Self And Other In Dylan Thomas’s And W.H. Auden’s Poetry

Abstract

This article presents a reading of two twentieth century poems, namely “This Bread I Break” and “Love in the Asylum” by Thomas and “O What is that Sound” and “September 1, 1939” by Auden through Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy focusing on the notion of the face which revolves around ethical awareness and sensibility. These works offer similar images of the self before the encounter and the other’s face effect on the subject; however, the speakers come out of the encounter differently: in “This Bread I Break”, parallels are drawn between the self and the other’s difference (a lack of sameness); in “Love in the Asylum”, the speaker simply comes out of the encounter with the other revealing a poverty represented as a woman; in “O What is That Sound”, a self/other relationship is based not on respect and trust but on betrayal and dominance; in “September 1, 1939”, the poet believes that the absence of love between the self and the other has consequences as severe as death. We conclude that though the self/other’s relation and the encounters with the face are unfriendly in Thomas’ poems, they do not impart the antagonism found in Auden’s poems.