On Dylan’s living symbolism of hope and defiance: 70 years and counting

By Raunaq Saraswat

An essay on a poem can be a counterintuitive undertaking, akin to - redundant and unnecessary

- the sieving of an already filtered cup of chai. Why would anyone filer what has already been
boiled to savour? Alternatively, why would we attempt to unthread what has been so finely
embroidered? I found myself a little befuddled by this assignment when I first saw it, wondering,
if not fretting, at the prospect of writing an essay on a poem of our choice. What was the essay
supposed to entail? A line-by-line explanation of the poem? An explanation of the linguistic
underpinnings of the poem? An explanation of our interpretation of the poem? All three, or
more, or none? I didn’t know, albeit I returned to the fundamental question I began with: why
do we attempt to explain, or ‘analyze,’ a word best suited to the world of data, a poem? A
hanging vine, I will come back to this question again towards the end of this essay, only after
we’ve inspected the poem in focus.

An artist’s conception

Almost all art is conceived, gestated, and birthed in the grey hues of mind, and the mosaic shades
of heart. The room for interpretation - the ground for the quest for meaning - is where the
creator and the taker of the art shake hands, their fingers sliding and slipping past the other’s,
spawning possibilities aplenty -- the shade A sees, the grey B finds, the tinge C comes across. It’s
in this room, a space equally metaphorical and metaphysical, where meaning emerges, and is
approved or disapproved of. A slight step-back and reversal in this regard can take us to other but
equally important question(s): what does the artist conceive at first place while creating the art
piece? In the room we shake hands, does our answer to the preceding question match theirs?
Should it?

When Dylan Thomas wrote “Do not go gentle into that good night,” a poem engraved in the
minds of many, he was, going by some records, reflecting on the condition of his ailing father. It
was written, possibly, to provide him with the hope and courage to fight till the very end,
unrelenting and ungiving. Yet another document claims how Thomas wrote the poem only after
having been drafted into the BBC as a spoken poet, and how he may have accounted for the
sound of his own recitation to lend the poem its powerful tenor. A recording, rare, of Thomas
reciting the poem for the radio continues to be available on the web. The raison d'être
notwithstanding, Thomas’s poem was met with widespread applause, its interpretation quite
possibly inter-locked with its origins as a token to his dying father. The quest for meaning,
howsoever satisfied, the curious question as with any other piece of art remained: what/why did
Thomas write the poem for in actuality? It’s another matter that we may never know the answer
now, and that whatever may have been the propelling cause, the poem found (and continues to
find) a resonance in that room for interpretation, assuming a life larger than the one Thomas
had bestowed it with, making a reader’s response to the why and what of an artist’s conception
both sufficient and complete.

The resplendence of a couplet, the heart of a poem

The reader is enabled to find the answers to the why and what, and parses the poem through the
technical machines of form and structure, before attempting to discover its poetic truth. The
latter is recognized as the explanation of the poem, recorded and spoken widely, from websites to
literature classes: a villanelle, sung on funerals, speaking of battling an impending death,
etcetera. A deeper inquiry would proffer the answer to the how underscoring the what,
encapsulating a reader’s knowledge of Thomas’ poem.

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.

Any rendition of Dylan’s poem houses a commandment, from the poet to the reader, or if read
aloud, from the speaker to the listener. The presenter, implicit or explicit, imagined or real, in all
cases, must issue a stern-plea, that after encircling examples of men good, old, wise, and grave,
reasserts its core message: to resist. A novel mould to understand this refrain of a couplet could
be to place it in the framework of a song as composed in the Hindustani classical genre,
consisting of, broadly, a face (mukhda) and an inside (antara). The poem in this realm acquires
the two classifiers, both running intermittent with each other, one (antara) augmenting the
poetic thought, the other (mukhda) recurring at the end of every verse. Likewise a song that is
typically remembered by the listener through its face (mukhda), the poem leaves (has left) its
imprints on the memory of the reader in its powerful opening couplet. The verses in the middle,
as the stanzas of a song, become but an imminent hint of the refrain and its spirit. Thomas’
success then, or the success of the poem, is telling, in that it sparks with only its structure and
rhythm the fires of hope and courage, leaving an unmissable mark.

For the Eastern and Western sensibilities, both

The extent of influence of Thomas’ poem can be explicated by the reception it has come to
garner in both the oriental and the American imagination. It’s not commonplace for art to
transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and entwine demographics with its sheer spirit - a
reflective only of the great classics. If Dylan’s villanelle could leave a deep impression on the
mind of the individual reader, it also held the potential to enamour the collective. The opening
couplet, mukhda, stands out in the latter realm, now synonymous with the notion of protest and
resistance against the forces that be. After the 1984 gas leak at Bhopal and the injustice meted out
to the victims, the campaign against which saw people conjure slogans to prevent the flame of
hope from dousing, Dylan’s poem became a marker of the very optimism and strength the
campaigners needed. Painted on the walls of the factory where the harrowing accident took
place, the instance showcased the inspirational element of Thomas’ poem, and its newfound
relevance in an afflicted world, where life borrowed, imitated, and followed art.

While the couplet became a symbol of hope and defiance in social movements, Christopher
Nolan confirmed its ingraining in the global minds by deploying it as a leitmotif in ‘Interstellar.’
The poem gained readers all across in the viewers who watched the film, possibly sparking a new
wave of interest, and found yet again - this time in fiction - a dimension above and beyond what
Dylan had conceived. (It’s befitting to mention that one of my peers, who reads poetry aplenty,
while mentioning other poems she’d read, noted: “how anyone who has seen Interstellar is aware
of Dylan Thomas’ poem.” She too was.) The couplet, even as it was used in the odyssey to
another world, retained the message at its heart: of unshakable hope and strength. In numerous
other sites and situations across the east and the west, it found a similar invocation, hinting at
the life the couplet had come to assume, possibly larger than the whole of the poem. What
Thomas might have written for his father whilst he lay on the deathbed, had swelled to become
an endless source of vigour for generations in line, in ways he could never envisage.

Epilogue: Why do we explain after all?

It’s only prudent to return to the question I posed and passed at the beginning of this essay: why
do we explain a poem? The origins of this question, as in my mind, are perhaps a result of
another more whimsical premise, where a poem can be sensed - approximately understood -
without a need to be elaborated upon. This knowledge of the poem is on most counts partial but
pleasant, half-sensical but deeply sensory. The meaning of the poem, albeit not unravelled,
remains embedded in the emotional responses of the reader, remarking the essential and singular
about poem and poetry: that it is more than its mere meaning explained.

Thomas’ poem benefited, both from a partial and complete reckoning of its meaning. The
littérateurs sustained the former, masses the latter. If both could resonate with the poem - the
masses without attending a lecture on its history and linguistics - the answer too swings on an
even balance, where there is footing for both, an academic and a sentimental reading. That there
is a space for both probably underscores what Thomas’ poem has come to represent, or any
poetry does in its course: contextualisation and explanation are imperative to understanding a
poem fully, but not essential for a fulfilling reading. “Tie the poem to the rope, and torture a
confession out of it,” as Collins writes in ‘Introduction to Poetry,’ is, if one, but not the only
means of masticating poetry. One could savour it at once too, or take only bits. For the poetic
flavour — in either and all cases — remains unchanged.

Bibliography

https://www.discoverdylanthomas.com/not-go-gentle-good-night-rage-rage-dying-light-
dylan-thomass-words-raging-battling-electrifying-world

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bsayantan/4700228649/in/photostream/

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-story-behind-dylan-thomas-s-do-not-go-gent
le-into-that-good-night-and-the-poet-s-own-stirring