Kearney argues that the empire forged by Britain over the following centuries followed this practice begun in the British Isles of containing such plural identities, and in doing this whilst identifying itself against the concept of others the British nation became a ‘narrated community’.36 He would argue, then, that it is possible for the individual to see himself as simultaneously British, Welsh and an inhabitant of a smaller locality – town or village, for example. For some Welsh people, however, there will still exist a need to maintain an identity of Welshness in opposition to Englishness, and to regard Wales as a separate nation under the umbrella of Europe not of Britain;37 to refute, that is, any existent or necessary connection with the concept of ‘Britishness’.
There are, then, a variety of reasons for considering the viewing of Welsh writing as postcolonial problematic. Much of the argument against the discussion of Welsh postcoloniality depends on political rather than cultural analysis. One of the strongest reasons against the exercise is the length of time that has elapsed since the English attempted to colonize Wales contrasted with the corresponding length of time that the two nations have formed one political entity; however, this argument fails to convince if the mindset of the writer is considered to be paramount. Should a writer feel his nationality is constrained by the political or social constraints of colonialism, and consequently write in a given way in order to promote aspects of his national culture, history or background (or to undermine those of the dominant nation), then it is arguable that his work is postcolonial regardless of whether or not the critic feels the writer’s assessment of the situation is accurate. Indeed, Williams describes Humphreys’s theories about the postcoloniality of Wales as bizarre.38
In chapter 2 Emyr Humphreys’s attitudes towards Wales and what it means to be Welsh will be discussed in the light of this tangled complex of issues, including an examination of his non-fictional writings on the subject, which lay bare the mainspring of the majority of his novels. Further chapters will examine the various ways in which Emyr Humphreys chooses to contend with the colonized nature of Wales as he sees it, finding ways in which to assert the existence of a separate nation and culture for Wales, whilst writing through the medium of the English language – ‘the language of the oppressor’39 – and in a political situation (for the larger part of his career) in which Wales, Scotland and England are governed as one entity by the British government. Before the term magic realism was widely used, Humphreys was producing a mixture of social realism (mostly set in Wales) and indigenous myth, legend and history, which he wove into his fiction in a variety of ways; the end result, however, was to educate readers, whether Welsh or not, through the medium of English fiction about the history and culture of the Welsh nation. Postcolonial theory would identify this as one of the strategies of liberation used by writers in countries which are or have been colonized. In one of the earliest postcolonial texts, The Empire Writes Back, the authors argue that ‘the seizing of the means of communication and the liberation of post-colonial writing by the appropriation of the written word become crucial features of the process of self-assertion and of the ability to reconstruct the world as an unfolding historical process’.40 Humphreys, born almost on the border between England and Wales and brought up with English as his first language, has spent his life appropriating ‘english’ for Welsh ends.41 He has described his writing in English as a ‘Kulturkampf, between the imperial language and the defeated native language’, arguing that in his writing he is, whether he likes it or not, ‘using the language of cultural supremacy to try to express something that comes directly from the suppressed native culture’.42 He is, therefore, explicitly aware of the postcolonial nature of his work.
Meanwhile, returning to John Prichard’s comments on growing up in ignorance of ‘one’s native language’, Prichard argues that,
It is an experience which possibly tends to develop a peculiar sensitivity to language. Could this be the reason why so many Welshmen of our generation have such an absorbing interest in the English language? I think it is certainly one reason. Having been denied our native tongue, the only form of revenge we can take is to turn the other cheek, as the Irish have done, and try to write English better than the English.43
Prichard’s conclusions are very different from those of Humphreys. By the time these views were broadcast in 1949 Humphreys had made the effort to learn the Welsh language. Prichard concluded that ‘surely the time has come when we should look forward instead of ever backward … For my part, I would gladly dispense now with the dismal deacons, the odes, the comic nightshirts, the mediaevalists, the burning aerodromes, and even Welsh rarebit’.44 Humphreys was to spend the next half-century enormously influenced by those same ancient themes, convinced they were essential in the construction of Welsh identity. Prichard’s view also holds validity, and chimes with Raymond Williams’s future thesis, when he says: ‘ethnologically and philologically, we are all mongrels the world over’.45 Williams’s awareness of the variety of ways of constructing identity has already been mentioned. What emerges from examining Humphreys’s fascination with the Welsh past, whether historical or mythological, are the problems that ensue when the word Welsh is used to discuss both ‘nation’ (which must include all of those born or living in Wales, people who have a variety of other backgrounds and histories, alongside those of Welsh descent) and ‘race’ (which has its own problems of definition, since racially/biologically indigenous Welsh people are as mixed as the inhabitants of various other countries). Humphreys’s use of the word tribe is interesting in that it avoids some of these pitfalls (whilst also hinting at the links between the Welsh and the Jews as Chosen People of God); however, it would be unpopular politically, in that it would further remove the nationhood status, which is so much in contention. Indeed, Humphreys has commented that ‘“identity” is a better term than “nation”, because when you get down to what a nation consists of, and what institutions a nation needs, we fall apart’.46
From the few quotations of Humphreys already cited it is clear that as a writer he is self-consciously aware of being in a postcolonial condition. This is manifested in a variety of ways. He recreates the country of Wales as a backdrop in his fiction and the landscape is particularly important to him as a means of conveying the mythic and historic past and its relationship with the present.47 Most of his novels, and particularly the more successful, deal with Wales as a subject, with the different ways of being Welsh and with the differences within Wales being of paramount importance. There is also an educational drive often apparent, a desire to teach readers, or remind them, about Welsh history and legend. One of the most interesting aspects is Humphreys’s relationship with the English language, which he has continued to use almost exclusively in his fiction, in spite of his bilingual ability. We have seen already that he has referred to English as ‘the language of cultural supremacy’, but he has also explained more constructively the effect of ‘using English to write about a way of life that is inseparable from the Welsh language’.
English has shapes and constraints within which you have to work, and that is partly why I try to reduce my language to a minimum; by being minimalist I try to minimize the distortion involved in this kind of cultural ‘translation’. So I try to turn the weakness into a strength, using this kind of stripped-down English in an effort to capture the quintessence, as opposed to the general texture of the Welsh life with which I am dealing. So, too, the small scenes are attempts at recording epiphanies, moments of heightened insight into this world which is foreign to English.48
This postcolonial condition, the need both to claim and to repudiate the language of colonization, has affected writers in English the world over. It is unmistakable in writers as diverse as Chinua Achebe and Alice Walker. We must recognize its effect on Humphreys, a Welsh writer writing in English.
