. Its modernizing mission, however, was in many respects
continued by Llywelyn-Williams in his life and works. He was in his mid-20s in 1939
and employed, at the time, by the BBC in Cardiff as a member of the pioneering
(^6) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘ ‘‘Tir Newydd’’ ’ (‘New Territory’),Tir Newydd, 1 (Summer 1935), 1. He
repeats a similar sentiment inGwanwyn yn y Ddinas: Darn o Hunangofiant(‘Spring in the City:
A Fragment of Autobiography’) (Dinbych: Gwasg Gee, 1975), the opening sections of which are
translated by Joseph P. Clancy inThe Light in the Gloom, 37–8: ‘I was proud of Cardiff city. I believed
it was the most beautiful and interesting city in the world, and I dreamed of ways to improve it and
make it more and more beautiful and increase its fame.’ 7
Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Gwaith ac Adwaith: Rhai Sylwadau ar Farddoniaeth Gyfoes Cymru’,Tir
Newydd, 8 (May 1937), 24.
(^8) Saunders Lewis,Braslun o Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg(Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1986;
1st pub. 1932), 1.