Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet who came to be one of the most important figures in 20th century poetry. A poet from an early age, his works, particularly “And death shall have no dominion,” his play Under Milk Wood, and especially his famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” eventually crept into the public consciousness and he became very popular among the public. In his later life, though, he had money troubles, a dysfunctional marriage, and extreme alcoholism, a deadly combination that caused him very poor health and eventually killed him at the young age of 39.
Thomas was born in the city of Swansea, Wales, in 1914. In childhood, he was never an exemplary student; he preferred reading and writing poetry to studying for school. At the age of sixteen, he dropped out of school, and took up a career in journalism. Only four years later, he published Eighteen Poems, an anthology of his work, to great acclaim. This was the inception of Thomas’s successful career, but also of his destructive lifestyle, as his alcoholic habits began to develop around this time.
Thomas became more and more successful in his career even as his personal life deteriorated. He continued to publish poetry, his next anthology being Twenty-Five Poems. However, despite his increasing popularity, his poetry alone still did not provide him with sufficient income, and he began to work as a broadcaster for the BBC. In 1937, he married Caitlin Macnamara. Their relationship proved to be turbulent and destructive, with both of them having multiple affairs and depending heavily on alcohol.
Thomas’s income from the BBC was still not enough to pay his taxes, especially since he was now supporting a wife and three young children, so he began to go on reading tours in America in the hopes that this would allow him to support his family. He would tour America four times; during this period of touring, his immense popularity increased even more, now spreading across the Atlantic. Not only did Thomas become quite famous, but his poetic development and style was quite unique as well; while most of his contemporaries preferred to focus on intellectual issues in their work, his remained entirely emotional, in the vein of the earlier Romantic poets.
As Thomas’s popularity increased, though, his reputation for recklessness and an incredible drinking habit was on the rise as well. As he further cemented this “rockstar” persona of his, the public began to know him as a “roistering, drunken and doomed poet.” It was also during this time that he wrote his radio play, Under Milk Wood, and his most famous poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” On his fourth tour of America, Thomas suffered from severe lung problems, exacerbated by the smoggy air of New York City, and his alcoholism reached new heights. His health became worse and worse, and in November of 1953, he fell into a coma and eventually died. While the man himself had passed on, Thomas remained very much alive in the public consciousness, and never lost his reputation as both a legendary poet and a legendary wild man.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
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.
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“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is arguably Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem. It is also one of the English language’s most famous villanelles (nineteen-line poems with five three-line stanzas, or “tercets,” followed by one four line-stanza, or “quatrain.”). This remarkable poem is dedicated to Dylan Thomas’s dying father. Thomas is pleading with his father not to give in to death, or “go gentle into that good night,” (lines 6, 12, 18) but rather to fight against it, to “rage against the dying of the light.” It is his belief that “old age should rave and burn at close of day;” (line 2) that death should not come peacefully, that the dying should go out in a fierce battle against their own mortality. In each stanza save the first and last, he describes how men of any type - wise men, good men, wild men, grave men all - find themselves regretting something as they die, and fight against death due to their feeling of unfulfillment. The line “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” (lines 3, 9, 15, 19) repeated at the end of four of the six stanzas, conjures up an extraordinary and dramatic image of a fierce struggle against death. Thomas uses visual imagery in this poem; he says that “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors,” (line 14) and speaks of how good men’s “frail deeds might have danced in a green bay” (line 8). Thomas also makes frequent and excellent use of repetition as a literary device in this poem. The lines “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “rage, rage against the dying of the light” are repeated at the end of every other stanza. This is meant to both emphasize the importance of that battle against death, both in the context of this poem and within Thomas’s personal philosophy, as well as to emphasize its inevitability; as he describes the worries of wise, good, wild, and grave men as their ends approach, the one thing they all have in common is their regret and their fierce raging against death. In addition, the word “rage” is repeated twice in the repeated line “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” with a powerful effect. Its repetition evokes a particularly strong sense of a battle against oblivion; this poem may well owe its tremendous fame more to that second “rage” than anything else.
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