{"id":2110,"date":"2013-01-10T12:38:28","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T11:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2013-01-10T13:13:39","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T12:13:39","slug":"following-edward-thomas-and-his-map-of-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=2110","title":{"rendered":"following Edward Thomas and his ‘map of the soul’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheBlown away by the quite phenomenal Nick Dear play The Dark Earth and The Light Sky <\/i>about Edward Thomas, now showing at the Almeida Theatre on its first run.<\/p>\n

I wrote about Thomas in The Green Road into the Trees<\/i> – indeed in some ways the book was a centenary version of his own book, The Icknield Way<\/i>, when he took the same route in 1912. Nick Dear has a fine phrase for Thomas’s travel books which he describes as \u2018maps of his soul\u2019, rather than more conventional guides, and as a result did not sell.<\/p>\n

Dear does a few things exceptionally well:\u00a0 he doesn’t sentimentalise Thomas at all – he often comes across as a monster in the way he treats his wife Helen in particular;\u00a0 the play does not climax with Thomas’s tragic death in the First World War which often over-colours accounts of his life – this is the chronicle of a death foretold;\u00a0 he shows how the friendship between Thomas and Robert Frost was pivotal for both men\u2019s poetry – Thomas started publishing and Frost got recognition.<\/p>\n

But above all it focuses on Helen, who for me had always been a shadowy presence.\u00a0 She comes across as a tragic figure, quite beautifully played by Hattie Morahan, dealing with her husband’s depression and death wish with alternate light and sadness.<\/p>\n

In The Green Road into the Trees<\/i>, I quoted the lines of Thomas that haunted me from his own account of my journey:\u00a0 \u2018I could not find a beginning or an ending to the Icknield Way. It is thus a symbol of mortal things with their beginnings and ends always in immortal darkness.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blown away by the quite phenomenal Nick Dear play The Dark Earth and The Light Sky about Edward Thomas, now showing at the Almeida Theatre on its first run. I wrote about Thomas in The Green Road into the Trees – indeed in some ways the book was a centenary version of his own book, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,65,76,1],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-literature","category-poetry","category-uncategorized","tag-edward-thomas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}