Yes, it's kind of hard to get into the ear: Bob Dylan, writer. To the general public, and even to some writers, not at all. The legitimacy of the division Pros and Cons of the merits that Dylan received the Nobel Prize for Literature should not be disputed, but it should be placed where it belongs: in democracy, which implies that everyone expresses his opinion and in a part of the public space that (in new times) craves no more only for controversy but for scandal, if at all possible.
When all the daily, vain and obstacles of ignorance and prejudice are unfolded, one arrives at the clear ground of analysis of what Bob Dylan wrote. What analysis, is it absurd, has yet to occur! A serious problem with the so-called Kant to authors is that part or all of what they wrote as text for songs people concrete a priori for music. Partly rightly so. But when, in the case of exceptionally talented authors, that limit is crossed in terms of quality, one must be objective and allow the text, if it deserves it, to move into literature.
So, the "mistake" with Dylan is that his character and work (records, concerts and music) were so surprising and revolutionary from the first appearance that they immediately moved him into the voice and leader of generations. A heavy burden for potential literature. And when that already happened, the furthest you could get to literature was the possible remark that it is poetry for the ears. And then more than half a century ago in 1962 and now in 2016, the same could be said. The Nobel committee called it "listening poetry".
What do I want to say? Well, the fact that Bob Dylan has been a poet all along, from the very beginning. Someone recognized it immediately, and someone didn't even to this day. The fact that he changed his birth name to the name of the poet Dylan (Thomas) is not enough, but it is one of a series of actions that speak of his love for poetry, his faith in it and his search for his own voice, in a broader sense. In his writing, he used the legacy of American poetry, and then switched to reading French symbolists. The influence of Arthur Rimbaud, for example, is more than obvious. This is the period when he wrote a cycle of eleven songs (poetry) and published them in 1964 with his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan (The Other Side of Bob Dylan) with special subtitle Some other kinds of songs... (Some other types of songs). So, runway year when the album that launched him into the public The Times They Are A changin' . Even then, he wanted to say that the difference between the three words that in English denote verses of all kinds is only linguistic, and that they have an essential connection with each other. Word lyric indicates the lyrics in a musical track, song the song that is sung, and poem song as poetry. So, he already emphasized there that he considers some of what he writes to be pure poetry and he literally and physically put it as an addition to the music album, next to the songs. It is interesting that this poetry is more communicative than certain texts of his musical songs of the same period. Among the songs he called poetry, there are extremely long ones, without titles, but also one short one (in my ad hoc translation) which is sufficient as an illustration of Dylan's poetry:
Michelangelo would cry.
that he only saw where Charlie slept once
(vow, Charlie, I'm afraid you stepped on it.
beyond the border where you were imprisoned)
what is the price what is the price what is the price of shame
to sleep on the angelic face of beauty?
It seems to me that this is a song about Dylan's spiritual father, Woody Guthrie (whom he visited in the hospital when he was being treated in 1961). Guthrie, his role model from a poet, a wanderer and a bum, wrote over three thousand poems, some unfinished prose books, but also one novel in 1947 that was not known about and was found in 2012. Likewise, Dylan published over sixty albums, as well as hundreds of songs (if not thousands that we don't know about yet) and one novel. And him, by name Tarantula, he published early, in 1966 when he was only 25 years old. Which also, it seems, the public needs to find again. With it, he showed that he was on the trail of the tradition of automatic Dadaist writing, experimentation with language, and that when even Leonard Cohen (famous for his first not-so-easy-to-understand novel Favorite game from 1963) published the same novel in 1966 Glorious losers, much more readable than Dylan's. It seemed that Dylan wrote it as if he wanted to defeat even his most die-hard fans. The understanding was not helped either by the female character who in the "plot" of the novel dealt with Yugoslavia for six whole months... Although the book is almost a mess of words, an uninterrupted series of thoughts and associations, it is literature only for study.
Likewise Tarantula he handles the enormous literary knowledge he pours on every page of the novel, by influence or mention - all the same, Bergman and Stravinsky, God and Jesus, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg... Curiously searching, surrealist, beatnik, almost automatic (poetic) prose. Admittedly, a few poems were thrown in among these pages as well. But also verses that are just prose. To deceive the enemy. Or ignorant. (Even now, half a century after its creation).
And then, so early on, the "voice of a generation" forever stopped proving what it was that he was doing. He let everyone understand things as they wanted. However, some did not let him out of literature. In the explanation, for example, of the jury that awarded him the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, in addition to praise for his contribution to popular music and American culture, there is also credit "for textual compositions of exceptional poetic power." Very interesting construction. With an accent on poetry.
The mentioned cycle of songs (which were not "set to music"), as well as many others, was buried by Dylan, as it were, hidden in various future editions of books bearing titles of the type Writings and drawings, Notes or Texts and the like. He even gave his 2004 conditional autobiography a title Chronicles as if he wanted to use it to further hide behind the genre. And the book, in its composition, is a stone thrown into the water, a series of concentric circles forward and backward, and in terms of artistic reach - mostly prose. Literary prose, regardless of all the factography. Although turning 75, Dylan announced the second part Chronicle for the year 2019. And he promised the third part. The author of this text signed copyright contracts for all three volumes as a publisher back in 2005, but he has not yet seen the manuscript of the second and third. But he believes in Dylan's optimism.
It seems as if Dylan is trying to tell us all along - literature is where she finds herself. Maybe. Although, it would not be worse, when he has already won the Nobel Prize, to try to read what he wrote more seriously. And then seriously qualify. Regardless of the result. I'm sure Bob Dylan wouldn't care about any. Not because he thinks highly of himself, but because he is one of the few who has managed to be who he is all his life. What would that be? And that's no small thing. Neither for literature nor outside of it.
"The public has been getting regular servings of all my recorded songs for years, but my live performances have never managed to capture their inner spirit - they've failed to add the spin they need. Intimacy, among many other things, was gone. My listeners must have felt as if they were moving through desolate orchards and withered grass. My audience, or rather my future audience, would not have the opportunity to experience the new areas I was about to venture into. Something like this, the fact that the whiskey disappeared from the bottle, happened for a number of reasons. I've always been extremely productive, but never thorough, and too many distractions turned my musical path into a veritable jungle of creepers. I stuck to established habits, but they did not lead to the desired results. My windows were years old, covered with cobwebs, and I can't say I didn't know that.
Before all this, things changed and not in the abstract. A few months ago, something unusual happened and I became aware of a certain set of dynamic principles that I could use to transform my public performances. By combining certain elements of the musical technique itself, which strongly excite each other, I realized that I could improve the levels of perception of my songs, the structure of their duration, as well as the systems of their rhythm, which would all together give them a brighter character, breathe much more life into them - shook them up and put them in order. It was like angels communicating with parts of my soul. A strong fire was burning in the fireplace, and the wind fanned it even more. The veil has lifted. A tornado came to my house at Christmas time, pushed out all the fake Christmas Bats and cleaned up all that mess. I just couldn't figure out why it took so long for something like that. I felt terribly guilty that it hadn't happened much sooner. What I was sure of was that until now I had written perfect lyrics to complement my musical style. The previous ten years have pretty much worn me down professionally. Countless times, as I walked out on stage before the start of a gig, I caught myself thinking about how I wasn't keeping my word to myself. What word it was, I couldn't remember exactly, but I knew that it was left there somewhere behind me. I've been trying to figure out what it's all about, but I've never come up with any solution. If I had at least seen her in sight, I would have stopped her on the spot, but that didn't happen. My public appearances became rarer, almost completely stopped. I've shot myself in the leg too many times with one hand. It's nice to see a legend and people will always pay to see it, but for most people doing it once is enough. You simply give what you have, not wasting your time or anyone else's. I had not, in fact, completely disappeared from the scene, but the path I had been on had narrowed, almost cut off, and was now, by all accounts, wide open. I haven't started it yet. I was just moving left and right on the asphalt. My personality was gone from me and it was up to me to find it. Time after time, I tried it several times, with all my might. There is a cure for everything in nature and that was the place I usually went in search of it. I used to go to my house on the water, sailing home, hoping to hear a voice slowly approaching me, sniffing the wild beaches at night - with moose, bears, deer around me - not even the elusive timber wolf was too far away, quiet summer listened to the call of the grebe in the evenings. Thinking about things. But all that was to no avail. I felt that I was finished, I was like an empty burnt wreck. There's too much static in my head that I can't get out. Wherever I am, I am a troubadour from the sixties, a folk-rock relic, a master of words from antediluvian times, a fictitious head of state whose whereabouts no one knows. I am in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion. Name anything. I can't get rid of it. As I emerge from the forest, people see me approaching them. I know what they're thinking. I have to accept things as they are.'
(Chronicles first part; Geopoetics 2005; Translation by Dejan D. Marković)
photo: ap
I pity the poor immigrant., who regrets not having
stayed at home.
Who tries with all his might to do evil, or on
in the end it remains
without a house.
That man who cheats with his fingers, and who lies
when they gape,
Who hates his life passionately and is also afraid to
is climbing to death.
I pity the poor immigrant., whose strength is wasted
spend,
Whose Heaven is like Cromwell's?, Iron Cavalry,
whose tears flow like water
it rains,
Who eats but is not satisfied, who will hear but will not
see,
Who falls in love with abundance alone, and my back will too
to turn.
I pity the poor immigrant., mud-shoveling,
Whose mouth is full of laughter and who raises his city
blood,
Whose visions, after all, must be like glass
to smash,
I pity the poor immigrant., when he is happy
happening.
Translation by Vladislav Bajac, from the collection
Trip - a guide to contemporary American poetry,
National Book 1983.
