After writing this week about killer cliches, and then about a character whose great obsession is the disturbing preposition in the phrase "in Maui," I was going to plunge once more into the dark seas of murky language. But then the Hawaii weather turned crisp and clear, I began listening to the words of some of my favorite Christmas music, and I decided not to take the plunge.

Instead I took out "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and surrendered to the magical words of Dylan Thomas. I don't want to talk about this classic, I just want to experience it, again.

But what is the best way to enjoy the story? Here we have three options. We can read it silently, taking in the words with our eyes and hearing them with our inner ear. Try it. Here's the opening sentence:

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

But the words cry out to be read aloud. So let's  choose instead to read that opening sentence aloud, taking our time, then strolling along the unhurried lyrical path of the Dylan Thomas narrative. Try it. Read it aloud, slowly, just listening to the sounds. Did I mention the need to slow down? This is not a race. Take a deep breath, then ease into the sentence, and the story:

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

The third way to enjoy this story is to hear someone read the story aloud to us. This may be what happened when we were first introduced to "A Child's Christmas in Wales." A parent or teacher read the story to us. Or perhaps we were lucky enough to hear a recording of Dylan Thomas reading, in his sonorous Welsh voice, in love with the music of the words.

Read on. Here's the second paragraph:

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

And off we go with the story. At the end of the child's Christmas Day, at the end of the story's path, Dylan Thomas gives us this, a sweet and holy ending:

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Tags: Dylan Thomas, reading aloud

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Literature, Memoir, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.