Dylan Thomas
Milk wood
Einaudi, 90 pages, 12 euros
It is not a novel or a short story (but the author has written some wonderful ones, in Portrait of the artist as a puppy), and not even a poem (even if Thomas, Welsh, is among the greatest poets of the twentieth century, compared to Rimbaud and rival of Eliot, Pound and Hopkins, his contemporaries). It is a radio play, a rare genre that has a beautiful history, from Savinio to Bachmann, and which deserves a new life, in the newfound importance of radio. Carlo Izzo translated it well, but this version is also very beautiful, by an excellent poet, Enrico Testa, who is perhaps wrong in having modified the title literally with questionable excuses. Under the milk forest. It was played on the radio and released a year before Thomas died (of alcohol) at the age of forty. Another radio play to re-propose is Very early in the morning, and also at its center is a coastal village full of bizarre characters, dreamers in quiet revolt against the rationality of a world that gave us war and atomic bombs.
Beautiful to listen to, but with a director and voices up to par, Under the milk forest it’s also great to read. Incidentally, Dylan Thomas gave the pseudonym (and a model) to Bob Dylan, and passed through Italy, where the magazine Botteghe Oscure (Bassani) was among the first to notice his greatness. How much love for life, and for the out of phase, for the dreamers and the humble in his verses and prose.
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