Dylan's Visions of Sin (81 page)

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
page
e [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

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

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
:

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:

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”.