Nostalgic memories. Perspective and perspectival changes in text and film of "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

1. Introduction

Christmas... that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like afragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia.

Christmas may be a day offeasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance, a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

This quote by Augusta E. Rundel illustrates so well the innermost feelings of the speaker in Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales, who reminisces about the most beautiful time of the year he passed with family and friends. However, he does not just recount facts in an emotionally detached way; and it is the aim of this term paper to analyze the confounding of the adult and the child speaker, that is, the former being entirely plunged in his memories surrounding him “like a fragrance”, he seems to actually be the child he was, reliving some scenes again.

First of all, after having given some information about the text version of Thomas' work, I will introduce Gérard Genette's theory of narratology, and mainly focus on the distinction between narration and focalization. This subtle difference, as well as other terminology referring to the question of perspective, is very enriching, as it permits to localize the narrator's point of view and involvement, to understand the story's organization, and eventually, to reflect on the how and why of the blurring of boundaries between the adult speaker of the here and now (at the moment of speaking), and the child speaker experiencing the events. I will argue that those two are intertwined, with several gradations more or less explicit in text and film.

Next, the way of narrating, the style, and linguistic issues will be examined, in order to attribute certain expressions or sentence structures either rather to the adult, or to the child. Of course it is not always possible to draw a clear-cut line, but nevertheless, there are passages which I believe to be revealing when arguing in favor of a perspective. It is crucial not to forget that the latter does not stay static, but that we can detect shifts of position throughout the story. This gives reason to dwell on some scenes in further detail.

The second part of my work will deal with the film A Child's Christmas in Wales. As above, I will begin with some general remarks; then I would like to investigate the impact of the camera position because a stage director, by means of making different choices concerning distance, or angle of vision, can influence the spectators' perception, and thus, partially, their emotions.

Finally, the role of sounds and music will be taken into consideration, there will be a close analysis of a few scenes, and I will sum up my results in the conclusion.

2. A Child's Christmas in Wales: The Text

A Child's Christmas in Wales is a prose poem, published as a book for the first time in 1954, which has its origins in two distinct works. The first one, Memories of Christmas, has been suggested by the producer of The Welsh Children's Hour of the B.B.C. in 1945. For fear of a displeasing incident, “[t]hey had to pretend to Thomas, who is hardly likely to have cared anyway, that technical reasons made it necessary to record in advance” (Ferris 200-201). This part contains the passage with the fire in the Prothero's kitchen, and is particularly close to poetry. “Conversation About Christmas”, the second work, is an essay written for Picture Post in 1947.

A Child's Christmas in Wales is among Dylan Thomas' most famous and successful works. It has been adapted as numerous theater plays, and film, on which I will focus later on. It is a very nostalgic portrait of Christmas Eve; the story is made up of several anecdotes rather than being a chronological report. The touching poeticity oflanguage (see the chapter on style), and the beautiful depiction of childhood memories have often been considered as being in sharp contrast to Dylan Thomas the persona (cf Korg 16). 'A condemnable artist could not but produce meritless art' - this alludes to Thomas' writings with provocative or disturbing subjects for his time. But in the following, there will not be given voice to these discussions - I would like to look at the work independently of the author's life, and underline the elaborated way of representing an adult's rediscovery of a child's delight in Christmas.

3. Gérard Genette’s theory

The terminology introduced by the French literary theorist Gérard Genette in his work Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method, first published in 1972, will provide a basis for my analysis of perspective and perspectival changes in Dylan Thomas' work. I present and explain his definition of narration and focalization, as well as other important aspects which play a role in my analysis in terms of the point of view.

To begin with, there are two decisive points one has to keep in mind : firstly, Genette's classification system is very strict, but detailed, and allows an exact identification of many narrative phenomena we encounter not only in contemporary, but also in historical texts. The “context of production as a fundamental element” comes to the fore (Guillemette and Lévesque). Secondly, Genette is convinced that every narrative, regardless of how it seems at first sight, implies the presence of a narrator. There can be no story without a narrator presenting the events in a certain way, because could be possible that the narrator makes himself explicit at any time in the story.

As I said above, I will accentuate the distinction between narration and focalization, following closely Genette's definitions. The first, often referred to as 'voice', is defined as the question: who speaks? One component in particular must be mentioned, namely the narrative levels, which are also going to be relevant for my perspectival analysis. The diegesis is the story, with the extradiegetic level being the so-called 'level of transmission' where the main plot is located; whereas the second, intradiegetic level, is concerned with the events presented in the narrative. A third, metadiegetic level, is provided within the second one. The difference between them is “that any event a narrative recounts is at a diegetic level immediately higher than the level at which the narrating act producing this narrative is placed” (Genette 228). Furthermore, the author talks about the possibilities of the narrator's relation with the story. Of course, the question of the personal involvement is relevant for the comprehension of the narrator's position and the nostalgic undertone in A Child's Christmas in Wales.

Instead of working with the expressions of a first-person or third-person narrator (used for example by Franz K. Stanzel), Gérard Genette, having realized the need for a new typology, uses other concepts who answer the question of the narrator's relation to the story. A homodiegetic one is present in the narrated world and takes part in his own story. At the highest form of involvement, the narrator coincides with the protagonist, and is thus called autodiegetic. By contrast, the heterodiegetic narrator manifests the greatest distance, being almost, though never entirely, absent from the story.

Focalization, or the narrative mood, gives an answer to the question: who sees in the story? It is about the narrator's consciousness, and all he can perceive and feel. Various nuances are imaginable here; and the choice amongst them, or the combination of multiple ones, can have an impact on the addressee's understanding and feelings. An external focalization signifies that the narrator remains as neutral as possible, and that he has no insight in the characters thoughts. Often, this position is compared to a camera simply showing the actions. When the narrator knows more than a character, or even everything about all characters, this is a case of zero-focalization. The omniscient narrator's knowledge is not restricted. Finally, the internal focalization displays a narrator knowing as much as one character.

Obviously, there are much more ways an author can construct and organize a story by modifying other narrative devices, such as order, duration or frequency (see the first chapters in Genette). Nonetheless, already these basic assumptions Gérard Genette makes in his work are going to be really helpful when I now highlight the narrative situations in Dylan Thomas' prose poem.

4. The wav of narrating

“You can struggle with rhyme and meter and style and still not have a poem”, said Dylan Thomas once (qtd. in Baughan Murdy, 107). In my opinion, it is legitimate not only to claim that A Child's Christmas in Wales bears resemblance to a poem, but also that some aspects which hold for Thomas' poetry are true for the short story in question. But what are the main features all poems have in common?

According to Vera and Ansgar Nünning, the characteristics are relative brevity, density and reduction of the topic, subjectivity, musicality, and deviations from everyday language (47-49). By definition, short stories fulfill the first condition: they begin in medias res and can be read in one single sitting. With Thomas' short story, this is perfectly possible. The second requirement goes hand in hand with the first one, and again we could say the same thing is true for short stories, which nearly always concentrate on only one line of action and one subject- matter. Also the third point is suitable for a formal description of short stories. Naturally, many people like to think back at how they celebrated Christmas when they were children; however, in our short story by Dylan Thomas, the narrator gives an account of his personal Christmas Eve. Now I will discuss he last two criteria, concerning more precisely stylistic and linguistic issues.

Many authors have pointed out the need to read out aloud Dylan Thomas' works, including those not intended to be broadcast on the radio. The author himself was convinced that poetry was “the rhythmic [...] movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision” (qtd. by Stearns in Tedlock 119). Louise Baughan Murdy also emphasized the value of an oral reading, and links this to the possibility of a deeper understanding of the texts : “[...] Thomas himself felt that auditory effects contribute to the total meaning of a poem” (11). It is via the listening that we understand that sound and sense go together, and that the meaning rather lies in the former than in thought. In A Child's Christmas in Wales, we can detect a lot of affinities with poetry: from the very beginning of the text, the author uses alliterations and internal rhymes. When looking closely at the first paragraph, one sees that the [s]- and [z]-sounds prevail (I stick to the phonetic notation as given in the International Phonetic Alphabet). For example, we have “sound except the distant speaking of voices I sometimes hear” (my emphasis, also in the following). Furthermore, the diphthong [ay] appears frequently: “around the sea-town comer now and out of all sound”. Also the second paragraph of the short story contains alliterations, such as “toward the two-tongued sea”, “fish-freezing waves”, or “wool-white”. In order to confirm the rhythmicity Dylan Thomas himself has talked about, we can have a look at the passage in which the children play a game: “Now we were snow-blind travelers / lost on the north hills, / and vast dewlapped dogs, / with flasks round their necks / ambled and shambled up to us, / baying 'Excelsior'”.

Elder Olson goes in for morphology, syntax, and semantics, writing that Thomas both liked to create new words with multiple meanings and functions in a phrase, and to use many metaphors (54-56). We find “Christmases roll down”, “a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards”, or “ice-cream hills”. An example for the attribution of a new meaning to a word could be “wind-cherried noses”, that is 'to have a nose as red as a cherry due to the wind', because 'to cherry' does not exist with the required meaning.

I thus conclude that A Child's Christmas in Wales has indeed several properties in common with poetry. However, this raises the question of artificiality and authenticity. On the one hand, given that in Nünning “deviations from everyday language” (47) are likewise cited among the characteristics of a poem, this could be interpreted as creating a distance. Clearly, it cannot be a child who is speaking in such an elaborate way, although the author often aims at imitating a child's point of view, as we will see in the following analysis. On the other hand, Thomas also tried to render the nostalgic atmosphere and feelings. The poetic language, and the complex structure on all linguistic sub-fields, certainly contribute to the romantic style, the idyllic picture of Christmas Eve, as well as to the impression to share the same dear memories with the narrator. Dylan Thomas' story is personal and universal at the same time: the latter, because he captures the essence, so to speak, or the major elements of Christmas how anyone of us could perceive them; and personal, because his family served as an inspiration: His [Thomas' grandfather's] was a large family, and when he died in 1905, there were three sons and four daughters still alive. These, with their husbands and wives, are the uncles and aunts of Dylan's A Child's Christmas in Wales, sturdy, humble people.

(Fitzgibbon 15)

What is more, neither does the short story's title allow for an identification of a single person, and the author has preferred the more general formulation to the possibility to say 'my Christmas in Wales'. Speaking in Gérard Genette's terms, when only considering the title, we could be confronted with a heterodiegetic, covert narrator who has knowledge either about all characters, only one, or none.

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