I admit it.
Memorizing Dylan Thomas is by far the most difficult trick of memorization I've put myself through. Though A Child's Christmas in Wales is only 25 minutes long, it was much trickier to learn that the 1 hour 45 minute, one-actor A Christmas Carol - all because of the language.
Dickens' Christmas Carol - for all its Victorian sensibilities - consists of fairly standard English, and a fair amount of dialogue. But Thomas, while using mostly standard words, assembles them in truly unique ways, and then layers them on top of each other in cascading cacophonies of verbal music.
Try it yourself. Here's a short passage from Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Try to memorize just this opening passage. You'll soon see what I mean.
" One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen."
Memorizing Dylan Thomas is by far the most difficult trick of memorization I've put myself through. Though A Child's Christmas in Wales is only 25 minutes long, it was much trickier to learn that the 1 hour 45 minute, one-actor A Christmas Carol - all because of the language.
Dickens' Christmas Carol - for all its Victorian sensibilities - consists of fairly standard English, and a fair amount of dialogue. But Thomas, while using mostly standard words, assembles them in truly unique ways, and then layers them on top of each other in cascading cacophonies of verbal music.
Try it yourself. Here's a short passage from Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales.
Try to memorize just this opening passage. You'll soon see what I mean.
" One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen."
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