Dylan's Visions of Sin (79 page)

(
Bob Dylan: A Retrospective
, ed. Craig McGregor, p. 165)

127
Poetry
(September 1946); reprinted with a postscript, 1950, in
Ezra Pound
, ed. Peter Russell (1950).

128
Song and Dance Man III
,
see this page
.

129
Swinburne
(1920);
Selected Essays
(1932, 1951 edition), p. 324.

130
Hallam Tennyson,
Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir
(1897), vol. I,
see this page
.

131
OED
, 1b, Tindale’s New Testament, 1525.

132
The not-at-all ghostlike soul in Andrew Marvell’s
A Dialogue between the Soul and Body
complains of the bodily
senses and of how they thwart it, poor soul: “Here blinded with an eye; and there / Deaf with the drumming of an ear, / A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains / Of nerves, and arteries,
and veins”.

133
See
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, vol. III,
see this
page
and note; 13 April 1778.

134
The snake is seen but not heard (“snake” goes unsung) in
Man Gave Names to All the Animals
.

135
Odds and Ends
,
Million Dollar Bash
,
Goin’ to Acapulco
,
Lo and Behold!
,
Apple Suckling
Tree
,
Please, Mrs. Henry
,
Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread
,
Tiny Montgomery
.

136
Samuel Butler,
Hudibras
, since you ask.

137
When Theodore Roethke reads his poem
The Sloth
(1972), he hesitates as to the long or the short o.

138
To Percy Withers;
The Letters of A. E. Housman
, ed. Henry Maas (1971),
see this page
.

139
On rhymes on rhyme,
see this page
. For an edgy frictive rhyme of “lazy” with
“crazy”, not relaxed at all this time around, see
Handy Dandy
,
see this page
.

140
Through the Looking Glass
, chapter VI.

141
Not included in
Lyrics 1962–1985
(1985), but in
The Songs of Bob Dylan: from 1966 through 1975
(1976),
sheet-music. The song-book for
Self Portrait
has at the end “Repeat 6 times and fade.” The women are not satisfied with a mere six.

142
Roger Ford points out to me that the songwriting credits in the
Self Portrait
song-book are more explicit than those on
the LP.
Alberta #1
: Revised Melody and Arrangement by Bob Dylan.
Days of ’49
: Revised Melody and New Music by Bob Dylan.
All the Tired Horses
: Words and Music by Bob
Dylan. I learn, again from Roger Ford, that Donovan, Dylan’s imitator, had written and recorded (three years earlier)
Writer in the Sun
, with its “And here I sit, the retired
writer in the sun” (
Sunshine Superman
).

143
See this page
, on
Lay, Lady, Lay
.

144
Not that a responsible crossword would permit
King’s
, with its apostrophe, to count as a five-letter word.

145
Desolation Row
.

146
Francis Paget on Accidie, quoted in
George Lyttelton’s Commonplace Book
, ed. James Ramsden (2002),
see this page
. For an analysis of accidie, or acedia, its relations to sloth, and its refusal of God’s “gift of laughter”, see F. H. Buckley,
The Morality of
Laughter
(2003), pp. 169–70.
Clothes Line Saga
both accepts and transmits the gift of comedy. Buckley: “The acedic may indeed be listless, for they lack a motive for action.
With Kierkegaard, they simply can’t be bothered.” Dylan can be bothered, even as to those who can’t be.

147
Released in 2002 on
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
.

148
On
The Basement Tapes
box, Dylan’s song was listed as
Answer to Ode
, not as
Clothes Line
or
Clothes Line Saga
. I learn all this from Roger Ford.

149
Parodying Thomas Hood,
The Bridge of Sighs
, as Archie Burnett notes in
The Poems of A. E. Housman
(1997), p.
544.

150
On
Biograph
, it is 4' 32'.

151
Anthony Scaduto,
Bob Dylan
(1971, revised edition 1973), p. 194.

152
Dylan sings “moaned” and “the best” on
Biograph
; as printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
,
“played” and “best”.

153
See the lines from Barnes on
see this page
, delighting in such rhymes.

154
The setting of
Time Passes Slowly
, where time “fades away”, might suggest “ready for to fade”,
“there is no place I’m going to”, and “no one to meet” in
Mr. Tambourine Man
.

155
The
OED
includes a reminder of the tambourine’s “use as a collecting dish”: “Will you kindly drop
a shilling in my little tambourine”. Kipling’s
Absent-Minded Beggar
in hope of a shilling, Dylan’s “ragged clown behind / I wouldn’t pay it any mind”.

156
See
Boots of Spanish Leather
and
Mama
,
You Been on My Mind
.

157
New York Times
(8 January 1978).

158
Bob Dylan: Freedom and Responsibility
, in
Bob Dylan:A Retrospective
, ed. Craig McGregor (1972),
see this page
.

159
Abandoned Love
, which mounts, like
Mr. Tambourine Man
, a parade. “I march in the parade of
liberty”.

160
Playboy
(March 1966).

161
Tarantula
(1966, 1971),
see this page
.

162
Ed. F. A. Wright (1948). It was first published in 1788, and Keats learnt much from it.

163
W. K. Wimsatt used to give a lecture entitled
Aristotle or Else
. The scholar Gerald Else declined to be warned off.

164
Gary Gilmore, a brutal murderer, is allowed by Norman Mailer the right to tell brutal truths:

When a girl finally decided to let you fuck her she’d always put on this act like she was being taken advantage of and 9 times outa 10 the girl would say “Well,
will you still respect me?” Some goof-ball shit like that. Well the cat was always so hot and ready to go by then that he was ready to promise anything, even respect. That always seemed so
silly, but it was just the way the game was played. I had a chick ask me that once, a real pretty little blond girl, everybody really was hot for her ass and I had her alone one nite in her house.
We were both about 15 and necking pretty heavy both getting worked up and I was in and I knew it and then she came up with that cornball line: “Gary, if I let you do it would you still
respect me?” Well, I blew it, I started laffing and I told her: “Respect you? For what? I just wanta fuck and so do you, what the fuck am I sposed to respect you for? You just won a
first place trophy in the Indianapolis 500 or something?” Well, like I said I blew that one.

(
The Executioner’s Song
, 1980,
see this page
)

165
I draw on an essay of mine on
American English and the inherently transitory
(
The Force of Poetry
, 1984).

166
As sung; as printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
(1985), “She took off her wheel, took off her bell, / Took off her
wig, said, ‘How do I smell?’ / I hot-footed it . . .”

167
Lyrics 1962–1985
prints an ellipsis. Dylan doesn’t sing dot dot dot, he sings a void.

168
See this page
.

169
As performed on
Before the Flood
(1974), the song ends: “I long to reach out for you in the dead of the night /
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead”. This chooses the different pattern of chiasmus,
abba
:
dead
. . .
night
. . .
night
. . .
ahead
.

170
A Man’s Song
, which begins “In deeper fat the sense of sin retires”;
New Poems 1963
, ed.
Lawrence Durrell (1963).

171
The
OED
includes this suffix and various words such as “glossolalia”, but it neglects erotolalia, though
sexologists have murmured the word.

172
See this page
, on
All the Tired Horses
.

173
He’ll say, “Oh darling, tell me the truth, how much time I got?”

She’ll say, “You got all the time in the world, honey”

(
Handy Dandy
)

174
As sung on
Hard Rain
, the song lets things rip, an invitation to what Dylan in
Tarantula
(1966, 1971,
see this page
) dubs “humanity in the gang bang mood”. So there need to be some new words in the new swing of things: “Forget this dance, let’s go
upstairs”, rhyming with “Who really cares?”

175
There is a question as to the pronunciation of one line’s end-word (not that this would affect the rhyming). Is
“read” present tense [
reed
]: that we now read? Or is it past tense [
red
]: that we used to read? The former, I take it (reading the inscription on the commemoration stone);
but one thing that the word on the page can do is leave us insecure. (Are these things present or past? That is a question on which Hardy often declines to rule.) Geoffrey Hill begins a poem:
“Rilke could ['ri:d] Bible in bad light / or shaky script. Most of what I claim / can be so ['red]” (
Scenes from Comus
, 2002, section III, 16). But in a song the voicing may
leave us in no doubt (which can be a differently good thing). Dylan: “It’s been nice seeing you, you read me like a book” – past tense [
red
], no longer the case (you
flatter yourself).
Under Your Spell
has this serious joke about spelling.

176
Weird, on the face of it, that “one” alliterates with “why”, but what do you know.

177
“I’m stayin’ ahead of the game”, Dylan sings in
Waitin’ for You
(released on the soundtrack
of
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
, 2002), where the opening verse includes the rhymes
way / say / day
and
head / spread / dead
. (
Lay, lady, lay
and
bed /
ahead
.)

178
Seven Types of Ambiguity
(1930, second edition 1947),
see this page
.

179
There is such a word (“Associated with, or redolent of, romance”), and it likes nights as well as knights:
“Where others’ lamps have burnt long Attick nights, / With rank romancie oil to grease their knights” (
OED
).

180
See this page
. The scene from
The Merchant of Venice
makes its opening move: “The moon
shines bright. In such a night as
this
, / When the sweet wind did gently
kiss
the trees”.

181
The American Spectrum Encyclopedia
(1991).

182
The original military application (“a sharp-shooter”,
OED
) dates from 1824. “Several sepoys were killed
and wounded by the enemy’s snipers.” 1897: “It is impossible to see the snipers, who generally stalk the sentries from behind stones.” 1900: “The artillery keep the
Boer snipers down.”

183
Florence in For the Union Dead
(1965).

184
For a different infection, see Michael Gray, who believes that Medgar Evers and his killer are “a device for strengthening
an essentially political and social polemic”: “the two men are just pawns in Dylan’s ‘game’” (
Song and Dance Man III
, 2000, p. 24). For me, either this
judgement is crassly “a handle” (for the critic) or the song is.

185
Maud
, II, v, 1. Tennyson and Dylan: “beat”, “brain”, “grave”, “hoof(s)”,
“never”, “pain”. Tennyson, “handful”; Dylan, “handle” and “hand”.

186
In 1994 Byron de la Beckwith was found guilty of Evers’ murder. This matters, but not to the conscience of the song.

187
Only a Pawn in Their Game
: “the one / That fired the gun”.
Hurricane
: “And though they could not
produce the gun / The D.A. said he was the one”.

188
A disconcertingly deranged and unforgettable way of putting it. “A finger fired the trigger to his name”? Pulled the
trigger that put an end to his name? (Not that it succeeded in doing that.) To?
To?

189
Tarantula
(1966, 1971),
see this page
.

190
“
Like a Rolling Stone
changed it all; I didn’t care any more after that about writing books or poems or
whatever. I mean it was something that I myself could dig. It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you” (
Playboy
,
March 1966).

191
1614;
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs
, ed. J. A. Simpson (1982).

192
Black Cross
, Lord Buckley’s monologue from Joseph Newman’s poem. Dylan recorded it (Michael Gray gives the
date, 22 December 1961).

193
11 September 1906;
Letters
(1920), vol. II,
see this page
.

194
Sleeve-notes to
Desire
.

195
The refrain, on its second appearance, does not say “Like a complete unknown”, but – unmitigated –
“A complete unknown”.

196
Richard Woodhouse to John Taylor, about 27 October 1818;
The Letters of John Keats
, ed. H. E. Rollins (1958), vol. I,
see this page
.

197
Playboy
(March 1978).