M. Wynn Thomas yn yr Eisteddfod / Annual Hywel Teifi Edwards Lecture

Traddodwyd Darlith Flynyddol Hywel Teifi Edwards eleni gan yr Athro M. Wynn Thomas. ‘Colli Hywel Teifi - Ymadawiad Arthur’ oedd teitl y ddarlith. Nododd Wynn Thomas fod Hywel Teifi yn awyddus i weld pontio rhwng carfannau ieithyddol Cymru, gan dynnu sylw yn benodol at gyfrol Saesneg olaf Hywel ar basiant Caerdydd. Awgrymodd Wynn Thomas bod T Gwynn Jones yntau yn ymwybodol o’r angen i greu ffurf ar Gymreictod a fyddai’n gallu pontio’r traddodiadau ieithyddol. Trawsffurfio chwedlau hanfodol Saesnig yn rhai Cymraeg a wnaeth T Gwynn Jones yn Ymadawiad Arthur, mewn cerdd hir rymus oedd hefyd yn fath o farwnad i fethiant Cymry Fydd.

This year’s Annual Hywel Teifi Edwards Lecture was delivered by Professor M. Wynn Thomas. Professor Thomas noted that Hywel Teifi was eager to reach out from the core of a Welsh speaking Welshness towards the English speaking majority and drew particular attention to Edwards’s final volume on the Cardiff Pageant. Thomas then turned back to T Gwynn Jones, the founder of Welsh modernist literature, another writer who was painfully aware of the need to create a form of Welshness that would be able to bridge the nation’s linguistic traditions. In his ‘Ymadawiad Arthur’ [The Departure of Arthur] Jones transformed a body of essentially English myths into a robust Welsh mythology. Thomas also suggested that Jones’s powerful long poem was a kind of elegy for the failure of Lloyd George and Cymru Fydd.