Dylan's Visions of Sin (24 page)
Read Dylan's Visions of Sin Online
Authors: Christopher Ricks
Meanwhile “the one you love” comes to more than “the man you love”, since “the one” keeps the love singular, and doubly singular: “the”, not
“a”, and “one” as not just a formal or objective way of speaking but as one and only. For Donne, the mistress going to bed is “My kingdom, safeliest when with one man
manned”.
Just how warm Dylan’s song is can be brought out by comparing it with a poem by Thomas Hardy that leaves the word “love” unrhymed, a deeply chilling poem. Likewise leaves it
unrhymed, but how unlike.
SHUT OUT THE MOON
Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.
Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady’s Chair,
Immense Orion’s glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.
Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.
Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,
Too tart the fruit it brought!
Hardy in the first stanza rhymes only the even lines:
moon / strewn / hewn
.
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In the second stanza, he rhymes all the
lines, alternately (with assonance at one point instead of rhyme,
lawn / form / drawn
). In the final stanza, he rhymes all the lines, perfectly:
room / loom / bloom
, and
thought /
wrought / brought
. But in the penultimate stanza he has hauntingly violated this progression: the even lines rhyme perfectly:
lingeringly / me / be
, but the odd lines have an oddity:
scents / sentiments / love.
Love unrhymed, never to be fully rhymed (ah . . .), all the more poignantly because within the line there is that other feature of language that so often
cooperates with rhyme, alliteration: “When living
seemed a laugh, and love / All it was said to be”. (Dylan, likewise, on the sounds of
w
and
l
:
“Why wait any longer for the one you love / When . . .”
176
) Just listen to, and feel acidly, acerbically, on your tongue the terrible
taste of the terminations in Hardy’s final stanza, the dental dismay in those
t
’s, always terminating the lines, their rhymes, but appearing not only there:
Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,
Too tart the fruit it brought!
The sharpness of the Hardy poem makes it very unlike a few songs by Dylan that might otherwise be its kin.
Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
– “Shut the light, shut the shade . . .” But then
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
moves on to a less bitter injunction, “Bring that bottle over
here”. Yet Hardy’s title,
Shut Out That Moon
, might open into Dylan’s way with titles. Hardy’s title derives not from the opening or shutting line of his poem, but
from that second line: “Shut out that stealing moon”. But
Shut Out That Moon
: the word “stealing” has been stolen. Hardy is a hard man. Dylan’s title is harsher
than the song that is
Baby, Stop Crying
: those words never exactly come in the song, where it is always “Baby, please stop crying”. The discrepancy is pleasingly teasing. What
happened to the magic word?
Love is a gamble, and so is inviting someone to make love. This sense of a responsible risk is playfully there in the phrase “while the night is still ahead”. This endearingly turns
the tables on the phrase. Quit while you are still ahead? No, stay, you can go on winning, the night – our night of love – is still ahead.
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William Empson memorably insisted that “the pleasure in style is continually to be explained by just such a releasing and knotted duality, where
those who have
been wedded in the argument are bedded together in the phrase”.
178
But “wedded”, they wouldn’t have to be. The phrase and the
argument might be living in sin. Which would not have to mean falling into the sin of lust.
On a Night Like This
In
The Merchant of Venice
the young lovers thrill one another (and themselves) by bandying, in loving rivalry of to and fro, a little run of words that they love:
“In such a night as this”. These words are always the completion of a line and of a cadence. Or more than a completion, a consummation, and yet one that does not cease there but
immediately opens into further worlds of love and lovers, worlds to which these young lovers, Lorenzo and Jessica, lay claim with all the innocently insolent rights that young love takes to itself.
The opening of the scene (V, i) immediately intimates that “In such a night as this” is set to be the conclusive charm, first by at once proffering a line in two reciprocal parts, and
next by having these two embrace one another in an internal rhyme:
bright / night
. He:
The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls,
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents
Where Cressid lay that night.
And she at once picks up his triple “night”, completing his half-line, “Where Cressid lay that night”, with the fondled word, rhyming with itself and yet
happily. (Throughout the exchanges, all the classical lovers who are invoked are famous for being unhappy, and how warmly happy this makes our young couple feel, and so secure.) She:
In such a night
Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew,
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself,
And ran dismayed away.
Whereupon he (trumping pathos with tragedy):
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
And she, not to be outdone (a perfectly natural inclination that will have recourse to the supernatural):
In such a night
Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Æson.
Not romancy,
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necromancy! Young Lorenzo had better remember that one day he may be as old as Æson. He (thinking to win
the game by having the night be this very night, and by speaking not only to her but of her, stealing a pun on her):
In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice,
As far as Belmont.
But she has no intention of being beguiled by his sly self-deprecation – “an unthrift love”, indeed. She (if stealing is what is at issue . . .):
In such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,
And ne’er a true one.
Her soul, not her body, he is mock-sternly reminded. At which point his dignity requires that he retort with mock-indignation. Time to tame his shrew. He:
In such a night
Did pretty Jessica (like a little shrew)
Slander her love, and he forgave it her.
The condescension of the man! Forgive her, forsooth. She is all set for another round of wrestling (“I would out-night you”), but the game has to be called off, and
neither they nor we will ever know who would have won. Not (and this is the sweet thought) that it matters in the slightest, for no one has been slighted. She:
I would out-night you, did nobody come:
But hark, I hear the footing of a man.
There is no reason to think that Dylan set himself to out-night “In such a night”, and probably, for all its currency, it wasn’t in his mind. Yet there are overlaps beyond the
refrain: “kiss” taking up “this”, “wind” / “winds”, “run”, “away”, “old”, “far”,
“pretty”, “like”, plus the relation of “hand” to “fingers”, and of “hark” to “listen”. The opening in Shakespeare, “The
moon shines
bright
. In such a
night
as this”, has an affinity with Dylan’s prompt move from “On a
night
like this” to “Hold on to me so
tight
”. Anyway, whether source or analogue, to have the one love scene keep the other company may cast some light (or is it moonshine?) on why
On a Night Like This
sure feels
right.
ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS
On a night like this
So glad you came around
Hold on to me so tight
And heat up some coffee grounds
We got much to talk about
And much to reminisce
It sure is right
On a night like this
On a night like this
So glad you’re here to stay
Hold on to me, pretty miss
Say you’ll never go away to stray
Run your fingers down my spine
And bring me a touch of bliss
It sure feels right
On a night like this
On a night like this
I can’t get any sleep
The air is so cold outside
And the snow’s so deep
Build a fire, throw on logs
And listen to it hiss
And let it burn, burn, burn, burn
On a night like this
Put your body next to mine
And keep me company
There is plenty a room for all
So please don’t elbow me
Let the four winds blow
Around this old cabin door
If I’m not too far off
I think we did this once before
There’s more frost on the window glass
With each new tender kiss
But it sure feels right
On a night like this
The song is not at all cryptic, which makes Dylan’s comment on it doubly so: “I think this comes off as sort of like a drunk man who’s temporarily sober. This is not my type of
song. I think I just did it to do it” (
Biograph
). Assuredly tentative, this, with “I think” and “I think” and “as sort of like”.
If I’m not too far off
I think we did this once before
But maybe I am too far off. Anyway (since I just did it to do it) I think I’ll not do this again. Not my type? Not my type of song.
Is he questioning the song, to take part in some kind of quiz? He clearly
catches the heady unclear mixture of inebriation and sobriety that is in the vinous air of
On a Night Like This
, as well as what this does to one’s sense of time (“temporarily”?). What we wait for all through the song is the rhyme for which the opening line
yearns, “On a night like this”, this line that both opens and closes the first three verses, though not the last verse, which, throwing open a window, throws the refrain-line to the
winds (instead: “Let the four winds blow”). “On a night like this” can’t wait – except that it can, since it just has to – for the word “kiss”,
the rhyme that is then enfolded within all the playful foreplay (“Run your fingers down my spine / And bring me a touch of bliss”: a nice touch, that) rising to the last verse:
Let the four winds blow
Around this old cabin door
If I’m not too far off
I think we did this once before
There’s more frost on the window glass
With each new tender kiss
But it sure feels right
On a night like this
At the start it looked likely that the rhyming would establish the title-refrain within a particular setting. “On a night like this” opens and closes the first verse, where it rhymes
with the sixth line, “And much to reminisce”. (Entirely at ease, this use of “reminisce”, not as an intransitive verb – which is how it operates these days– but
as transitive, as in the old days that we now reminisce, or reminisce about.) The rhyme-pattern, though, then comes to enjoy its freedom, especially when it comes to expanding and contracting. The
triple rhyme of the first verse,
this / reminisce / this
, is followed by an expansion as though to the four winds:
this / miss / bliss / this
, a pretty stroke that is the consequence
of the newly arrived further rhyme, “Hold on to me, pretty miss”. The third verse reverts to the triple rhyme (
this / hiss / this
), only to be followed again by a change, though
this time in the opposite direction: not an expansion but a contraction in the last verse, twofold only,
kiss / this
. Finis. A contraction, were it not that “kiss” is a
consummation devoutly to be wished, and the more so as one fertile figure of speech for a rhyme is a kiss.
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Furthermore, like expansion,
contraction is of
the nature of love and of this song. Take, for instance, the penultimate line of the refrain. In the first verse, “It sure is right”. In the
second verse, “It sure feels right”, which both expands (feeling right is a larger truth than being right, right?) and contracts (come on, being right is a larger truth than feeling
right – am I right or am I right?). The song stands by the claim for feelings, and then has – in the final verse – one word to add: “But it sure feels right”.
Intriguing, this final “But”, in the lover’s train of thought or rather of feeling:
