Dylan's Visions of Sin

by Christopher Ricks

  Plate sin with gold,

  And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;

  Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it.

  Covetousness

  Gotta Serve Somebody

  There is a story of a country squire who, leaving church after having heard tell (once more) of the Ten Commandments, took some comfort to himself: “Well, anyhow I haven’t made a graven image.”114

  Only one of the seven deadly sins is granted one of the Ten Commandments to itself. For although anger may lurk within “Thou shalt do no murder”, and lust within “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, these Commandments neither identify nor identify with one particular sin. But the sin of covetousness has its very own Commandment, the Tenth, no less. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his servant, nor his maid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his.” Do not covet his wife or his maid, even though you may happen to find your pleasure in somebody’s mistress or in having women in a cage. Do not covet his servant, and do remember that you yourself are going to have to serve somebody. You may be this, that, or the other,

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

  You’re gonna have to serve somebody

  Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

  The Old Testament concurs with the New Testament in the warning against covetousness that is Gotta Serve Somebody. “Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth,” Christ urges in the Sermon on the Mount.115

  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

  Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk

  Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk

  Might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread

  May be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

  The Victorian provocateur Samuel Butler put in a word against the word of the Lord, that we cannot serve God and Mammon.

  Granted that it is not easy, but nothing that is worth doing ever is easy. Easy or not easy, not have only we got to do it, but it is exactly in this that the whole duty of man consists.

  If there are two worlds at all (and about this I have no doubt) it stands to reason that we ought to make the best of both of them, and more particularly of the one with which we are most immediately concerned.116

  Gotta Serve Somebody is unrelenting, and this in itself presented its creator with a challenge. How do you vary the unrelenting? And how, once you have started on the infinite possibilities of You may be anything-you-care-to-name but you’re gonna have to etc., will you ever be through with instances and remonstrances? You are assuredly characterizing all these people most vividly, with no end of styptic scepticism, but you’re gonna have to serve notice on the song sometime.

  But the first thing of which to take the force is the combination of the song’s inexorable speed with its radiating deftness of sidelong glances, sly touches and chances. Take the opening verse, which opens, very diplomatically, on to the summit of the social world:

  You may be an ambassador to England or France

  You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

  You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

  You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

  What’s going on here? Everything.

  “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” Such was the straightfaced definition given by the seventeenth-century ambassador Sir Henry Wotton. An ambassador is a servant of his country (as a minister is supposed to be), and the word “ambassador” is from ambactus, a servant. To England or France: old sparring partners, and – in their European culture – constituting a rival to the United States of America as to who should be the heavyweight champion of the world.

  So to the second line, where at once we can’t help wondering whether the move has immediately been to two other very different worlds and Yous, or whether there aren’t mischievous intimations that the second line has not lost touch with the first.

  You may be an ambassador to England or France

  You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

  Being an ambassador is a bit of a gamble, for you and for your country, and it often asks a poker face. Moreover, you had better like to dance all right, not just because of all those social occasions at the Embassy but because the diplomatic soft-shoe shuffle is one name of the game. Anyway, “gamble” makes its way smilingly across to “dance” on the arm of gambol. “You may like to gamble, you might like to dance”: one “You” after another, presumably, and yet the two halves of the line are perfectly happy either to be dancing partners or to form a onesome. The world of the song is socially gathering:

  You may be an ambassador to England or France

  You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

  You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

  You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

  England and France have become the world – but then these are the two countries that were (formerly) the ones most in danger of supposing that they were the world. Not just the social world, although the social world is there as the string that connects the ambassador and the long string of pearls. The heavyweight with a long string of successes117 turns into the socialite with a long string of pearls, lite on her feet. The long string of pearls helps to reinforce, with a glint, the point that she is a socialite, not a socialist.118 She is a lightweight champion of her world, not with a towel but with pearls around her neck.

  Dancing, whether on the international ambassadorial stage or in the ring, turns now to prancing, bringing on some more of the worldly successes who keep forgetting something:

  May be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage

  Money, drugs at your command, women in a cage

  The initiating ambassador has given way to a rock ’n’ roll performer, but then a performer – like a heavyweight champion – is often presented as an ambassador of a kind. (Never forget that you are an ambassador for our way of life, representing your country abroad . . .) The “rock ’n’ roll addict” is apparently addicted to his own rock ’n’ roll (the fans are another story), though not only to rock ’n’ roll: “Money, drugs at your command”. Is it truly the case that, thanks to money, the drugs are at his command, or is he at theirs? As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, the next line was straightforward, “You may be a business man or some high degree thief ”, but I hear what he sings as askew and buttonholing: “You may be in business, man”, with a sudden addressing of “You”, and with the further suggestion that things are proceeding apace, you’re in business, that’s for sure, man, you’re not just some business man.

  You may be in business, man, or some high degree thief

  They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

  The high degree is wittily succeeded by “They may call you Doctor” – now, there’s a higher degree for you, not just a high degree (of whatever). “If I were a master thief”, Dylan had sung in Positively 4th Street. But even a Master thief would have to yield to a Doctor thief.

  You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk

  May be the head of some big TV network

  You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame

  May be living in another country under another name

  From England or France, things have dwindled (or not, given states’ rights) to a state trooper, with the geographical allocations then receiving a comic twist from “a young Turk”. (You might be an ambassador to Turkey or France? Or e
ven to “another country”?) Meanwhile, the state trooper is keeping communications open with both the ambassador and the rock ’n’ roller addict prancing on a stage, each of whom is a trouper in his way.

  May be a construction worker working on a home

  Might be living in a mansion, you might live in a dome

  You may own guns and you may even own tanks

  You may be somebody’s landlord, you may even own banks

  This starts by coming a long way down the social ladder from that ambassador (slumming?), with the two successive work-words here establishing the daily grind: “May be a construction worker working on a home”. “Worker working”: that is what it feels like (work, work, work), with the redundancy not being of the luxurious kind, simply repetitive and a bit blank. But up the scale again, at once, into that “mansion” and into “you might live in a dome”. Living in a dome is a combination of the grand and the offhand. The usual thought is that it is very nice to have a dome over one’s head again.

  Perhaps this verse seems for a moment tamed, compared with its predecessors, but not for long, for it swings into a different kind of action as it makes a place for the word that until now has exerted its energies only within the refrain, the word “somebody”. The power here is felt in the momentum from the verse into the refrain:

  You may own guns and you may even own tanks

  You may be somebody’s landlord, you may even own banks

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are

  You’re gonna have to serve somebody

  Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

  Every somebody is a nobody in the eyes of the Lord, or of the devil, come to that.

  You may be a preacher, Mr Dylan, and it may be necessary to take this bull, whether papal or not, by the horns.

  You may be a preacher preaching spiritual pride

  May be a city councilman taking bribes on the side

  May be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair

  You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

  As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, it was “You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride”, but what Dylan sings, “a preacher preaching”, is much more telling, as adopting – and adapting – “a construction worker working”, and as suggesting that the preacher not only has spiritual pride but preaches it. He may think that he is preaching against pride, but this is not what actually happens as soon as he opens his ripe and fruity mouth.

  And then there is scattered another flurry of darts. Preacher is in touch with councilman, because of what council is. Taking bribes is in touch with cut, because of what it is to take a cut (my usual percentage, I trust?). Taking bribes on the side is in touch with somebody’s mistress, because of what The Oxford English Dictionary knows carnally about on the side: “surreptitiously, without acknowledgement. (Freq. with connotation of dishonesty: illicitly; outside wedlock.)”. “What would some of you say if I told you that I, as a married man, have had three women on the side?” (1968). In the momentum from this verse into the refrain (a mounting momentum now), there is twice a “somebody” before hitting the refrain:

  You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes

  You’re gonna have to serve somebody

  Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

  The verse that follows is both the seed of the song and – because of the Sermon on the Mount – its flower.

  And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

  “Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk”: Dylan sings this quatrain most elegantly, with an equable commitment to its being so pat, rhythmically and vocally and syntactically, so symmetrical. The bed may be king-sized but it is a perfect fit. The danger of the fit and of the pat could not be better intimated (complacency completely self-satisfied), intimated delicately to the point of daintiness, but without palliation. For the “But” is biding its time.

  Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk

  Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk

  Might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread

  May be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody . . .

  And so the song moves to its moving on. The turn that finally releases it from its perpetual motion is its decision to switch from what you may be, and what they may call you, to what you may call me – and thence to what little difference this could ever make, given the inescapable truth of our all having to serve somebody. Earlier the song had dangled titles and entitlements: “They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief ”. They may call you these things servilely, but don’t forget that you, too, are gonna have to serve somebody. “They may call you . . .” now returns, from the opposite direction, as “You may call me . . .”

  You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy

  You may call me Bobby, or you may call me Zimmy

  You may call me R. J., you may call me Ray

  You may call me anything, no matter what you say

  You’re still gonna have to serve somebody, yes

  You’re gonna have to serve somebody

  Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord

  But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

  On every previous occasion, not only the last line of the refrain but its first line had crystallized in an opening obdurate “But”. Dylan has always respected the patient power of life’s most important little insister, “But”, which will not be cheated or defeated. To bring the song to an end, while urging us not to forget the unending truth of its asseveration, there is this time no opening “But”, only the conclusive one.119

  You’re gonna have to serve somebody. You may not like the thought, but there are forms of the thought that ought to do more than reconcile you to it. At Morning Prayer, the Second Collect, for Peace:

  O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies.

  Thy humble servants, thou whose service is perfect freedom. It is perfectly paradoxical, like so much else.

  Meanwhile, the crasser forms of covetousness keep up their assaults. The artist seeks to defend us against them.

  You can’t take it with you and you know that it’s too worthless to be sold

  They tell you, “Time is money” as if your life was worth its weight in gold

  (When You Gonna Wake Up?)

  It is one of the most enduring of proverbial reminders, You can’t take it with you. In the different accents of St Paul:

  For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

  (1 Timothy 6:7–10)

  They tell you, “Time is money” as if your life was worth its weight in gold

  Not that any of these matters are as simple as the confident repudiation of covetousness would like to believe. The realist Samuel Butler would again like to say a word: It is only very fortunate people whose time is money. My time is not money. I wish it was. It is not even somebody else’s money. If it was he would give me some of it. I am a miserable, unmarketable sinner, and there is no money in me.120

  Sad-Eyed Lady of th
e Lowlands

  Sad to say, there has been many a sad-eyed lady. One of the most haunting, and haunted, is Dolores, she whose very name means sadness.121 Swinburne’s Dolores (1866) opens with her hidden eyes, and soon moves to her flagrant mouth, all this then issuing in a question:

  Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel

  Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;

  The heavy white limbs, and the cruel

  Red mouth like a venomous flower;

  When these are gone by with their glories,

  What shall rest of thee then, what remain,

  O mystic and sombre Dolores,

  Our Lady of Pain?

  He covets her, even as she covets so much.

  Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands opens with the mouth of our lady of pain, and soon moves to her eyes, all this then issuing in a question, one that is on its way to further questions:

  With your mercury mouth in the missionary times

  And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes

  And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes

  Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?

  With your pockets well protected at last

  And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass

  And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass

  Who among them do they think could carry you?

  Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands

  Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes

  My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums

  Should I leave them by your gate

  Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

  He covets her, even as she covets so much. The seductive “mercury mouth” may be a death-dealing poison (thanks to a particular plant), or it may be a health-dealing antidote (thanks to a compound of the metal).122 Swinburne has “Red mouth like a venomous flower” (and “eyelids that hide like a jewel”); Dylan has “eyes like smoke”, and then “like rhymes”, “like chimes”.123 The first question (within a song that puts so many searching questions), “Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?”, might summon the goddess who is summoned in Dolores, “Libitina thy mother”. For she is the Roman goddess of burials, who since ancient times has been identified – in a sad misguidance – with the goddess of love, Venus herself.