E 'of a few hours ago that the legendary Chelsea Hotel of New York has been put up for sale: the owner is no longer able to support expenses and restructuring of that great, dilapidated building that towered up to the 800 Manhattan in the last century had become a luxury hotel frequented by writers, painters and musicians. In so many of us have passed since Mark Twain to Thomas Wolfe, by Arthur Miller to Jack Kerouac, and beside them giants of music like Bob Dylan , Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith , Janis Joplin , or the likes of Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol , here turned even a film, called "Chelsea Girls". Lowest common denominator among all these artists who gravitated around the Chelsea Hotel was not only their love for art, or celebrity. Almost all poor and deeply conformist and revolutionary, one of the studios with kitchenettes that the hotel offered at discount prices made their temporary home. And a hotel room for some of Chelsea it was the last home of a lifetime of wandering and gimmicks. And 'This was the fate of Dylan Thomas, from his room at the Chelsea was transported to St. Vincent, where he died on November 9, 1953 . Thomas had stayed in the famous hotel with his wife Caitlin already during the second lecture tour in the United States, and he immediately set in Greenwich Village bar full of old friends in London and moved to New York. It 'possible that the whole area where there was the Chelsea reminded him of certain areas of Swansea: the trees, the houses that lined the streets, the ships anchored in the Hudson River, and most of all his favorite pub, the White Horse Tavern, one of the oldest in New York, with the atmosphere by English pub that Dylan was more familiar than anything else. Could be no money in pocket (something very common, among other things), away from his family, without a roof to sleep or a verse to be written, but wherever he was, the first thing he did was make sure that there was a nearby bar, and start attending regularly.
At Chelsea Thomas also set October 19, 1953, when he arrived in the United States for his fourth and last tour. His readings were crowded, their behavior often over the top were viewed with sympathy and admiration from the audience. And then, his voice now as an angel, now a madman, now drunk by now unmistakably Welsh accent, conquered anyone. His favorite bar was still the White Horse Tavern, which he affectionately called "The Horse", which today is a room dedicated to the memory of the poet. Here he drank his last two glasses, which were not those of the famous whiskey 18 claim, now considered unreliable, and yet become a legend, but two pints of beer at lunchtime the next day, before collapsing in the final his room at the Chelsea Hotel, in company with American lover Liz Reitell , the only real source of information on those last, frantic hours still under discussion, and her doctor, the doctor Feltenstein, which is been given responsibility an injection of morphine would have been the real cause of death of Thomas. What is certain is that Thomas never returned to live in Wales either reunited with his beloved wife and children, but died in the company of the one thing that never gave up, alcohol, making a dish that, beyond any medical report and any testimony about his last hours, maybe it was already inscribed by the principle in its short, turbulent existence.
L ' America, instead of putting an end to debt and increase the chance of Thomas and his family had in fact exacerbated the health problems of the poet, his fraying marriage and marked the tragic end of his life and his career. From America came the really significant gains popularity and that she had never achieved even in Britain, but too late because if he might enjoy. In America, Thomas had recorded for Caedmon Records debut readings of some of his poems, and these discs, integrated with other material of the BBC and other public readings, they went like hot cakes; here had ended and represented the first time Under Milk Wood, which twenty-five thousand copies sold in Britain in the six months following the death of the author; Collected Poems became a best-seller.
* The title of the article is the line from a famous and beautiful song by Leonard Cohen, Chelsea Hotel # 2
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