Monday 27 October 2014

Dylan Thomas Centenary: Do Not Go Gentle



A great poem - for the centenary of Dylan's birth (October 27, 1914, Uplands, Swansea, Wales)

"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".


I still prefer the Richard Burton rendering

Anthony Hopkins

Cerys Matthews

Stravinsky, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas

As a counterpoint:

Fixin' to die

Bukka White original

Dylan Thomas and Corfu (from a Dylan Thomas letter to Lawrence Durrell, December 1938?)

Blushford, Ringwood, Hants

Dear Lawrence Durrell,

I think England is the very place for a fluent and fiery writer. The highest hymns of the sun are written in the dark. I like the grey country. A bucket of Greek sun would drown in one colour the crowds of colours I like trying to mix for myself out a grey flat insular mud. If I went to the sun I’d just sit in the sun; that would be very pleasant but I’m not doing it, and the only necessary things I do are the things I am doing. Unless by accidents, and my life is planned by them, I shall be nearer Bournemouth than Corfu this summer. It will need a nice accident for us to live anywhere: we are stages beyond poverty; completely possessionless; and we are willing but angry; we can take it but we don’t want it. I liked your Stygian prose very very much, it’s the best I’ve read for years. Don’t let the Greek sun blur your pages as you said it did.

Sincerely,
Dylan Thomas

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