Deaths and entrances ... Dylan in 1949 and today. Photographs: AP and ©iCreate Ltd 2005
Foolish Dylan Thomas, who wrote so passionately of life and death, sparked out too soon to see the error of his ways. "Do not go gentle into that good night," he advised. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." But he needn't have bothered. On the 52nd anniversary of his own whisky-fuelled demise, the poet is back again and duly booked for a reading at Swansea's Dylan Thomas Centre - albeit in animatronic form.
Death is not the end, it would seem. It is merely a pit-stop on the celebrity circuit; a kind of full-body detox from which the artist emerges purged of all their less savoury aspects.
The 3D Dylan unveiled in Swansea tonight will dutifully read Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night to an invited throng of local dignitaries. He will emphatically not be showing up late, drinking copious amounts of alcohol or harassing female members of the audience. Likewise the "digitally restored" Frank Sinatra who is booked to star in next year's show at the London Palladium. He will sing and dance and provide some well-honed saloon bar banter. But he will not be insulting female journalists, consorting with Mafia hoodlums or stubbing out cigarettes on the upturned faces of compliant hookers. Chances are he won't be smoking cigarettes at all.
Dawn Lyle, the co-producer of the virtual Dylan, hails the breakthrough as the "Madame Tussauds of the 21st-century", which sounds about right. Just as Madame Tussauds is a mausoleum that reduces history's most significant figures to rouged dead matter, so the 3D Dylans and Sinatras epitomise a celebrity culture in which the (dead) artist takes precedent over the (living) art. Take this trend through to its logical conclusions and you'd remove every Van Gogh canvas from exhibit and replace it with a red-bearded robot that cuts off its own ear.
Until then we have the priceless irony of Dylan Thomas, who viewed life as something rich and wild and fleeting, finding himself re-booted into some semblance of computer-generated animation. If they hadn't already dug him out of his grave, he would surely be turning in it now.
