Cymru Dafydd ap Gwilym : Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Wales

This is the fifth collaboration between translator and scholar John Bollard and photographer Anthony Griffiths. Previous books have included The Mabinogi: Legend and Landscape of Wales (2006) and Englynion y Beddau: Stanzas of the Graves (2015). In each, classics of medieval Welsh literature are explored in the context of the landscapes and locations associated with them. In Cymru Dafydd ap Gwilym/Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Wales they turn their attention to one of the greatest of all Welsh poets, exploring his world through a selection of his poems, with parallel Welsh and English texts, illustrated by Anthony Griffiths’ evocative photographs.

In his introduction, John Bollard explains that the choice of poems was dictated partly by places associated with Dafydd or mentioned in the poems, but also by the desire to present the range of this extraordinary poet’s work. The poems are divided thematically, pride of place given, not unnaturally, to Dafydd’s poems of love (more often than not frustrated) addressed to Morfudd and Dyddgu, with, for good measure, a selection of poems to unnamed girls. Further sections represent Dafydd’s poems to patrons and fellow poets, while a final group addresses the subject of inevitable decay and the need (perhaps) for repentance.

John Bollard’s English versions of the poems are, he explains, rendered in prose in order to express ‘as clearly as possible what I perceive to be the meaning of the original and to replicate the order and structure of Dafydd’s phrasing as clearly as is compatible with clarity.’ Wisely, he has not attempted to recreate the intricate cynghanedd which is integral to the Welsh. He is too modest, however, when he refers to his versions as prose. There is a verve to the translations which gets very close to the animation and vivacity of Dafydd’s poetry, the sheer inventiveness of it, as in these lines from ‘Y Cloc’ (The Clock), where the Welsh has:

Cloc anfwyn mal clec ynfyd
Cobler brwysg, cabler ei bryd,
Cleddau eurych celwyddawg,
Cnecian ci yn cnocian cawg,
Mynychglap mewn mynachglos
Melin ŵyll yn malu nos.

which, in John Bollard’s sprightly version, reads:

Rude clock like the foolish clack
of a drunken cobbler – curse its form –
the sword of a lying tinker,
a clattering dog banging a bowl,
the frequent clap, in the monks’ cloister,
of a ghostly mill grinding at night.

The poems are accompanied by end notes which often provide an interpretation, followed by an explanation of words and references in the originals. There is a great deal of learning here which is presented with an admirably light touch.

Anthony Griffiths’ photographs – now of broad landscapes, now close-ups of ruins associated with Dafydd such as the massive cornerstones of what is left of Brogynin, Dafydd’s home in Ceredigion – are an evocative and essential element in the conception of this book, which is to present Dafydd, man and poet, in the context of the natural and human world in which he moved. The landscapes are devoid of humans – the reader must people them from the poems; most affecting are the photographs of ruins, a reminder of what every medieval poet knew – that time passes, that in the end all is vanity.

One other aspect struck me forcibly reading this book. Dafydd’s poems teem with birds and animals – blackbirds, nightingales, hawks, roe deer – they are part of the living world out of which he wrote. Today many are on the Red List of endangered species – you will not find many nightingales in Wales now. Dafydd’s world is a world we have lost in more ways than one. We should grieve for it, but also be glad that John Bollard and Anthony Griffiths have presented us with a truly revealing pathway into the poetry and life of this brilliant poet, and the Wales that he celebrated.

John Barnie

A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.