Twelve

Dylan Thomas's Twelve

Dylan Thomas's poem "Twelve" presents a complex, haunting exploration of religious imagery, spiritual disillusionment, and human suffering. Written during Thomas's early career, the poem manifests many of the stylistic and thematic concerns that would come to define his oeuvre: dense imagery, religious symbolism repurposed for secular ends, and an exploration of the human condition through paradox and contradiction. This analysis will excavate the multilayered complexity of "Twelve," situating it within Thomas's broader poetic project and the historical context of early twentieth-century modernism, while examining its formal innovations, thematic preoccupations, and enduring relevance.

Historical and Biographical Context

To fully appreciate "Twelve," we must first understand Thomas's complicated relationship with religion and spirituality. Born in 1914 in Swansea, Wales, Thomas grew up in a household where his father, an English teacher, read Shakespeare to him before he could read, and where the rhetorical cadences of Welsh chapel services permeated the cultural atmosphere. Though Thomas would later reject organized religion, the linguistic power and imagery of Christianity—particularly its Welsh Nonconformist expressions—would influence his poetic sensibility throughout his career.

"Twelve," published in Thomas's 1934 collection 18 Poems when he was just twenty years old, emerges from a period of intense creative productivity and personal struggle. The Great Depression had gripped Britain, and the specter of another world war loomed on the horizon. Meanwhile, literary modernism was reshaping poetic conventions, challenging traditional forms and subjects. Thomas himself was beginning to develop his distinctive voice—one characterized by dense verbal textures, intricate sound patterns, and surrealistic imagery.

The poem's title, "Twelve," invites multiple interpretations. It might reference the twelve apostles, suggesting a religious framework for the poem's explorations. Alternatively, it could allude to the twelve hours of night, reinforcing the poem's preoccupation with darkness, both literal and spiritual. The number twelve also carries connotations of completeness or wholeness in various mystical traditions—a wholeness that the poem's speaker seems desperately to seek but cannot attain.

Formal Analysis

"Twelve" consists of fourteen lines, resembling a sonnet in length but diverging significantly from traditional sonnet form in its structure and rhyme scheme. This subversion of the sonnet tradition aligns with modernist innovations in poetic form while gesturing toward classical structures—a tension characteristic of Thomas's approach to tradition.

The poem employs what would become Thomas's signature style: densely packed imagery, syntactic complexity, and a musicality derived from Welsh poetic traditions. The syntax is particularly notable—the first eight lines constitute a single complex sentence, creating a breathless momentum that mimics the speaker's intensifying declarations. This syntactic structure draws the reader inexorably forward, mirroring the poem's thematic movement from abstract philosophical concerns toward increasingly concrete images of religious desolation.

Thomas's use of sound patterns is sophisticated and deliberate. The poem abounds in harsh consonants and sibilants: "slaving lips," "starved babies," "broomsticks," "black apparelled cries." These sounds create a jarring, unsettling effect that reinforces the poem's dark content. Meanwhile, assonance patterns—particularly the repetition of the "ah" sound in words like "naught," "starved," and "parson"—lend a mournful, elegiac quality to the piece.

Thematic Analysis

The Corruption of Religious Language and Imagery

At its core, "Twelve" presents a scathing critique of religious hypocrisy and the inadequacy of spiritual language in the face of material suffering. The poem is saturated with religious imagery—"cross," "manna," "hymn," "homage"—but these sacred elements are consistently twisted, corrupted, or rendered impotent.

The speaker positions himself as both critic and participant in this religious system. His declaration—"I would enforce the black apparelled cries, / Speak like a hungry parson of the manna"—reveals a bitter awareness of religious rhetoric's failure to address real human suffering. The parson speaks of divine sustenance (manna) while remaining hungry himself, a potent metaphor for religious institutions that offer spiritual platitudes without addressing material needs.

Similarly, the image of adding "one more nail of praise on to the cross" transforms an act of devotion into one of further crucifixion—praise becomes indistinguishable from torture. This collapse of distinction between worship and cruelty cuts to the heart of Thomas's critique: that religious systems often perpetuate the very suffering they claim to alleviate.

Language, Meaning, and Failure

The poem opens with the striking image of sanity adding up to "naught" and words falling "crippled from the slaving lips." This establishes from the outset a preoccupation with the inadequacy of language and the failure of rational thought. The "slaving lips" suggest both tortured effort and enslavement to linguistic systems that ultimately fail to communicate meaning. This theme of communicative failure runs throughout the poem, culminating in the speaker's declaration that he "would choke the heavens with my hymn"—an image that suggests both devotional intensity and a violent silencing of divine response.

The poem's exploration of language's limits connects to a broader modernist concern with the breakdown of traditional systems of meaning in the early twentieth century. In the wake of World War I, with traditional religious and social structures increasingly called into question, poets like Thomas explored the limitations of language itself as a medium for making sense of a fragmented world.

Hunger and Spiritual Starvation

Images of hunger and starvation permeate "Twelve," functioning both literally and metaphorically. The "starved babies" and "hungry parson" evoke the material deprivation of Depression-era Britain, while simultaneously suggesting a deeper spiritual hunger. The juxtaposition of religious imagery with starvation creates a powerful indictment: while religion promises spiritual nourishment, physical hunger persists.

The poem's conclusion—"That men might see the devil in the crumb / And the death in a starving image"—crystallizes this theme. The "crumb" evokes both minimal physical sustenance and the Eucharistic bread of Christian communion. By locating "the devil" in this crumb, Thomas suggests that even our most sacred symbols of nourishment contain within them elements of evil and death. The "starving image" might refer both to religious iconography and to the starving human beings such imagery fails to sustain.

Darkness and Illumination

The poem establishes a tension between darkness and light, with darkness seemingly predominant. The "thief of night" steals babies, cries are "black apparelled," and the speaker addresses a "mad miner"—a figure associated with underground darkness. The only mention of light comes in the phrase "talk of light to a mad miner," suggesting that illumination exists only as empty rhetoric offered to those dwelling in darkness.

This preoccupation with darkness aligns with Thomas's broader poetic project, which often explores what might be called a "negative mysticism"—a spiritual approach that finds transcendence not in divine light but in confrontation with darkness, death, and absence. In "Twelve," the speaker seems to suggest that authentic spiritual insight comes not from conventional religious illumination but from acknowledging the darkness within religious experience itself.

Stylistic Innovations

Thomas's stylistic approach in "Twelve" reveals his distinctive synthesis of modernist techniques with older poetic traditions. His use of surrealistic juxtaposition—girls taking "to broomsticks when the thief of night / Has stolen the starved babies from their laps"—creates a nightmarish landscape that defies rational interpretation. This technique allows Thomas to convey emotional and spiritual states that resist direct articulation, a strategy that aligns him with contemporaries like T.S. Eliot while reflecting his unique sensibility.

Particularly noteworthy is Thomas's use of syntactic ambiguity and multivalent imagery. The phrase "I would be woven a religious shape" can be read in multiple ways: the speaker might be describing himself being woven into a religious shape, or he might be expressing his desire to have a religious shape woven for him. This ambiguity creates a productive tension, suggesting both active and passive relationships to religious formation.

Thomas's use of conditional phrases—repeated "would" statements—creates a hypothetical frame for the poem's declarations. This framing device establishes distance between the speaker and his proposed actions, suggesting both desire and impossibility, commitment and hesitation. The conditional mode allows Thomas to explore radical religious and poetic possibilities without fully embracing them, reflecting his ambivalent relationship to religious tradition.

Comparative Perspectives

"Twelve" bears interesting comparison to other modernist explorations of religious disillusionment, particularly T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (1922) and W.B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" (1919). Like these works, Thomas's poem confronts the perceived failure of traditional religious frameworks to provide meaning in a modern context. However, while Eliot's approach is more scholarly and allusive, and Yeats's more mystical and prophetic, Thomas's engagement with religious imagery is more visceral and embodied, grounded in physical sensations of hunger, choking, and darkness.

The poem also invites comparison with other works in Thomas's oeuvre, particularly his later, more famous poems like "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and "Fern Hill." While these later works are often more accessible and directly emotional, "Twelve" showcases the dense, challenging style of Thomas's early period. Nevertheless, we can trace consistent preoccupations throughout his career: the relationship between language and experience, the tension between religious imagery and secular meaning, and the search for transcendence within rather than beyond the physical world.

Philosophical Underpinnings

"Twelve" engages with several philosophical currents of its time, particularly existentialism's concern with meaning in a seemingly absurd universe. The poem's opening lines—"That the sum sanity might add to naught / And words fall crippled from the slaving lips"—echo existentialist anxiety about the possibility of rational meaning. The speaker's response to this anxiety is not to abandon meaning-making entirely but to forge new, more authentic expressions, even if these expressions must "choke the heavens" rather than harmonize with traditional sacred music.

The poem also reflects elements of Marxist critique in its attention to material conditions and its implicit challenge to religion as "the opium of the people." The juxtaposition of religious imagery with scenes of material deprivation—starving babies, hungry parsons—aligns with Marxist analysis of religion as a distraction from material suffering rather than a solution to it.

Reception and Legacy

"Twelve," like much of Thomas's early work, received mixed critical response upon publication. While some critics praised its innovative imagery and linguistic density, others found it obscure and overwrought. Over time, however, scholarly appreciation for Thomas's early poems has grown, with critics increasingly recognizing their sophisticated engagement with modernist poetics and their powerful emotional impact.

Thomas's influence extends beyond academic literary circles. His musical language and powerful imagery have inspired musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers. The dark religious imagery of "Twelve" particularly resonates with twentieth and twenty-first century explorations of spirituality in a post-traditional context, where religious symbols retain power even as traditional religious frameworks have lost authority.

Conclusion

"Twelve" stands as a testament to Dylan Thomas's precocious talent and his distinctive contribution to modernist poetry. Through its dense imagery, complex syntax, and radical reimagining of religious language, the poem creates a powerful vision of spiritual crisis and poetic possibility. At its heart lies a paradox characteristic of Thomas's work: a simultaneous rejection of traditional religious frameworks and a profound engagement with religious imagery and concerns.

The poem's enduring power derives from this tension—between belief and disbelief, tradition and innovation, darkness and illumination. In its fourteen lines, Thomas offers not a resolution to spiritual questions but an enactment of spiritual struggle, one that continues to resonate with readers grappling with the place of religious language and imagery in a world where traditional religious certainties have been radically called into question.

As contemporary readers engage with "Twelve," we are invited to recognize in its dark vision not merely historical artifacts of modernist anxiety but enduring questions about language, meaning, and transcendence—questions that continue to haunt our own spiritual and literary landscapes. In Thomas's visionary wrestling with religious tradition, we find not answers but a companion in our own struggles to make meaning in a world where, all too often, "words fall crippled from the slaving lips," and yet we continue, against all odds, to speak.