gerwyn wiliams
1934–1942(‘Poems1934–1942’) (1944)—includes at least ten poems written dur-
ing his service as a soldier in Sandhurst, Weymouth, and Brecon and also whilst on
leave in Cardiff. In addition to those which deal directly with the War, he managed
to capture in the whole collection some of the nervousness and anxiety of the
1930s as the world, for the second time in the twentieth century, moved inevitably
towards war.
‘The poetry I attempted to wrest from this sorry state of affairs immediately
before and during the years of the war was a poetry of despair,’ said Llywelyn-
Williams; ‘my own personal despair, my despair for Wales helplessly entangled in
the cataclysm, and my despair for the whole of human civilization.’^12 In 1936—the
year in which Hitler won 99 per cent of the vote in German elections and the
Spanish Civil War began—Alun Llywelyn-Williams wrote ‘If the Rain Would Stop,
Friend’. One senses a sinister threat, although at this stage it is unidentified and
referred to in mythological and symbolic terms: ‘Friend, we cannot wait|and see
the wolf roaming a Cardiff street.’^13 The tone is already urgent and apprehensive:
‘if we could free ourselves...from the fear, from the terror,|from the nightmare
of our world—|but almost everyone is an enemy.’ The paranoia and uncertainty
increase in ‘On the Threshold of War’, written the following year: ‘they say that
the war has broken out,|but who our enemies are has not been revealed,||We’ll
find that from tomorrow’s paper.’^14 Nothing is certain or dependable: in ‘After
Listening to the Doctor’s Advice’ the previous reference points have lost their
relevance, and uncertainty has spread like a disease among people and infected the
mutual understanding that helped society function: ‘the old map is not correct, the
roads|are strange, the old signs silent.’^15 The brave new world that he had greeted
as recently as 1935, the civic topography and industrial landscape of Cardiff that he
hadpromotedwithconfidenceandprideinTir Newyddas a powerhouse for a new
Wales, is abruptly turned into a dystopia of disillusionment.
Llywelyn-Williams was overwhelmed by political disillusionment. Neville Cham-
berlain’s appeasement policy in his dealings with Hitler and Mussolini led to the
Munich Conference in September 1938, where the Sudetenland was yielded to
Germany in the misguided assumption that Hitler’s territorial aims would be
satisfied. Two months laterKristallnachtoccurred, one of the definitive events of
the Holocaust: synagogues were burnt, houses ransacked, shops looted, nearly 100
people killed, and over 20,000 transported to concentration camps. Surely it is
the British Prime Minister and his fellow politicians whom Llywelyn-Williams had
in mind when he referred to the amateurs in a newsreel in ‘Lounge on the Hill’:
‘let us watch, while we can, in the ample seats,|the film slip across the light of
(^12) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘Alun Llywelyn-Williams’, 173–4.
(^13) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘If the RainWould Stop, Friend’, trans. Clancy, inLight in the Gloom, 113.
(^14) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘On the Threshold of War’, trans. Clancy, ibid. 116.
(^15) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘After Listening to the Doctor’s Advice’, trans. Clancy, ibid. 117.