Awen yn codi o’r cudd, yn cydio’r cwbl
(Awen rising from hiding, everything binding)
The above quotation from Waldo Williams’ great mystical poem “Mewn Dau Gae’ (In Two Fields) has appeared in the masthead to this weblog and I wrote about its context in the poem elsewhere ~> . His sense of the awen arising from the deep both within the poet and from the landscape was discussed there. More recently I have come across a discussion of the poet’s work written in the mid twentieth century by Anglican priest and fellow Welsh-language poet Euros Bowen who asserts that, for Waldo Williams (in my translation) “awen is more than poetic inspiration; it is more than a divine influence on the poet. […..] It is itself a religion.”
Although Waldo Williams was a Quaker, and widely thought of as a ‘Quaker poet’, this critic asserts that “ .. it would be a grave error to call him a non-conformist Christan poet” but one who worships in an “invisible and timeless place” (to quote one of his poems) beyond the confines of any temple. He further asserts that “the basis of his faith is not a trust in Christ, or a convincement about God. Its core is a metaphysical and religious convincement that God’s Awen gives life its meaning and purpose, and that awen enables ‘recognition’ (‘adnabod’ – a key term in his poetry) of the divine. After citing a number of references to awen in the poetry to make this case, Euros Bowen then examines the awdl (a long poem in cynghanedd metres) ‘Tŷ Ddewi’ about the establishment of a centre of worship by St David in the place which now bears his name. He notes that, in spite of the Christian context of this foundation, Waldo Williams has St David replying to a passing Celtic pagan who tells him
“I will not serve
Christ hanging on a cross.
Give back the sun of the old shining world,
bring light to the land of the heart
without any pang of pain from an odious crown,
O, give us the birds of Rhiannon.” (*)
David replies that there is room for “the song of that queen” in the new religion alongside “the beauty of Brân the Blessed”. The response of the critic to this is that it sounds distinctly odd coming from a Christian saint, but is entirely consistent with the poet’s view of awen.
It is enlighnening to read such a critical response from an Anglican priest with a different theological perspective but who also had great admiration and respect for the poet and was able to imaginatively inhabit his spiritual space. It was also instructive to have my own perceptions of the poet’s view of awen re-inforced and extended by the discussion. Not everyone would endorse Euros Bowen’s view of Waldo Williams, at least not as categorically as he states it. For most he will remain a Quaker poet working within the Christian tradition. But that is not, of course, incompatible with the Quaker view of experiental religion and its recognition of ‘many paths to the Spirit’ ; nor of the poet’s belief that, speaking of Catholic martyrs,
Un yw craidd cred a gwych adnabod
Eneidiau yn un a’r rhuddin yng ngwreiddyn Bod
(The core of all faiths is one, so I keenly acknowledge / Souls quickening together at the root of Being)
or of his perception of awen as a “voice clearly heard” and its presence clearly felt “yn cydio’r cwbl” – making everything whole.
(*) These lines are from the translation of Dafydd Johnston in The Peacemakers , a volume of Waldo Williams’ poems in Welsh with facing English translations, mainly by Tony Conran (Gomer, 1997)
Euros Bowen’s essay first appeared in 1957 and was re-published in Waldo Williams – Cyfres y Meistri 2 , Robert Rhys (1981)
greghill.cymru 