About the Author:

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet

and writer who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short

stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public

readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a

subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. His best-known works

include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his

dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night".

Our Eunuch Dreams

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light,

Of light and love the tempers of the heart,
Whack their boys' limbs,
And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet,
Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night
Fold in their arms.

The shades of girls, all flavoured from their shrouds,

When sunlight goes are sundered from the worm,
The bones of men, the broken in their beds,
By midnight pulleys that unhouse the tomb.

In this our age the gunman and his moll

Two one-dimensional ghosts, love on a reel,
Strange to our solid eye,
And speak their midnight nothings as they swell;
When cameras shut they hurry to their hole
down in the yard of day.

They dance between their arclamps and our skull,

Impose their shots, showing the nights away;
We watch the show of shadows kiss or kill
Flavoured of celluloid give love the lie.
 Which is the world? Of our two sleepings, which
Shall fall awake when cures and their itch
Raise up this red-eyed earth?
Pack off the shapes of daylight and their starch,
The sunny gentlemen, the Welshing rich,
Or drive the night-geared forth.

The photograph is married to the eye,

Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth;
The dream has sucked the sleeper of his faith
That shrouded men might marrow as they fly.

This is the world; the lying likeness of

Our strips of stuff that tatter as we move
Loving and being loth;
The dream that kicks the buried from their sack
And lets their trash be honoured as the quick.
This is the world. Have faith.

For we shall be a shouter like the cock,

Blowing the old dead back; our shots shall smack
The image from the plates;
And we shall be fit fellows for a life,
And who remains shall flower as they love,
Praise to our faring hearts.

The first part refers to boy’s fruitless dream of love. According to this stanza,

the boy’s eunuch or impotent dream cannot happen in the light of day, a symbolism

for reality. It is hinted that the woman whom the boy dreams about is a woman from

the movies, women separated from reality.

The second stanza is more about the movie. The moll is the gangster or the

gunman’s woman. It is said that Dylan Thomas was a fan of American movies as a

boy and so may explain the presence of movies in this poem. The “two one-

dimensional ghosts” refer to the man and woman who were characters in the film.

“Love on a reel” means pretended love or love that is found only in film. The next
line portrays the intimacy between the man and the woman. Here, the word swell

pertains to ejaculation or erection.

In the next line, the word camera refers to the public eye. As soon as the

people are done watching the film or as soon as the “cameras shut” these characters

hurry back to the yard of day. This simply means that as soon as the film is over and

the projector dies and the light from the sun comes in, the film characters are no more.

He compares fantasy from reality in this poem as said in the next stanza,

where the phrase “two sleepings” refer to fantasy and reality. The author compared

the harshness of reality with the insincerity of fantasy or cinema. The poem is also not

only about love but also death. Thomas criticizes cinema for forcing people to

question their faith in an afterlife: "The dream has sucked the sleeper of his faith.

He embraces mortality and the mystery of it, urging us to "Have faith" rather

than question or challenge the mortality of our lives and loves by putting "love on a

reel". The last line of the poem clarifies his opinion as he praises "our faring hearts",

commending our living, active hearts.

There is also another interpretation that I have found. It is basically the same

in the symbols but the main difference is this one is purely about love and this one is

more about traitorous love and not the impossible kind of love portrayed by movies.

This one is about a man presented with temptation and the line “the dream sucked the

sleeper of his faith” means that the man has cheated on his wife or his partner.

The part here where it says “the cameras shut they hurry to there hole”, the

camera still refers to the public eye but the meaning is different as this one means that

when people are no longer watching, they go somewhere and do there “business”.
 The “two sleepings” still pertain to reality and fantasy but reality here means

the life that this person has with his legal wife or partner and the fantasy refers to the

affair he is having.

Vocabulary

Eunuch

1. A castrated man employed as a harem attendant or as a functionary in certain

Asian courts.
2. A man or boy whose testes are nonfunctioning or have been removed.
3. Informal. An ineffectual, powerless, or unmasculine man.

[Middle English eunuk, from Latin eunūchus, from Greek eunoukhos : eunē, bed +
-okhos, keeping (from ekhein, to keep).]

eunuchism eu'nuch·ism n.

WORD HISTORY The word eunuch does not derive, as one might think, from the
operation that produced a eunuch but rather from one of his functions. Eunuch goes
back to the Greek word eunoukhos, "a castrated person employed to take charge of the
women of a harem and act as chamberlain." The Greek word is derived from eunē,
"bed," and ekhein, "to keep." A eunuch, of course, was ideally suited to guard the
bedchamber of women.

Sources:

Wikipedia.org

etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd.../31295010288149.pdf

yahooanswers.com

googleshareddocs

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