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.
Dylan Thomas's "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower" explores the relationship between time, creation, and destruction. The poem's speaker uses various metaphors to illustrate how all of existence is bound by the same driving "force": time. Time is what makes a flower bloom but also what makes it wilt; likewise, time makes the blood pulse through the speaker's veins but will also one day stop that blood from flowing. Yet the speaker can't "tell" the "crooked rose" nor the "mountain spring" that they're all part of the same cycle of life and death, growth and decay; though everyone and everything is subject to time, the poem implies that people experience time's passage alone. Thomas wrote this poem in 1933, when he was just 19 years old; it was published in his first collection, 18 Poems, in 1934.
Summary
The force that flows through a flower's green stem is the same force that fuels my youth. The force that destroys trees' roots will destroy me. And I'm speechless, unable to tell the crooked rose that the same icy force that makes it wilt makes me grow old, too.
The force that pushes water through stone is the same force that pushes my red blood through my veins. The force that dries up rushing rivers also makes my blood become thick and stiff. And I'm speechless, unable to tell my own veins that the same force that drains them sucks water from the spring that wells up in the mountain.
The hand stirring the pond also stirs up the quicksand; the hand that captures gusts of wind also yanks my ship's sails. And I'm speechless, unable to tell the dying man how the lime that the executioner will use to make his body decompose comes from the same materials that make up my own body.
Time's lips suck away at the original source of life; love dribbles down and pools on the ground, yet this bloodshed will soothe her pain. And I'm speechless, unable to tell the wind how time has spun up the universe with each tick of the clock.
And I'm speechless, unable to tell the lovers in the grave that the same twisted worm that consumes them consumes my own burial shroud.
Themes
Time, Creation, and Destruction
The speaker of Dylan Thomas's "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower" presents time as both the creator and destroyer of life. In each stanza, the speaker uses a metaphor to illustrate how the very "force" that makes things grow and move also eventually brings about their demise. Time, the speaker argues, is constantly unraveling and renewing the world, which means that life and death, creation and destruction, are endlessly intertwined.
Throughout the poem, the speaker makes it clear that time is both a source of generative and destructive power. It's like a spark that ignites the "green fuse" of a flower's stem and makes it bloom. Likewise, it's what fuels the speaker's "green age," or youthfulness—the force that makes the speaker feel powerfully alive.
Yet time is also what "blasts the roots of trees" and what will ultimately "destroy[]" the speaker. Time makes the rose both grow and wilt; it's what makes the "red blood pulse" through the speaker's veins yet will one day turn that same blood "to wax" (a reference to the way blood stops flowing and coagulates after death). Time "whirls" the nourishing water of life but also stirs up "the quicksand"—a substance that suffocates and devours. Time, the poem implies, brings things to life only to later consume them.
In a way, then, all things are connected by the fact that they experience the blessing and ravages of time. "[O]f my clay is the hangman's lime," the speaker says: the elements in the chemical "lime" used to speed up the decay of a dead body are present in the speaker's own "clay"—the speaker's body. The same "worm" that eats lovers in the grave "goes" at the speaker's own "sheet"; the speaker's bed might as well be a tomb, the mention of a "sheet" evoking the burial shroud that will one day cover the speaker's body. Though the speaker might not be literally decaying just yet, time is already ticking away—and it won't be long until the speaker, too, becomes worm food.
Of course, the speaker's death would thus sustain that worm's life. The poem isn't just suggesting that life leads only to death, then, but also that decay can become the source of new growth. Life and death are two sides of the same coin, an idea that connects the speaker to everything else in existence and suggests that destruction is in fact an essential part of creation.
Building on this idea, the speaker imagines time as a "leech" sucking from "the fountain head" (or the original source of life). "Love drips and gathers," the speaker says, illustrating how time greedily laps up love, youth, vitality, and so on. But, the speaker continues, "the fallen blood / Shall calm her sores." This suggests the way that time is both destructive and restorative. That "her" seems to refer back to the "fountain head," whose pain is soothed by the blood that time spills. (The speaker might be alluding to childbirth, when the mother's "sores" are calmed by the presence of her new child. Or, perhaps, this "her" evokes a Mother-Earth-like figure, alluding to the fact that death and decay provide the materials for new growth.)
The speaker continues, "Time has ticked a heaven round the stars." In other words, time is as vast and unknowable as the universe itself—or perhaps, the speaker is saying that time is the universe: it contains everything.
Humanity, Mortality, and Isolation
Though Thomas's poem presents life, death, creation, and destruction as intimately intertwined, the speaker seems distinctly isolated. Throughout the poem, the speaker is unable to "tell" nature, other people, the dead, or even their own "veins" that they're going through the same thing as everyone and everything else. Even though all of existence is connected by time, the poem suggests, the speaker is alone in their experience of time and their awareness of their own mortality.
The speaker recognizes that time twists and shapes human beings as easily as it does a rose; people have no more power over time than a flower does. Time results in the speaker's demise just as surely as it does that of "the hanging man" or lovers in their "tomb." The same metaphorical "hand" that "whirls the water in the pool" and "ropes the blowing wind" also pulls the speaker's own "shroud sail" forward. In short, the speaker's body follows the same cycle of birth, growth, death, and decay as any other part of nature.
Yet the speaker is also "dumb"—unable to voice the ways in which their experience mirrors that of everything else. The speaker can't "tell" that flower, that dying man, or those lovers that they're all ruled by, and in a way connected by, the same force. In fact, the speaker can't even tell this to their own body (their "veins"). The speaker is rendered speechless in the face of time's incredible power. In this way, the poem suggests that although existence is all interconnected, it’s also profoundly lonely. Everything is subject to time yet experiences time's passage in isolation.
초록 줄기 속으로 꽃을 몰아붙이는 힘
초록 줄기 속으로 꽃을 몰아붙이는 힘이
내 젊음을 몰아붙이네, 나무뿌리를 시들게 하는
그 힘이 나를 파괴하네.
그리고 난 말할 수 없네, 시들어 굽은 장미에게,
내 젊음도 똑같은 겨울 열병으로 굽어졌음을.
바위 사이로 물을 몰아붙이는 힘이
내 붉은 피를 몰아붙이네, 흘러드는 강물을 마르게 하는
그 힘이 내 피를 밀랍처럼 굳게 하네.
그리고 난 말할 수 없네, 내 혈관에게,
어떻게 산속의 샘물을 똑같은 입이 마시는지를.
웅덩이의 물을 소용돌이치게 하는 손이
모래 수렁을 휘젓네, 바람을 돛폭에 잡아 매는
그 손이 내 수의 천을 잡아끄네.
그리고 난 말할 수 없네, 사형수에게,
어떻게 내 진흙의 몸이 죽은 자를 묻는 석회가 되는지를.
시간의 입술이 샘물의 근원에서 거머리처럼 빨고 있네,
사랑은 이슬처럼 떨어져 모이네, 하지만 떨어진 피가
그녀의 아픔을 달래리라.
그리고 난 말할 수 없네, 계절의 바람에게,
어떻게 시간이 별들을 돌며 천국의 시간을 세는지를.
그리고 난 말할 수 없네, 연인의 무덤에,
어떻게 내 시트 천에도 똑같은 굽은 벌레가 기어 다니고 있는지를.
딜런 토머스가 1933년 19세에 쓴 이 시는 그를 유명하게 만든 시이다. 1934년 발간된 시집 "18편의 시" (18 Poems)에 수록되어 있으며, 토머스의 초기 '시적 태동기' 에 속하는 시이다.
이 시에서는 시인의 젊음과 시적 창의력이 생동하는 힘으로 강하게 분출되고 있다. 한편으로는 이 무렵 그의 부친이 암에 걸려 살 날이 얼마 남지 않았음을 알았기 때문에, 죽음에 대한 암시가, 분출하는 생명력의 저변에 깔려 있다.
이 시는 시를 일관하여 많은 은유적 표현을 쓰면서, 시간, 삶, 사랑에 관해 이야기하고 있다. 꽃, 나무, 물, 바위, 피, 강, 바람, 돛폭, 수의, 사형수, 거머리, 무덤, 벌레 등 다양하게 강렬한 이미지를 도입하며 자연, 죽음, 사랑, 삶의 의미를 다루고 있다.
시에서 자연의 힘은 꽃을 피우게 하고, 바위 사이로 물이 용솟음치게 하고, 웅덩이의 물을 소용돌이치게 하는 생명의 힘이면서, 한편으론 나무를 시들게 하고, 강을 마르게 하는 파괴의 힘이다.
자연은 생명을 창조하는 힘이며, 동시에 시간이 흐르면 만물을 죽음에 이르게 하고, 그리고 다시 이를 재생시키는 힘을 갖고 있음을 나타낸다. 생명은 단절되지 않으며, 순환되며 계속 이어짐을 시사한다.
꽃과 만물을 생동하게 하는 이 자연의 힘은 동시에 시인의 시적 영감을 자극해 창조적 본능을 분출시키고 있음을 상징적으로 말하고 있다.
시의 서두에 이 '힘' (the force)을 강렬하게 인상적으로 표현하고 있다.
'초록 줄기 속으로 꽃을 몰아붙이는 힘이 내 젊음을 몰아부치네'
(The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age)
라고 했다.
이 힘은 매우 강렬하여 마치 화약의 '도화선' (fuse)과 같이 줄기를 통하여 꽃을 '몰아붙인다' (drive).
'fuse' 는 꽃의 줄기를 말하나 '도화선' 의 이중적 이미지를 주고 있다. 도화선에 불이 붙어 폭발하듯이 꽃이 피어나는 생생한 이미지와 함께 억제할 수 없는 힘의 분출을 느낄 수 있다.
시에서는 이 강렬한 생명의 힘을 강조하기 위해 '몰아붙인다' (drive)를 네 번을 반복하고 있다.
'꽃' (flower)을 몰아붙이고,
'내 젊음' (my green age)을 몰아붙이고,
'물' (water)을 몰아붙이고,
'내 붉은 피' (my red blood)를 몰아붙인다.
그리고 '소용돌이치게' (whirl) 하고, '휘젓는다' (stir)라고 하여 힘이 넘치고 분출되는 이미지가 부각되고 있다.
동시에 시인은 이 생명의 힘이 한편으론 자신을 파괴시키고, 피를 굳게 하며, 종국에는 죽음으로 이끌고 있음을 인식하고 있다.
생명과 죽음 모두를 주재하는 자연의 힘에 대해 압도되었으며, 자연의 이 모순적 측면에 대해 시인은 '할 말을 잃고 있다' (and I am dumb).
시인은 전체 5연의 각 연에서 일어나는 상황에 대해 '난 말할 수 없네' (And I am dumb)를 다섯 번, 후렴구처럼 반복한다. 자연의 신비하고 위대한 힘은 인간이 이해할 수도, 설명할 수도 없다는 강력한 메시지를 주고 있다.