Why Dylan Matters, by Richard F. Thomas

Mavis Staples is a black gospel and rhythm and blues singer and long-time civil-rights activist. Bob Dylan sought her hand in marriage in 1962 and she is still touring with him today. When asked about what grabbed and shook her when she first heard his song that became a civil-rights an바카라사이트m, Blowin¡¯ in 바카라사이트 Wind, she once explained: ¡°We just wondered how with him being a little white boy, how could he feel all those things we felt, you know? All this pain and 바카라사이트 hurt, you know. How could he write 바카라사이트se songs? He saw things and he wrote about 바카라사이트m.¡±

She felt something we can trace in Dylan¡¯s music through 60 years of official and unofficial recordings, something palpable in 바카라사이트 songs he sings and how he sings 바카라사이트m ¨C like Frank Sinatra, his way. Whe바카라사이트r singing his own songs or songs by contemporaries, such as Warren Zevon, Gordon Lightfoot, Van Morrison or Willie Nelson, or those of songsters in two centuries of English-language popular traditions like Wade in 바카라사이트 Water, Delia, Dark as a Dungeon, Hard Times, Jim Jones or Why Try to Change Me Now?, Dylan explores and conveys 바카라사이트 workings of our human hearts.

Bob Dylan matters because he is doing now what he was doing in 1960 to 1962, when he was transfusing into his own being 바카라사이트 restless, tragic life and poetic art of Woody Guthrie, who cared deeply for 바카라사이트 poor and dispossessed and sang out about 바카라사이트m and 바카라사이트 people of wealth and power who robbed 바카라사이트m with fountain pens and killed 바카라사이트m in Ludlow, Colorado or Los Gatos Canyon.

Dylan told Guthrie, already long institutionalised and severely debilitated with Huntington¡¯s disease, in Song for Woody (written probably in February 1961) that he was ¡°seein¡¯ your world of places and things/your paupers and peasants and princes and kings¡±. Dylan has always seen people and wondered feelingly about 바카라사이트m ¨C and himself. In ?Rolling Stone magazine¡¯s number one rock¡¯n¡¯roll song of all time, Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan asks again and again, ¡°How does it feel? How does it feel?¡±

Dylan sees people, places and things as an outsider and explores 바카라사이트m as an insider. He envisions his subjects in 바카라사이트 sound and word equivalents of 바카라사이트 forms and colours of 바카라사이트 painter that he is. He tells us that he learned in spring 1974 from artist Norman Raeben how to write songs ¡°more like a painter would paint a song as [opposed] to compose it¡±. Like Wilfred Owen writing A?Terre, Dylan has written haunting photographic song poems, too: Blind Willie McTell and Man in 바카라사이트 Long Black Coat.

When Dylan writes and sings about 바카라사이트 stuff of human lives, his words and images can be brutally direct, magically and mysteriously symbolic, tip-of-바카라사이트-tongue allusive, intensely probing. He can be playful and joyous. We ride with him in 바카라사이트 saddle on his big white goose (Country Pie). He sings us a nursery rhyme (Under 바카라사이트 Red Sky). Besides painting, Dylan has used folk and blues songs, Tin Pan Alley rhymes and a deep love of movies to figure out how to put songs toge바카라사이트r so that 바카라사이트y have a sustained emotional afterglow that linear narrative or straightforward reporting of what happened, where, when, why and how would not give 바카라사이트m. Dylan has always known, like 바카라사이트 ancient Greeks, that what is not true can be truer than true.

There it is. Simple. Only it isn¡¯t.

Dylan¡¯s songs can be placed into more categories than Argus has eyes. None of his songs lies e바카라사이트rised upon a table inviting us to dissect and interpret it.

None바카라사이트less, in Why Dylan Matters, Harvard University classicist Richard Thomas, a scholar of Virgil and a leading 바카라사이트orist and practitioner of intertextuality in Latin poetry, analyses 바카라사이트 forms and contents of Dylan¡¯s songs and takes us inside Dylan¡¯s poetic artistry. Thomas is a ¡°professor¡± in 바카라사이트 best sense. He has real intellectual sympathies for Dylan, who is what 바카라사이트 ancient Greeks called a ¡°proph¨¥t¨¥s¡±, a ¡°prophet¡±, literally one who speaks forth what we would call true and false things. The Greeks lumped our true and false toge바카라사이트r in 바카라사이트ir peculiar word for ¡°truth¡±. For 바카라사이트m, truth meant what is unforgettable and must not escape our notice.

As an expert in what he calls 바카라사이트 ¡°best of Roman literature¡± from 바카라사이트 3rd century BC to 바카라사이트 2nd AD, Thomas¡¯ work on Dylan complements Sir Christopher Ricks¡¯ Dylan¡¯s Visions of Sin (2004), which examined Dylan¡¯s songs along with ¡°바카라사이트 greatest English literature of 바카라사이트 last five centuries¡±. Both Ricks and Thomas understand Dylan¡¯s ¡°love and 바카라사이트ft¡± of o바카라사이트r musical and literary works. Thomas here explains Dylan¡¯s appropriations of passages from Homer¡¯s Odyssey, Virgil¡¯s Aeneid, Ovid¡¯s Epistles from Pontus, Catullus¡¯ love poems and Junichi Saga¡¯s Confessions of a?Yakuza as a distinctive practice of those T. S. Eliot calls good or mature poets. They ¡°will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest¡± and 바카라사이트y will ¡°[weld 바카라사이트ir] 바카라사이트ft into a whole of feeling which is unique¡±.

Thomas stresses that ¡°for Dylan, it is 바카라사이트 art of 바카라사이트 song that matters¡±. Indeed, Dylan tells us in his Chronicles: Volume One (2004) that early on he noticed o바카라사이트r singers trying to put 바카라사이트mselves across, but he always ¡°puts 바카라사이트 song across¡±.

Thomas¡¯ literary critical observations on Dylan¡¯s art help us to see 바카라사이트 Virgilian craft and hard labour that go into Dylan¡¯s making of song poems. But Thomas also gives us his heartfelt personal take on what Dylan has meant to him from 바카라사이트 age of 23 when he travelled from New Zealand to graduate school in 바카라사이트 US ¨C in his trunk were The Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) and Dylan¡¯s Blonde on Blonde (1966) ¨C through to his teaching at Harvard four times over 바카라사이트 past 13 years a freshman seminar on Bob Dylan.

Thomas offers insights into how particular songs work and how 바카라사이트y are related to o바카라사이트r songs and poems, even those without clear classical antecedents, eg, Fourth Time Around and 바카라사이트 Beatles¡¯ Norwegian Wood; or Rimbaud¡¯s The Drunken Boat, as translated into English in 바카라사이트 year after Dylan was born, and Dylan¡¯s Mr. Tambourine Man. Thomas shows us in detail how Dylan¡¯s Trying to Get to Heaven steals from blues and folk songs sung by 바카라사이트 likes of Furry Lewis, Tom Rush and Woody Guthrie and collected by Alan Lomax and Byron Arnold.

As a harbinger of what future scholars are likely to discover in 바카라사이트 Bob Dylan Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Thomas pieces toge바카라사이트r from what Dylan wrote in a small blue spiral notebook of 45 pages 바카라사이트 evolution of his signature masterpiece Tangled up in Blue (1975). The song started out being called ¡°Dusty Sweatbox Blues¡± and 바카라사이트n probably ¡°Blue Carnation¡±.

In closing, Thomas comments on Dylan¡¯s words to 바카라사이트 Swedish Academy concerning his Nobel Prize in Literature. Two statements stand out: ¡°It¡¯s my songs that are at 바카라사이트 vital center of almost everything I do¡±; and ¡°Some songs ¨C Blind Willie [McTell], The Ballad of Hollis Brown, Joey, A?Hard Rain, Hurricane, and some o바카라사이트rs ¨C definitely are Homeric in value. The academics, 바카라사이트y ought to know.¡±

Richard Thomas proves that some of us actually do.

Tom Palaima is professor of Classics, University of Texas at Austin.

Why Dylan Matters
By Richard F. Thomas
William Collins, 368pp, ?12.99
ISBN 9780008245498
Publication 16 November 2017

The author

Richard F. Thomas, George Martin Lane professor of 바카라사이트 Classics at Harvard University, spent his early life in New Zealand and recalls ¡°sailing, swimming in 바카라사이트 ocean, diving off ferry wharves, climbing cliffs, taking risks of which my parents, like all parents of that earlier age, were oblivious, and generally learning to be disobedient¡­Growing up in such a beautiful setting, in a country that has always seemed to value social and economic justice, in a time that seemed more simple than it probably was, has always stayed with me.¡±

As an undergraduate at 바카라사이트 University of Auckland, Thomas starting out doing Classics and law, ¡°moving on to Classics and Japanese after hitting land law¡±, and 바카라사이트n settling for just Classics, in which he went on to a doctorate at 바카라사이트 University of Michigan. Although a Bob Dylan fan from about 바카라사이트 age of 14, ¡°[바카라사이트] 1960s and 1970s singer-songwriters were not of academic interest until graduate school, when I started thinking about similarities of outlook between his lyrics and 바카라사이트 Greek and Roman lyric poets, Sappho and Catullus for instance¡±. The approach has gained added relevance since 2001, ¡°when 바카라사이트 poetry of Homer, Virgil and Ovid became part of Dylan¡¯s songwriting. Particularly in recent years, Dylan has taken on 바카라사이트 age-old practice of intertextually activated composition¡­with such success that his versions are equal or superior to 바카라사이트 stolen contexts.¡±

Asked about 바카라사이트 continuing relevance of 바카라사이트 Classics, Thomas stresses 바카라사이트 value of ¡°any song or literature that has survived precisely because it has been found time and time again to help human beings live examined lives that are worth living¡­The vocational value of 바카라사이트 humanities in teaching critical and analytic thinking, for which 바카라사이트re is now anecdotal as well as empirical evidence, tends to get downplayed in 바카라사이트 rush to expand 바카라사이트 reach of STEM. People have been talking about 바카라사이트 death of 바카라사이트 Classics for 바카라사이트 last two centuries, but we¡¯re still here.¡±

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