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24 Nordic Journal for Christianity and the Arts</cite>,
25 hence the emphasis on connections with Christianity, which in a different context would
26 have been less pronounced.
27 What was originally footnotes have been placed in square brackets in this version.</p>
30 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">B</span><span class="smallcaps">ob Dylan – the "Voice of a Generation"</span> in the 1960s,
31 the self-appointed gypsy and divorce poet in the 70s, the sulphur-fuming prophet in the
32 years around 1980, who through a series of mediocre albums in the following years lost
33 whatever he may have had left of commercial status – what does he have to say today,
34 forty years after he first entered the stage? Quite a lot, actually.</p>
36 his best-selling album ever, but which was also generally lauded, by critics and fans
38 charts, and all worried predictions that Dylan would do as he usually has done: follow up
39 a masterpiece with an unengaged embarrassment, have been put to rest. </p>
41 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">W</span>hen Dylan issued the album <em>Slow Train Coming</em> in 1979, it was a
42 surprise to most of his fans: the protest singer, beatnik, former Jew even, had converted
43 to Christianity, and to one of the more extremely evangelist directions, at that: the
47 living in the endtimes and that Judgement Day is just around the corner. </p>
49 events in Afghanistan in 1980 as a confirmation of his exegesis of the end time profecy of
50 the Revelation), and the original fire gradually changed into a more nuanced understanding
51 of Christianity, in which there was room for more than dystopias and over-zealous
52 evangelization. In the years since, there have been much speculation about Dylan‘s
53 religion. To the extent that religious themes have occurred in his lyrics, the threads
57 talmudic rabbi, and the same is the case with Dylan‘s acceptance speech at the Grammy
58 show in 1991. ] At the same time, he has on several occasions stated that he
59 does not believe in organized religious communities: "I find the religiosity and
64 <p>Several authors have pointed to another motive that seems to have been
66 history can be read as the story of the development of his relation to these two, which
67 for Dylan are almost one and the same. Not only was it through a woman (the actor Mary
68 Alice Artes) that Dylan came in touch with the evangelic Christianity. This is also a
69 topic that recurs in many of the songs, both from the time of his conversion and the years
70 before it: the redemption, salvation even, through carnal love. In a song like
72 I-character christological overtones ("In a little hilltop village they gambled for
74 storm‘"), while the association between salvation and earthly, carnal love is
75 explicit also in the songs after his conversion ("Change My Way Of Thinking" on <em>Slow
77 can do the Georgia Crawl, She can walk in the spirit of the Lord") [The exact content
83 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">D</span>ylan is often credited for having brought <em>meaning</em> into popular
84 music through his lyrics. That is not the same as saying that it‘s always clear what
86 against clear-cut meanings; instead he puts together seemingly unrelated images,
87 characters and situations in a collage which becomes confusing if one searches for exact
88 meanings. But if one lets that go, it is easier to approach his technique: some of his
89 greatness as a poet lies in his ability to serve the listener with a web of associations
90 and semi-graspable connections, in a way that imitates how the mind works, and which
93 nothing more, can give.</p>
94 <p>One of the texts that is often mentioned in this connection, is
96 Dylan‘s technique and of my own analytical vantage point. The song begins:
99 that glides by in the song, is slightly surrealistic: Einstein disguised as Robin Hood,
100 Dr. Filth with his world in a leather cup, the death-romantic Ophelia, Cinderella as a
101 street-sweeper, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot fighting it out on the Titanic. </p>
103 metaphor of suppression in the modern society, an expression of the status of art, or
104 something completely different? It is hard to tell, first and foremost because Dylan
105 usually does not take his images and metaphors from coherent motivic circles, which would
107 other. I therefore prefer a simplistic model of interpretation, where ‘brown
109 the lover of Juliet, and then see what happens. </p>
110 <p>This is not as simple as it may sound: in order to do this, we must
111 first know what a brown passport really is, which involves all the associations we have to
112 each of the words, the connection between them and between similar concepts that are
114 then becomes the outcome of the cluster of meaning
115 ‘colour – identity – document‘, etc., with all the layers of symbols and
116 associations that each of these brings with it – in short: a never ending chain of
117 connections that can in principle not be delineated: in the end it embraces our entire
118 world and world view, seen from one perspective: that of the brown passports.</p>
119 <p>Usually it is not meaningful to stretch this horizon of understanding
120 and interpretation beyond the song itself and its references to someone‘s
123 made attempts to read a consistent symbolic language into Dylan‘s texts, so that
126 was a methodical scrutinizing of Dylan‘s garbage, in the search for discarded
127 scribblings and other important material. Weberman‘s interpretations stem from an
128 obsession to prove that Dylan is a drug addict and that he has AIDS. They used to be
129 accesible on the web site www.dylanology.com, but
132 interpretation of the entire album as a more or less unified whole, where certain central
133 motives turn up in song after song, weaving themselves around and within each other
134 throughout the record: the main motives are the same, but their value changes, gets
135 reverted: the important becomes unimportant, the innocent becomes dangerous, and what
136 remains when a song is over, changes from song to song, depending on which motives are
137 connected, and how. Sometimes several motives are combined in an action- and idea-packed
140 dominates entirely. This can perhaps be likened to the function of the aria in opera:
141 characters steps out of the action for a moment, to present their view of things, from <em>their
143 <p>This motivic web even extends beyond the songs on this album, and
144 include both Dylan‘s earlier production, and a more general Western symbolic
145 universe, above all the Christian and the American, and the combination of these: the
147 in recent years has expanded his catalogue with a number of songs by the profoundly
151 <p>The primary legitimation for using a model of analysis like this, which
152 might easily turn into a self-fulfilling hunt for hidden connections, is that this
155 similar manner. Allen Ginsberg witnessed the process, and explains the working method as
156 follows: </p>
158 or more, and he looked at all the scenes. Then he put all the scenes on index cards,
159 according to some preconceptions he had when he was directing the shooting. Namely,
160 themes: God, rock & roll, art, poetry, marriage, women, sex, Bob Dylan, poets,
161 death – maybe eighteen or twenty thematic preoccupations. Then he also put on index
162 cards all the different characters, as well as scenes. He also marked on index cards the
165 cross-file of all that. And then he went through it all again and began composing it,
166 thematically, weaving these specific compositional references in and out. So it‘s
172 They can be called: The Apocalypse, The River, and Love. Along the way, several others
173 will turn up.</p>
175 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he apocalyptic is the carrying motive in two of the songs, which can
176 be regarded as the pillars around which the whole album and its motivic threads spin:
179 assault on the World Trade Center in New York, makes the album‘s apocalyptic strand
180 even more prominent, but as was mentioned, this has been a strong preoccupation for Dylan
181 throughout his carreer]. The outer connection between the two songs is evident: Highwater
182 takes its point of departure in Charley Patton‘s description of the big flood in
187 man": he was raw and bullyish, enjoyed a good fight, drank heavily, allegedly had
188 eight wives and spent time in prison. His guitar style and song technique had an enormous
189 influence on virtually every blues musicians in the following generation, and is both
191 Water Everywhere" is a long description of the flood, even this a topic that Dylan
194 songs. In Highwater it is the thread that goes through the whole song, dominating it to
195 the degree that whatever positive bits of thread that are weaved in, lose their good
198 lyrics were available. All quotations from the album are my own, inofficial,
205 actually saying that he‘s happy, only that <em>he </em>can‘t be happy unless <em>she
207 why she would be. All that remains is the threat of the not-lasting, destruction, the
212 disaster. Rather, the physical calamity is the metaphorical starting point for the <em>real</em>
213 topic of the song: the way people react and interact when they are left to themselves in a
214 pressured situation (be it flood or love), where the solitude and the pressure are allowed
218 and musically. Just as the feeling of disaster pervades the lyrics, so the sound is dark
219 an monotonous. The verses are dominated by a solitary banjo, which not primarily (but
220 also) is a reminiscing gesture to Patton and the delta-blues; even more, it underlines the
221 loneliness and hopelessness in the song itself: it fills its part of the soundscape, high
222 above the rest of the sonorous field and without any contact with it, where its manical
223 plucking over a sustained chord turns into a musical representation of the nightmare
224 situation where you run and run without ever getting anywhere. The refrains are
225 accompanied by ominous thunder in the drums and growls from deep male voices.</p>
227 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">"M</span>ississippi" is dramatically different, despite the common
228 point of departure. Even here the Apocalyptic is the framework for the narrative,
229 established already in the second line of the song: "Your days are numbered an so are
231 The song culminates in wreckage and death: "Well, my ship's been split to splinters
234 life-inspiring song. The difference from Highwater is noticable already in the music:
235 Highwater is dark and heavy, Mississippi has one of the few ascending bass lines in
237 Stone‘), and a lighter sound overall. But even more interesting are the lyrical
238 differences. Again, the disaster situation is rather to be interpreted as a human (and
239 inter-human) condition, but unlike Highwater‘s isolated fates, it is instead the <em>possibility</em>
240 of communication that is explored. The River is still the river of flood and drowning, but
241 at the same time it is used as an image of the Crossing of boundaries ("I crossed
242 that river just to be where you are"). If we bring the two together, we get a complex
243 metaphor of the dangers of being close to someone – a human-life version of the
246 said in the second verse), but doing so entails a danger, one enters unknown territory,
249 <p>A development seems to take place within the song, concerning the
252 through which this development goes, is the insight: "All my powers of expression, my
253 thoughts so sublime, could never do you justice in reason or rhyme" [This can be seen
254 as yet another one of the small motifs that recur here and there on the record, which in
261 sugar-coated rhyme" (see below). It is not obvious that Dylan has known these lines
262 from Petrarch, but there is in fact a more or less direct link between them, which at
263 least invites speculation: in Tangled Up In Blue (1975) the I-person follows a woman home
264 to her place, where she reads for him from a "book of poems written by an Italian
266 century, but in an interview Dylan once intimated, in his usual, anti-intellectual way,
271 thematically Petrarch seems to be a likely candidate, with his personal relation, rich in
272 contrasts, to Woman, not unlike what Dylan expresses in other songs. That the quoted line
273 has been of a certain import for Dylan, appears, not only from it being the emotional
275 conversion, fall 1978, precisely this line was re-written: now, the quotes are from the
276 Bible and Jeremiah.].</p>
277 <p>Not only the border towards other people is crossed, but also the
278 limits of time. Even here there‘s a development through the song, from a perception
280 concept of time, where time, in the moment of crossing, disappears completely ("got
282 that neither the past nor the present exists, other than in memory, can be found in his <em>Confessiones</em>,
284 <p>All through the song, the boundary-crossing is represented as a
289 somewhere"), both related to communication and to time, and through the insight about
291 does not end up in fatalism, because it is based on the necessity of choice), the fearful
292 in the disaster dissolves. Therefore the apocalyptic climax in the central
296 Dylan has ever written.</p>
297 <p>Likewise, in Mississippi the presence of evil is counterbalanced by the
298 good, and, unlike in Highwater, the good is allowed to stand for itself: Higwhater‘s
300 sorry too". Thus, even though the last verse brings drowning and death as a
301 consequence of the Crossing, and ends with the refrain "I stayed in Mississippi a day
302 too long", it is still the tender declarations of love that remain when the song is
306 <p>Two further motives are worth mentioning, because they show up in other
309 from the trees, feeling like a stranger nobody sees." The same foliage shows up time
310 after time on the album, as a symbol of comprehension – either the one not reached, as
314 the breeze", see below). As a motive, this reaches back to at least two earlier Dylan
316 wind, for whoever so wishes to pick it up, but at the same time: who can catch the
321 rustling in a mild summer breeze and logs crackling on the hearth, and as menacing ghosts
324 motive is also closely related to the culminating lines in another classic Dylan song,
326 of my mind, / down the foggy ruins of time, / far past the frozen leaves, / The haunted,
327 frightened trees, / out to the windy beach, / Far from the twisted reach of crazy
331 least in a parenthesis, wonder when was the last time Dylan himself did that; his
333 concern only.)]. </p>
335 maybe surprisingly, the Journey motives in the Biblical Christmas narrative. Both the wise
340 though, I suppose, / To go along with all the ring dancing, Christmas Carols on all the
343 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap">S</span>everal of the other songs treat motives that may be referred to the
344 Love motive in different ways. What they have in common is that they – again like opera
350 from <a href="http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/81-aug15.htm">http://www.interferenza.com/</a>].
353 where they are the archetypical unruly brothers: well attuned to each other, but just as
355 evil, rather indifferent, unaffected, careless. In a central scene they recite the poem
357 not to associate the title with Dylan himself, whose original surname was Zimmermann
359 was based on the same poem] for Alice, where it is hard to tell who of the protagonists is
364 fulfill every cliché about the slightly mafiotic craftsman with affairs on the side, who
365 owns the world and takes what he wants: "Looking at a window with a pecan pie / Lot
366 of things they'd like they would never buy". They own the truth in the same manner
369 indifference – <em>they </em>certainly don‘t feel any need to take fate in their own
372 fratricide. And it is not a nice neighbourhood that is presented in the song. All traces
373 of love and good thoughts are twisted, with money as the only measurement of value, if at
375 baby, she's looking around. She's wearing a multi-thousand dollar gown." "Well,
376 they're living in a happy harmony … They're one day older and a dollar short, They
377 got a paid permit and a police escort". The song is full of bizarre images and
378 scenes, culled from the border land between the horror cabinet and the boy pranks:
379 "Brains in a pot, they're beginning to boil / They're dripping with garlic and olive
380 oil," "They're throwing knives into the tree / Two big bags of dead man's
382 Dee is a low-down sorry old man. / Tweedle Dum, he'll stab you where you stand. /
386 almost idyllic mood, where bees are buzzing, leaves are stirring, and trees inspire
388 trees on the outskirt of town … /Timber, two foot six across, / burns with the bark
391 is apparent that the story takes place by the riverside, and the very title of the song
392 points to yet another aspect of the River as a metaphor: that which floats by, always and
394 but the cares are not given any importance. Motives that in other connections (other
395 songs) become fatal or problematic, just float by, not unnoticed, but without import, with
397 to see how it goes." Some of the verses sound like comments on other songs.
399 don‘t bother me, times are hard everywhere / We will just have to see how it
401 to bully you, strong-arm you, inspire you with fear: / it has the opposite effect."
402 The wind, which elsewhere make leaves whisper and boats sink, is here almost ridiculed:
404 <p>The perhaps most beautiful strophe tells lovingly about the
405 grandparents: "My grandfather was a duck-trapper / he could do it with just dragnets
406 and ropes. / My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth, / I don‘t know if
407 they had any dreams or hopes." This description flows straight into a rejection of
408 such things as dreams or hopes on the part of the narrator: "I had them once, though,
409 I suppose". And the context in which the strophe occurs, is far from idyllic: to
410 begin with, he states that "If you ever try to interfere with me or cross my path
411 again, / you do so at the peril of your own life. / I‘m not as cool or forgiving as I
412 sound". What is described is a breakup scene; a demanding partner is thrown out, and
413 the unyieldingness involved in this, stands in sharp contrast to the seemingly peaceful
415 cool, disinterested observation, as a price to pay to get away from the deeper problems.
416 Both the price and the reward are paid in hopes and dreams: he has escaped them, but also
417 had to let them go.</p>
419 Bye", only with the contrasts drawn to an even stronger extreme. Most of the song is
420 dominated by an uncritical carefreeness, as an example of the above-mentioned phrase
422 musically by the light swing-jazz arrangement. The last of these ‘sugar-coated
424 last strophe brutally turns the whole situation upside down, and all of a sudden we are
425 back in the apocalyptic verbiage, this time explicitly connected with a love relation.</p>
429 Gonna make you see just how loyal and true a man can be!</p>
431 peaceful situation, can be found in just about every song on the album. "Lonesome Day
432 Blues" presents, in strophe after strophe, lost relationships, all in accordance with
436 2000), and the breakup from a woman, this time left standing in the doorway, with the
437 crushingly laconic remark: "Funny the things you have the hardest time parting with
445 where Anchises exhorts his son Aeneas about how to rule: </p>
447 to teach the ways of peace to
448 those you conquer<br />
449 to spare defeated peoples, tame the proud. <br />
451 <p class="first">In the final strophe there is again the echo of disaster, and again associated with love: "The leaves are rustling in the wood, things are falling off the shelf / You‘re
454 it shows up from yet another perspective.</p>
456 an innocent invitation to a saunter in the moonlight, but small hints elsewhere in the
457 text make us suspect that it may not be going to be a romantic stroll: the air is thick
461 the blessings of tranquility, yet I know when the time is right to strike." Perhaps
466 Styx? – again a River metaphor), and we are suddenly not sure if the bells call to a a
467 wedding or a funeral: "For whom does the bell toll for, love? / They toll for you and
469 we find the line: "I can hear the church-bells ringing in the yard. I wonder who
472 explicitly wedding bells, but not even here can we be absolutely sure: "What looks
473 good in the day, at night is another thing." This ambiguity is implicit already from
475 which is also supported by the poignant rockabilly arrangement. But what the song really
477 around a series of images and motives that we recognize from other songs: the Help motive
482 Great Gatsby</em>. See this article at <a href="http://pool.dylantree.com/phorum/read.php?f=2&i=15849&t=15849">http://pool.dylantree.com/</a>
497 Thereby it is also, in a twisted way, the most loving song – even though the
498 perspective entails that it may perhaps be too late.</p>
500 from a love relation. It is treated in different ways, from different perspectives, but in
501 the final end, the outcome is always the same. It is as if Dylan wanted to say: no matter
502 where one starts or how one attempts to solve the problem, it ends in disaster. All roads
505 Ballad’ of the same cut as the closing songs on several Dylan albums. The song begins
506 with the large overview, where the narrator stands alone against the rest of the world,
507 but is in possession of esoteric knowledge, thanks to his alienation: "I got my back
508 to the sun ’cause the light is too intense. / I can see what everybody in the world
510 down the road, … / you went years without me, might as well keep going
511 now" – but here the perspective is more distanced than in the earlier songs: sober
515 painful experience of the separation is drawn into the same distanced framework of both
516 understanding and language: "Your charms have broken many a heart, and mine is surely
517 one." The deeply personal is mixed with the general, without ever dominating: the
519 leads directly into the next generalization, about love, but with the opposite value:
527 the circle is closed, that the religious redemption is the solution to love’s
528 problem, but this would be reading too much into it. Rather, the message – if there is
529 a message – is that just as unfathomable as religious redemption, just as difficult is
531 problem is brought to an existential level, where religious themes are relevant, for
533 the introduction, this is the strength of Dylan’s poetic, and in <em>Love and Theft </em>it
534 is generally treated with great care and skill.</p>
536 Theft </em>is a dark and somber album, and there are certainly plenty of dark strands in
537 the weave. But an equally salient feature is the exuberant joy of pouring out words: the
538 lines are filled to the point where they seem to burst, and the songs are mostly long.
539 They are also filled with humorous flashes, especially puns of the kind that Dylan from
540 time to time has delivered from stage during his shows: "Call down to room service,
544 <p class="first"><span class="dropcap"><em>L</em></span><em>ove and Theft</em> is not a cycle of poems, it is a record, so a few
545 words about the music is appropriate. Most striking is the total mix of styles, and
547 has expressed his liking for artists like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, but he has never
550 surprisingly, explain the musical freshness that pervades the record: when Dylan relates
551 to a style that is new to him (in the capacity of listener, not of performer), it calls
552 for an attentiveness and concentration which is not as compellingly necessary when he
553 sails in the well-known waters of the blues. The same phenomenon could be observed when
554 he, with the fervor of the convert, turned his attention to Gospel music in the late 70s.
555 Add to this that Dylan this time has left more than usual to his musicians, mostly taken
556 from his very experienced and tight touring band. Especially the two guitarists Charlie
557 Sexton and Larry Campbell demonstrate a full command of the various styles that Dylan
558 explores, be it swing or blues. Therefore, Dylan can, for the first time in his carreer,
559 let his own guitar, one of his trademarks, be as good as absent (and his other trademark:
560 the harmonica, is not heard at all).</p>
566 stolen) both melodies and the entire arrangements from songs that were actually written in
568 diminish the album’s musical merits, but a note on the album sleeve about the origins
569 and composers of the songs, would have been welcome; no such thing can be found.</p>
570 <p>The other main group of songs consists of variations of the blues
571 pattern. Being a performer who has played the blues during an entire 40-year carreer,
573 is a master in varying the simple blues patterns; it seems like a self-imposed constraint
575 half of the songs fall in this category. This might have created a certain monotony, but
576 so is in fact not the case. By exploiting large parts of the range of subgenres to which
578 heavy, electric Chicago blues etc.), and through variations in phrase length and playful
579 use of little riffs and licks, Dylan and his band manage to keep the listener’s
580 attention even in songs that otherwise might have felt too long.</p>
581 <p>If one particular feature is to be emphasized, it will have to be
583 the blues pattern is a principally unconcluded, cyclic form, where each round through the
585 back to the keynote and the next verse. Dylan, on his part, has always preferred to tone
587 modifying the dominant chord (e.g. by using an 11th chord, which in effect is a
588 subdominant chord with a dominant bass), or by leaving out the dominant altogether. This
591 precisely through its absence where it is expected the most, makes itself all the more
594 the course of time. In a subtle way this accords with the way the course of time is
597 catchphrase condition.</p>
599 Boy". It deals with a poor guy who washes the dishes and feed the pigs, pays too much
600 in the store, has the police on his back and is (probably) made a cuckold by some Freddie,
601 but who is still basically happy and satisfied. In the middle of the song we also get a
602 glimpse of a conversation between Othello and Desdemona, about what actually happened with
603 that poisoned wine. All in all a text that fits Dylan’s own description well, as a
606 that’s a song that could exist without any lyric. It exists just on chord structures
607 … and the lyrics are just trying to stay in the path and not to lay too much
610 Theft </em>proves that he still stands comparison with any of the other generations to
611 which he has belonged. He can still be poignant and playful like in the 60s, pensive and
613 subjects, but this comes in addition to and not instead of earlier periods’
614 preoccupations. This is a particular kind of novelty: to be able to keep the old when the
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