Dylan's Visions of Sin
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253 Dylan: “I don worry no more bout the no-talent criticizers an know-nothin philosophizers” (For Dave Glover, programme for Newport Folk Festival (July 1963); Bob Dylan in His Own Write, compiled by John Tuttle, see this page). Pope, again in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, sharpens the intransitive verb “hesitate” into a transitive: “Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike”. You can hesitate, and you can intimate dislike, but can you “hesitate dislike”? If you are cold sly Addison, you can.
254 Dylan in concert (New York, 31 October 1964), when saying something to introduce the song, had a nervous laugh and uneasy wording, as though (touchingly) in awe of the greatness of what he must have known he had created: “This is a true story, right out of the newspapers again . . . The words have been changed around. It’s like conversation really.”
255 There is this exchange with an interviewer: “Listen, how does it feel, Bob, when you’re twenty-two years old and you go out on the stage at the Lincoln Center . . .” Dylan: “Old?” “Well you were twenty-two then.” Dylan: “Oh yeah.” (Les Crane Show, 17 February 1965; Bob Dylan by Miles, 1978, see this page).
256 The headline effect is there in the song from a newspaper report, Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.
257 Newsweek (6 October 1997).
258 London, April 1965; Bob Dylan in His Own Words, compiled by Miles (1978), see this page.
259 John Bauldie’s sleeve-notes for the bootleg series, vols. 1–3: “The song’s story is as old as the hills . . . but it seems likely that Dylan’s direct source was a song called ‘Anathea,’ often performed by Judy Collins.”
260 Samuel Beckett plays “go” against “creeps”: “We go wherever the flesh creeps least” (Mercier and Camier, 1974, see this page).
261 Intriguingly different uses of the preposition “by”: “by night” is through the night, “by morning” is in time for morning.
262 “Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools / You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules” (When You Gonna Wake Up?).
263 Introduction to These Paintings (1929); Phoenix, ed. Edward D. McDonald (1936), p. 552.
264 When Pushkin re-created Measure for Measure as a poem, it was this crucial situation to which he gave salience.
265 Contrast Percy’s Song and the injustice, or not, of the sentence passed upon the driver of a car.
266 Wittgenstein in 1929; Culture and Value, ed. G. H. von Wright, tr. Peter Winch (1980), see this pagee [i.e., English].
267 To his publisher, Grant Richards, about another publisher, 21 August 1920; The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971), see this page.
268 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, and as sung on the Witmark demo tape, the second verse began: “Old Reilly’s daughter”. Released by Dylan in his bootleg series, the second verse begins “When Reilly’s daughter”, and has several other changes that matter.
269 I am reminded of Eliot, who made much of the word “only”, by Dylan’s distinctive only: “It’s only you that he does crave”. This comes to more than just the father’s insistence that “It’s only that – it’s just that – he craves you”, for there is a faint suggestion that the line might be moving towards a lovingly grateful remark from the father whom she so loves: “It’s only you who would even think of doing such a thing for me” or “It’s only you I love”.
270 Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XLVIII.
271 For the first six curses, Lyrics 1962–1985 prints “will not”, which is what he sings on the Witmark demo tape; on the bootleg series, he sings “cannot”. Both versions retain “shall never kill him” for the last curse. On the bootleg series, Dylan has a frighteningly beautiful suspension, instrumental, following the first of the curses, “That one doctor will not save him”, as though biding his time, his eternity.
272 The Structure of Complex Words (1951), pp. 347–8.
273 WFMT Radio, Chicago (3 May 1963). Dylan didn’t perform the song on this show.
274 (1966), ed. Thomas H. Johnson, under Mississippi.
275 On gals and heroes, see Hero Blues: “Yes, the gal I got / I swear she’s the screaming end / She wants me to be a hero / So she can tell all her friends”. “She wants me to walk out running / She wants me to crawl back dead”. “You can stand and shout hero / All over my lonesome grave”.
276 Tarantula (1966, 1971), see this page.
277 Lyrics 1962–1985, see this page.
278 Letter, in The Dolphin (1973).
279 What a contrast with the spirit in which Dylan sings Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.
280 No Direction Home (1986), see this page.
281 About Lay Down Your Weary Tune, Dylan said: “I had heard a Scottish ballad on an old 78 record that I was trying to really capture the feeling of, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. There were no lyrics or anything, it was just a melody – had bagpipes and a lot of stuff in it. I wanted lyrics that would feel the same way” (Biograph).
282 The fleet foot urgency and urging are audible within Tarantula (1966, 1971), “Note to the Errand Boy as a Young Army Deserter”, a page that begins: “wonder why granpa just sits there & watches yogi bear? wonder why he just sits there & dont laugh? think about it kid, but dont ask your mother. wonder why elvis presley only smiles with his top lip? think about it kid, but dont ask your surgeon”. It ends: “wonder why the other boys wanna beat you up so bad? think about it kid, but dont ask nobody”.
283 I draw on an essay of mine on American English and the inherently transitory (The Force of Poetry, 1984).
284 Well, I rush into your hallway
Lean against your velvet door
I watch upon your scorpion
Who crawls across your circus floor
Just what do you think you have to guard?
(Temporary Like Achilles)
Door again finds itself floored.
285 The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks (1987), vol. II, see this page.
286 – ok, so you used to get B’s
in the ivanhoe tests & A minuses
in the silas marners . . . then you
wonder why you flunked the hamlet
exams – yeah well that’s because one
hoe & one lass do not make a spear –
(Tarantula, see this page)
287 In the Rome interview (2001), someone quotes to Dylan the words “Inside the museums history goes up on trial”. Dylan, with infinite patience and corrugated brow: “Is it history?”, and then “I don’t think that’s right . . . doesn’t sound right – Is it right? It could be . . . Let me go look in the book.” In this exchange, infinity is not the only thing that goes up on trial.
288 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik (1985), pp. 197–200.
289 The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism (1921); Collected Poems and Selected Prose, ed. Christopher Ricks (1988), p. 334.
290 “As the night comes in fallin’ . . .”: how very different this would be from Dylan’s “As the night comes in a-fallin’” (One Too Many Mornings), and not only for rhythmical reasons.
291 A few verses later: “a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together”. Dylan’s song happens to have “time”, “cast”, “stone”, and “gather”.
292 “I’m not about to tell anybody to be a good boy or a good girl,” he went on. Playboy (March 1966).
293 North Country Blues, Rambling, Gambling Willie, Hard Times in New York Town, and Masters of War.
294 To In the Wind, December 1963; Bob Dylan in His Own Write, compiled by John Tuttle, see this page.
295 Of old: “They said who they fought an what they fought for an with what they fought with” – enemy and weapon (For Dave Glover, programme for Newport Folk Festival, July 1963; Bob Dylan in His Own Write, see this page). Of late: “For whom does the bell toll for, love?” (Moonlight).
296 In the preceding verse of Matthew: �
��father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands”. “Come mothers and fathers / Throughout the land / . . . / Your sons and your daughters”.
297 A Brief Introduction to the Method of Paul Valéry, Le Serpent (1924).
298 Dr Clark Kerr, of the University of California, earned the credit or the discredit for coining “multiversity” in the 1960s. The protests at his Berkeley, though, were about the war in Vietnam.
299 See this page.
300 Michael Gray is humanely attentive to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7). “Christ’s injunction ‘all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’ is rendered in modern Bibles as ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’” (Song and Dance Man III, 2000, see this page n.)
301 Greil Marcus, itchy and scratchy, put it like that, to back up his version of this song: “Dylan’s received truths never threaten the unbeliever, they only chill the soul, and that is because he is offering a peculiarly eviscerated and degraded version of American fundamentalism” (New West, 24 September 1979). It is not the unbeliever that this is quick to threaten.
302 Some Other Kinds of Songs:
as i vanish down the road
with a starving actress
on each arm
(for better or best
in sickness an’ madness)
i do take thee
i’m already married
(Lyrics 1962–1985, 1985, see this page)
303 Lord Bryce, quoted in Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks, eds. J. A. Gere and John Sparrow (1981), see this page.
304 Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, July 1735. The other two of the three: Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks, eds. J. A. Gere and John Sparrow (1981), see this page, see this page.
305 Blake was hard on Prudence, too: “Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.” See this page.
306 Beckett, Mercier and Camier (1974), see this page:
Good evening, my children, said Mercier, get along with you now.
But they did not get along with them, no, but stood their ground, their little clasped hands lightly swinging back and forth.
307 Mr. Tambourine Man.
308 Newcastle (9 May 1965); released as one of the bonus tracks on the DVD of Dont Look Back (1999).
309 Including:
He that first invented thee,
May his joints tormented be,
Cramped forever;
Still may syllabes jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never.
[syllabes: syllables]
310 I draw on an essay of mine on Lowell, The Force of Poetry (1984), see this page. Lowell’s words are from 1965.
311 11 Outlined Epitaphs, in Lyrics 1962–1985 (1985), p. 114.
312 The Milky Way is far away, but the thought is not far-fetched given the origin of the phrase, the milk from a mythical breast. Also OED, 2b: The region of a woman’s breast.
313 Lowell feels the poignancy in such a hovering: “often the old grow still more beautiful, / watering out the hours, biting back their tears”. Both “hours” and “tears” are uncertain as to how long they have. (Mother and Father 1, in History, 1973.)
314 This chapter of Daniel may contribute to Dark Eyes, where “the falling gods of speed and steel” are the accelerated modernized compacting of “the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone” who are twice invoked.
315 “You came in like the wind, like Errol Flynn” (You Changed My Life). “Sing me one more song, about ya love me to the moon and the stranger / And your fall-by-the-sword love affair with Errol Flynn” (Foot of Pride). One more song, that’s all he asks, temperately. But the next two lines, despite their further “one more”, have had enough of temperance: “In these times of compassion when conformity’s in fashion / Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in”.
316 T. S. Eliot, Gerontion.
317 Sugar Baby: “I got my back to the sun ’cause the light is too intense / I can see what everybody in the world is up against”.
318 I believe that it was Tom Davis, in Birmingham long ago, who pointed out to me some of these dark energies.
319 See this page.
320 Book Eighth, chapter 1.
321 Whaaat? (the 1965 interview with Nat Hentoff, in full, differing from Playboy, March 1966), see this page. See see this page.
322 Kenneth Haynes helped me to see and hear this.
323 In MODERNISM / modernity, vol. 7, 2000. “Rhymes like love : of have signifying possibilities that were first taken seriously in the early twentieth century because they satisfied the intentions of the modernist aesthetic.” Such a rhyme is felt to be “mismatched”, marked by “incongruent effects”, because of the tradition that deemed certain classes of word to be below the dignity of rhyming, even of comic rhyming. Prepositions, for instance (though phrasal verbs or prepositional verbs were granted some licence: “Shakespeare’s ‘drinkes it vp’: ‘cup’; Herbert’s ‘creepes in’: ‘sinne’”). Edward Bysshe, in The Art of English Poetry (1702), had issued a list of the parts of speech that should not be rhymed on, for instance “the Particles An, And, As, Of, The, &c.” Anne Ferry writes with imaginative acumen about what it is to rhyme on such a word as “but” or “of”, even – Marianne Moore’s inaugurative move in 1916 – to have an end-rhyme of “the” with “be”. The essay is on poetry, not song, but much in it would illuminate Dylan’s decisions in timing and in a kind of rhyming that his lineation, as voiced, can bring home.
324 Three lines later in Foot of Pride: “He looked straight into the sun and said revenge is mine”. Blind revenge. As for me: “I got my back to the sun ’cause the light is too intense”.
325 Preface to Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus (1931), p. ix. On temperance in relation to “no limit” (which in Sugar Baby is “There ain’t no limit to the amount of trouble women bring”), see this page.
326 There is many a song called Sugar Baby, and Dock Boggs has one. (It is in the recorded Anthology of American Folk Music, edited by Harry Smith.) The first citation for “sugarbaby” in the OED (“sugar” as a term of endearment) is from Gone with the Wind (1936), chapter XXVI: “Scarlett said gratefully: ‘Thank you, Sugarbaby’.” (In Sugar Baby the regrets are tinged with weary thanks, less said than glimpsed – thanks, I suppose.) The instance in Gone with the Wind is presumably no more than a coincidence, but the ferret enjoys unearthing the fact that the preceding sentence in the novel ends “in the sun”. (Dylan, “to the sun”.) Dylan famously sings “gone with the wind” in Song to Woody, which shares with Sugar Baby the phrase “down the road” (and mentions “Walkin’ a road”) and which has “a thousand miles” (Sugar Baby, “a thousand times”), as well as “It looks like it’s a-dying an’ it’s hardly been born” (Sugar Baby, “Just as sure as we’re living, just as sure as you’re born”).
327 But with a saddened impetuosity, only the slightest of breaks in the run of the words.
328 The time-word “day” again gets the time of two syllables later in the song:
Any minute [the expected four]
of the day [three, two of them allotted to day]
the bubble could burst
329 As printed in Lyrics 1962–1985, not “Lord” but “Well, I’m walkin’ down the line”. But seek your Maker.
330 Dylan-lovers posted word of this soon after “Love And Theft” appeared, but I should never have known of the Austin / Shilkret song were it not for my colleague Jeremy Yudkin, who generously made a tape of it for me in November 2001; I am much in his debt.
331 Dylan pinpoints and punctures such a political rallying-cry as “Which side are you on?”: “Praise be to Nero’s Neptune / The Titanic sails at dawn / And everybody’s shouting / ‘Which Side Are You On?’” (Desolation Row).
332 Sing Out! (October / November 1962), reporting Dylan in June 1962. Dylan at Carnegie Hall in 1963, introducing the song: “Met a teacher who
said he didn’t understand what Blowin’ in the Wind means. Told him there was nothin’ to understand, it was just blowin’ in the wind. If he didn’t feel it in the wind, he’d never know. And he ain’t never gonna know, I guess. Teachers.” (Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan, 1971, revised edition 1973, see this page.)
333 At Gerde’s, April 1962, the song opens with harmonica introduction and has the harmonica between verses and at the end. The Witmark demo tape, July 1962, has no harmonica. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, July 1962, does best by the song, establishing itself as the performance against which all others are heard and (though not necessarily measured) weighed: it opens with guitar, but has harmonica between the verses and at the end. Blown with breath’s wind. Dylan does not sing the verses in the order in which they have been printed in Lyrics 1962–1985 (1985). The printed sequence is: the first verse, but then the last one sung, and then the second that is sung. But Broadside (late May 1962) printed the verses in the order in which he sings them.
334 The song was recorded on 9 July 1962. Harold Macmillan’s words, which became famous at once, had been delivered on 3 February 1960 in Cape Town: “The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.” Forever Young: “When the winds of changes shift”. What a singular difference the plurals make.
335 “Before he sleeps in the sand” in the early sheet-music (Broadside, late May 1962). Lyrics 1962–1985 prints “a white dove”, but Dylan sings “the white dove”: of peace in the world, of mercy from the Flood, and of pentecostal message. True, he wasn’t a Christian in 1962, but he copyrighted Long Ago, Far Away long ago, in the same year as Blowin’ in the Wind. “And to talk of peace and brotherhood / Oh, what might be the cost! / A man he did it long ago / And they hung him on a cross”. Several of the early songs have more than a turn-of-phrase that is Christian.