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Re-reading In my craft or sullen art, by Dylan Thomas

 

Re-reading In my craft or sullen art the personal declaration doesn’t sound like a revolution, or even just a reason for writing words, perhaps because of sullen, a word meaning resentment, moody, bad-tempered, morose, uncommunicative, a word that sets the tone. And though uncommunicative, the art or craft is not still or too moody but Exercised in the still night, a time When only the moon rages, giving credence to the claim that he is exercised though everything else, bar the moon, is still. Except, either in his mind or to acknowledge their certain presence And the lovers lie abed, as night will have it, though unexpectedly not with ardour or passion or mutuality but With all their griefs in their arms. The words, having set out their condition, then turn to a series of opposing purposes for writing words: I labour by singing light. Does he even sing for his supper? Apparently Not for ambition or bread, even if he’s doing a good job of keeping our attention while staying alive; Or the strut and trade of charms, which discounts the theatre in one go; On the ivory stages, and likewise universities and award ceremonies. How sullen can one be forgoing all of those avenues, and prosceniums? Instead, he turns and admits working in his own craft or art But for the common wages Of their most secret heart, thereby raising the drama of who are these lovers and who is he to them; and what is most secret? But for them and their love only the words are made, Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon, giving the sense that he himself cannot live separate from this turmoil, this exercise and grief, unnamed though it be. He writes: I write On these spindrift pages, spindrift a word meaning the spray that blows off waves, and therefore fleeting, transient, the slightest momentary crest of something far deeper. Nor for the towering dead does he write, never mind how aware he is himself of their towering beingness, nor how sullen they leave him, With their nightingales and psalms and all of that great readerly backstory. No, by his own admission he writes But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, though one hopes there is more to love than grief. Even the grief that is most secret cause of so much sullenness, cause of the words. These loves Who pay no praise or wages, any more than anyone else, it seems, Nor heed my craft or art. Thus leaving the maker of words alone in his sullen state, wrestling with pride and fame and loss, which he cares to share with us, not the lovers, the patrimony of twenty lines signed by a Welshman famous for writing the same twenty lines.

 

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