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Dylan Thomas’ Endopsychic Myths

When Dylan Thomas said that his poetry is the "movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision", he meant that his poetry is the reflection of his blind, obscure mind, that is, the unconscious. Deep psychologists such as Freud and Jung agree that myth is none other than the projection of psychical factors and relations in the unconscious, of what Freud calls 'endopsychic myth.' However, Jung calls it an 'archetype' instead, believing that it is the pattern, matrix and blueprint of all our behavior in our collective unconscious. In this article, however, I use 'endopsychic myth' because 'archetype' is liable to mislead us to believe that all primordial images and motifs can easily be classified, and have one fixed meaning or value. I found that the motifs in “Before I Knocked” gather around the myth of Crucifixion, so that the narrator's birth is merged with the images of the Crucifixion and Genesis in a subtle way. As Christ's death means rebirth in Heaven, the narrator's birth implies his mortality or death (hence, 'womb-tomb'). The other poem “Once Below a Time”, in contrast, does not depend upon any previously known myth, but creates a new myth out of autobiographical experiences and mythic visions. In conclusion, it seems that Thomas attempted throughout his lifetime to reveal his unconscious dramas. In other words, his poems are projections of his deep inner life. He wants to live and reveal a myth below or beyond his conscious mind, as Jung wants to live a myth.