Though I have never been a devotee of Dylan Thomas, I find I have been doing him a great injustice by my criticism of his villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle...etc."

At http://www.alsopreview.com/gaz/gaz_noted there is recorded a debate between R. J. McCaffrey and myself, which took place several years ago, concerning the third stanza of this poem and whether or not it contains a serious defect which makes it wrong to call it, as some have done, a flawless English-language villanelle. The third stanza, as you may remember goes:

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
do not go gentle into that good night.

My argument was that the central metaphor of this stanza was incomprehensible. To what are the frail deeds being compared? What image are we supposed to see? Are the deeds frail boats, or perhaps skinny dolphins dancing on their tails? I long maintained, successfully in such discussions on the point as I entered, that the line and the metaphor were a muddle serving only to provide the required rhyme and to make possible Thomas' parody of part two of Marvell's famous double ionic: "To a green thought in a green shade."

Quite suddenly I have received a flash of understanding about this metaphor, which makes me wonder how I ever managed to get an A in a college poetry analysis class. I now see that Dylan probably intended the frail deeds to be represented by the waves themselves: waves that might indeed have danced in a green bay representing a warmer, more appreciative place or set of beneficiaries. The "last wave by" would then mean "the final deed accomplished."

How does this interpretation strike you folks? I now think the metaphor quite a good one and humbly withdraw my assertion that "Do not Go Gentle..." is more or less ruined by S3L2.

It is probably unnecessary to post the entire villanelle here as it was once voted the most admired poem in the language by respondents to a BBC survey of 50,000 listeners.

Janet...you were right and I was wrong...but could you have told me why and how?

Wiley Clements (Golias)






[This message has been edited by Golias (edited September 23, 2005).]

Dear Wiley,
here it is:
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


------

I don't know whether I ever said that that was the meaning but yes, indeed, it is so. I find this poem so heartbreakingly true that I am unable to understand why anybody should ever want to attack it. As I wait impatiently to move house to travel away from my friends into the unknown, I have flashes of :
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

You are permitted more than one accidental oversight Wiley since your own wonderful poems are full of wisdom and subtle innuendo and profound understanding. All of us have blind spots when things are too near to one or other of our own obsessions.

When the multitudes applaud it isn't always just a response to sieg heil.

It can be the recognition of a Beethoven or a Mark Twain, or a "Do not go gentle".

It is typically gracious and honest of you to post this message.
Best,
Janet

Well, I could never see much wrong with that villanelle, either. And I wrote a “Dylanelle” saying so! This previous Dylan Thomas thread may be of interest.

Wiley, I salute you for this post. Many in your position wouldn’t have bothered to recant.


[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited September 23, 2005).]

Well said, Wiley.
Yes, the frail deeds were the waves.
It's a wonderful poem, and I've never understood why Tim Murphy, Jim Hayes and a few others who should know better would not see it so. When my father died, in a way it sustained me.
That's a damn good thread on Alsop, even despite RJ's posturing, and I thank you for reminding me of it.
Best wishes,
David

It is a wonderful poem. It is relevant, powerful, passionate and accessible. I'm afraid Dylan Thomas was right when he said 'I am saint and sinner'. I find him equal part genius and windbag

[This message has been edited by Hugh McMillan (edited September 29, 2005).]

It is a wonderful poem, but I object to it based on its "message," since I can't for the life of me see why a son would wish on his father an angry, ungentle death.

I agree with Slater, and I differ with McMillan in finding this a perfect example of DT's windbaggery. Posturing, glorious, highflown windbaggery.

I read the poem as a howl of grief. Lucifer protesting against mortality. A young man's rage against the ending of life. I don't think it's a matter of wishing his father a painful death. I think the poet is experiencing the pain.

Roger, here is how I see it. Thomas’s father approached his own death in the same passive, resigned way that he lived. To Thomas, such an attitude suggested a lack of engagement with life. Had such passionate involvement been present in his father, it would not have allowed him to die in such a “gentle” manner. Knowledge of what he would lose, and what he had not yet accomplished, should provoke him to “rage against the dying of the light.” Even “wise men”, if they had not accomplished their aims in life, don’t go gently into death. And even “good men”, whose lives might have seemed more impressive in a flattering social environment, realise what they are about to lose, and rage against its loss.

I recall Thomas saying in an interview that his father was the only person in the world he couldn’t show this poem. His father’s lack of resistance to his own demise seemed to suggest an indifference to life which was more distressing to Thomas than anger. That’s my understanding.

Tim, yes, I agree there is a windy element here, but perhaps it is the divine afflatus, the breath of holy inspiration which often inflates rhetoric like this. And while it will always annoy some of us, it will also guarantee that the poem will be popular 500 years from now, since we always turn to high-rhetoricals like this (like “Death, be not proud”) when in extremis - their very windiness buoying us up.

Janet, yes, I agree, it is a younger man's poem, expressing his own rage at his father's passivity.


------------------
Mark Allinson

Aye, but at least it means something. You can't compare it to flatulence like:

...it is the sinners' dust tongued bell claps me to churches
when with his torch and hourglass, like a sulphur priest,
his beast heel cleft in a sandal,
time marks a black aisle kindle from the brand of ashes,
grief with dishevelled hands tear out the altar ghost
and a firewind kill the castle...
(alright officer, I'll come quietly)


[This message has been edited by Hugh McMillan (edited September 30, 2005).]

But Tim, it strikes us right in the soul. How can windbaggery do that?

I see, I guess. My "mistake" is to take the advice at face value, rather than as a crie de coeur of a son whose "advice" is not being offered by DT as a universal blueprint for how to approach one's own death. I'm not convinced, but I see the point and don't entirely reject it. It just seems to me to be reading more into the poem than is warranted, perhaps, based on the text alone.

I've always loved the poem for its sounds and craft and windbaggery...but I can't say it's ever struck my soul. It's a song I love for the music, not the meaning. It's a fine and wonderful poem, but it doesn't hold a candle to "Fern Hill," which stands among the truly great poems of all time, on a shelf right beside Wordsworth's mortality ode.

Roger,
I have a pact with myself to never use the word "soul". I just broke it because I didn't find "mind" an adequate substitute.

I have always taken the larger meaning from the poem and never thought that the intense personal pain of Thomas was more than a starting point for a howl of resentment against the dirty trick of mortality. Perhaps only those who grew up outside orgamised religion can remember the sense of outrage when they fully absorbed the inescapability of the indignity of death. The waste of accumulated knowledge. The blankness of it. For me, that is what the poem is about.

Those who have been trained into another posture will not share that response.
Janet

" ...crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay"

Think of wavetops on choppy water, & how sunlight reflects from them--the light really dances. And think of the 7th wave or 9th wave, or whatever it is (I think it was Tennyson wrote a poem calling Milton the 7th wave of his [Milton's] age), you know, the wave that is supposed always to be the largest in a series.

I suppose it is significant Thomas chose a bay because the water is habitually choppier in bays or lakes than in seas or oceans.

Hopkins uses a similar image somewhere. Also, Hopkins'

"gash gold vermilion"

[the sparks coming up from a wood fire] bears some similarity.

What is really quite interesting to me, is, the light on the waves is necessarily a reflected light. Odd image for an atheist.

Matthew,
Above all it was because he came from Swansea which nestles above a green bay. It was part of his unconscious and therefore a natural image for him to choose.

Here are some pix. I have seen it look green. Not in these photos alas. Swansea used to be nicer. It's been tarted up.

Swansea maritime area

Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited October 09, 2005).]

You know, I knew he lived near a body of water, but couldn't remember which body it was or what type it was. Thanks for the link! Too bad it's not what it used to be.

"Part of his unconscious," yes, but it was not an unconscious employment of the image, however "natural... to choose," it may have been.

I mentioned Tennyson's "7th wave" (or "9th Wave" -- I still can't remember the title) because both he and Dylan Thomas are speaking of human achievement (albeit in radically different images) in terms of the movement of a natural body of water. I.E.-There are dips or troughs in the wave (which=poor-quality poets or underachieving human beings in general) versus crests or bright spots at the top of waves (which=great poets or overachieving human beings). Again, there are people (or poets) who stand out, and there are people (or poets) who don't.

In life, one should rather wish to be the Promethean, raging against the dying of the light, than the shadow in the shallows, hoping to slip by with little noise and no suffering. Or so Thomas seems to say.

That's a trite way of explicating a much deeper metaphor (forgive the pun), but I explain it so, for clarity's sake.

That's how I've always interpreted Thomas' poem in the past. I could be wrong.

EDIT: The "frail deeds," BTW, I see as rather depressing, despite the dancing bright waves.

'Fact is, I was also thinking of Walt Whitman when I posted. I was thinking of the sounds of sea & waves in Whitman's poetry. "Dover Beach" comes to mind as well. But neither any of Whitman's poems (that I can think of), nor "Dover Beach," bear any strong thematic similarity to Thomas' poem.

[This message has been edited by Matthew T. Barber (edited October 14, 2005).]

It is a cry of frustration and grief that might have come from a child, someone who is not reconciled to mortality. What Thomas really wants his father to do is keep living, and since that is impossible the son blames his father for accepting death, as though he could make it go away if he really wanted to. I never thought it a realistic or mature point of view and the advice is less than useful, but the grief and rage are real.

I see old age and degenerative illness as nature's way of making death easier; it would be too hard to let go when we are young and fully engaged with life. But let go we will, sooner or later, ready or not.

I hope to go more gently than I came.

Carol