As we wanted to emphasize other times, Dylan Thomas wrote many short stories from an early age, although it is commonly remembered as a poet. The production prose has a double importance because while he is utterly self-respect and equal to the poems, on the other reveals many similarities and links with the poetry, at times even anticipates or deeper issues. We also mentioned the important role of notebooks, these notebooks filled with notes and revisions which will draw on Thomas for life. One of the five books stored at the Lockwood Memorial Library is the so-called Red Notebook, which contains ten stories, of which only a constitute the core part of the first prose collection, The Map of Love (1939). One of the stories, so to speak, "discarded", entitled "Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar" , will be published only posthumously, in the collection Early Prose Writings 1971. Then reappears in the book The Collected Stories (1983), in an Appendix entitled Early Stories, along with stories "Brember", "Jarley's", "In the Garden". I understand that the most extensive collection of poems and stories published in Italy so far Thomas is the sheer volume Poems and short stories, edited by A. Marianne (Einaudi, Turin, 1996), and the fact that it did not include translations of these four stories of young people, was what prompted me to experiment with their translation a couple of years ago. Were written by Thomas between 1931 and 1934, when the author was not even 20 years, though this may raise some doubts about their value relative to the rest of Thomas, let's not forget that we are talking about a precocious author , and whose life was still very short: the works that date back to look more mature when he was little more than 30 years. Of these four stories unpublished in Italy, what I think is most significant in fact "Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar" , full of symbolism and that language is characterized by complex, high-power metaphor that is also found in her most famous production later. The stories in the appendix, it is also what has attracted more attention from critics than the other three almost completely ignored.
The narrative opens on a scene of apocalyptic destruction, in which war planes fly over and bomb the island and strife raging in the streets haunted by death, dissolution of the physical and moral value: the bombs sow destruction, the revolutionary armed looting stores and raping women. According to Tritschler the story is a reductio ad absurdum a real moral carnage that was taking place in society, the society of the '30s in high social and economic crisis. The United Kingdom is going through a turbulent period with high unemployment, strikes, falling wages and subsidies. But death in the story is a force levels, which abolishes any social distinction: all equally suffer from hunger, all die in the same slum. The theme of life springing from death is anticipated in the first part, in one sentence and then deleted from Thomas: " out of the spirits of death in new, reeking life, out of the new fire to last hacked Coals." But once the fighting and resume the images of death, in a world in which the normal conditions seem reversed: people are hungry but they need love, not food, to survive, and the bombs were greeted like manna from heaven, "Their hands cupping for the exploding manna" .
Suddenly the narrative switches to first person: the protagonist sees two ghosts that wander through the dead bodies and decides to follow them, but he feels the same ghost in a world that I live only in appearance, in which every regular activity appears to be suspended in a timeless stillness. His dream tour ends in a square: you will find the two ghosts, and at their feet, he sees the lifeless body of a woman. In his belly shake something is a new life, a child is born from the womb of the woman who died in the rubble of a world devastated by war. But as the two ghosts kneel offering gold and incense to the new born, the protagonist is reached by a bullet of his persecutors. This point is particularly interesting fixes Thomas, appearing in square brackets, in the case of cancellations, or in italics, if it is added: the names that first revealed the true identity of the two ghosts, Gaspar and Melchior are been eliminated, replaced by the terms "the first ghost" and "the second ghost." The only elements that allow us to identify them as two Kings, then, are gifts that carry the newborn, reference in the dialogue between the protagonist and the men who obstruct its path, which alludes to "the wise men", and of course the title. Even the most explicit "bitter as Myrrh" referring to the blood of the hero mortally wounded by the bullet is removed and inserted in its place is "my blood streamed bitterly." No clear indication of the true identity of the Magi is then made in the final version of the story, that certainly makes the allusion less clear but equally effective. The bitter
reading of Christianity and its values \u200b\u200bin the light of the modern world devastated by war and hatred, a world that values operates a total reversal, is a recurring theme in Thomas, and highlights the weakness and inadequacy of ritual and religious beliefs in the midst of such decay. This immediately brings us back to the poems of Thomas where death caused by war is revealed in all its useless atrocities. Thus, in "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" , the refusal to mourn the dead child, and extremely bitter objections to the traditional religious rites that belong to the same company that caused so much sorrow and violence, it is expressed paradoxically through the use of religious images, their juxtaposition with pictures from the world of nature wants to emphasize the authenticity of the latter than the conventional symbols of religion and corrupt, who cries too late an innocent victim.
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