Thomas: Mythic Poet

Perhaps one of the greatest representations of the inevitability of death and change in modern poetry is Dylan Thomas' "The Force That Through The Green Fuse..."  In this mythic poem Thomas reveals to us the nature of living a life burdened by the constraints of time.  

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age;that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head; Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood Shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

The poem seems to be informed at once by scientific and spiritual tendencies.  These two influences which are often at odds in the real world seem to be blended perfectly here to create a rich display of insight and meaning.  Clearly Thomas understands implicitly that science, which aptly explicates the observable and material world, falls short in bridging the gap to the timeless and and ineffable elements of the human experience.

The image of the "green fuse" invoked in the first line reflects a seamless blend of the natural and technological, while also reflecting the imposition of mans influence on the natural world through the crafted fuse.  The Green fuse itself in Thomas' poem is merely a vessel for that universal power which underlies everything.  The power which science has yet to define and observe but has been understood for thousands of years by mystics and sages.  

In the first stanza Thomas begins to point towards mans inability to grasp the vast interconnectedness of all living things.  He on the one hand explains how the "force" "drives the flower" and at the same time "blasts the roots of trees".  This power is at once a preserving force of new life and in the same instant an agent of death and decay.  The speaker of the poem also indicates that his "youth is bent by the same wintry fever"; that he shares the same plight as trees and flowers and must submit in the end to death and decay.  

This same idea is repeated and reinforced through varied examples over the next two stanzas and then in the fourth stanza he introduces time and love.  "The lips of time leech to the fountain head" drawing off the power that drives all life.  Essentially time is acting as a limiting factor here, diminishing the potential for everlasting life.  Because of time we must, like all things, have an end.  But love seems to be a great savior of the human condition here.  As "Love drips and gathers" it grows in power and "the fallen blood shall calm her sores" acting as a salve to mend the pain and injury that is implicit in the decay and death which are sure to come to all of us.  Meanwhile "time has ticked a heaven round the stars" and the cycle goes on and on without any end in sight.  Finally he is bound in an endless chain of birth, life and death that continues unceasingly.  

The last stanza binds the plight of the lover with that of the speaker. He is stunted by the magnitude of this ineffable power and it unceasing reign over life and death throughout the ages.

So what of all this?  What is particularly mythic about the poem or the processes it describes?  My next post will try to make the connection between life, death and time.

Meaning and Mortality

In "The Bacchae" Pentheus is dismembered by the Maenads due to his inability to recognize the divinity of Dionysus and instead relegates the fertility rites of his followers to mere spectacle.  Life in modern America does much the same to us.  

Living lives of "consumers" recognizes little more than our corporeal need for food, clothing and shelter and ignores the deeper needs of individuals to connect with each other and their world on a meaningful level.  With the advent of television, and now portable media in the form of tablet computers and smartphones, we are encouraged to further alienate ourselves from one another even within our own households. 

Where does this end?  What is the remedy for the seemingly overwhelming pressure to look outward instead of inward?  Literature offers us a world of insights into our own nature as human beings and can allow us to connect with each other through the

archetypal stories of birth, death, intitation, loss of innocence and so on.  The wealth and breadth of human experience is available through the writings of the worlds great authors.  

Great authors share unique and powerful insights in to the nature of existence through their stories.  The careful reader will find a world of advice and direction in the stories, plays and poetry of these wise artists.  Look around in modern media and you will see Shakespeare rearing his head over and over again, decade after decade and generation after generation.  This is precisely because while time changes the circumstances we live in, the basic narrative of a human life does not.  This of course leads us to Hamlet.

Why is Hamlet one of the most widely performed plays in human history?  Precisely because in the character of Hamlet we see our selves.  His struggles with himself become the visible manifesation of our own inner turmoil.  The conflicts that threaten to tear apart his world also threaten our own.  So in contemplating Hamlet and his plight, we can see that we are not alone in our sorrows, that indeed everyone has troubles making sense of a semingly meaningless existence.  Perhaps the best we can do is to contemplate, reason, and medititate until we find solace that in our collective human struggle we are not alone.  Even though death lurks around every corner and is the final result of every human life, it should not, precisely for that reason, be feared.  It should instead serve as a motivation to live and act in the present for tommorrow may never come.

This is the great advice that Hamlet ultimately serves up in several acts and through many hours of contemplationa and riddling.  The insight that a good human life is not lived in fear, but is one that conquers fear and liberates the soul to take action.