Re: Life and death are just things that you do when you're bored
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Mon, 22 Sep 1997 21:50:56 +0500
>I've always thought Dylan Thomas meant "Rage against the dying of the light"
>because, well, why would one want to give up the struggle in this
existance so
>cavalierly. Passivity, ambivalence, apathy...these are the enemies, not
mortal
>death. Like Jesus said: "Either be hot or cold or I shall spew thee from my
>mouth."
Yes -- and to my ear, since it was a plea to his father, it was as well a
plea to himself -- or, rather, a kind of declaration that when his time
comes, the speaker of the poem intends to resist "that good night," and
hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father.
Perhaps it's a simplistic reading, but sometimes I see things in "fathers
and sons" terms these days.
Funny, too, that I walk my dogs around the block at night and pass the
White Horse Tavern, where the fine Mr. Thomas drank his last, and I repeat
the poem in my head. (If I said it to the dogs, I'd likely be locked up by
the cops in five minutes flat.) And I wish, very strongly, that we had
been able to hold onto Dylan Thomas a lot longer than we had him to ourselves.
[For those of you who have recently joined us on the "bananafish" list, we
do occasionally swerve into the direction of J.D. Salinger here. You've
caught us in a strange interlude.]
--tim o'connor