Quote:
Originally posted by Janet Kenny:
Above all it was because he came from Swansea which nestles above a green bay.
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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.
Quote:
Originally posted by Janet Kenny:
It was part of his unconscious and therefore a natural image for him to choose.
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"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).]