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).]
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