Lyrics as literature
Bob Dylan
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to an author who has produced “the most outstanding work” in an ideal direction.
Most of the time, the laureate has come up with an extensive body of work, lengthy novels that insightfully plumb the depths and heights of the human condition.
This year, however, aesthetics have been “instructively” blindsided by the august body’s decision to confer its proud literary honor to songwriter Bob Dylan “for having crafted new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
The verdict is admittedly controversial, but before rejecting it out of hand, Dylan’s devotees urge naysayers to peruse the evidence at hand that lyrics can make for great literature.
Some of Bob Dylan’s masterful “sung poems”:
“Blowin’ in the Wind”
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in
the wind.
“Just Like a Woman”
And she takes just like a woman
And then she aches just like
a woman
And she wakes just like
a woman
Yeah, but she breaks just like a little girl.
“Love Minus Zero, No Limit”
The bridge at midnight trembles
The country doctor rambles
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring
The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some raven
At my window with a
broken wing.
“Like a Rolling Stone”
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
“Masters of War”
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.
“You’re a Big Girl Now”
I’m going out of my mind
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart.
“The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”
So when you see your neighbor carryin’ somethin’
Help him with his load
And don’t go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road.
Finally, a montage of short takes from his insights or lyrics of many Bob Dylan songs, to vivify the awesome range, depth and scope of his passionate rages and advocacies:
“Gonna change my way of thinking, make myself a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.” “Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain.”
“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” “Some people feel the rain, others just get wet.” “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.” “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient—then repent.”
“If you try to be someone but yourself, you will fail. If you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. But then again, there’s no success like failure!”
PS: Dylan’s signature song lyrics? His 1965 anthem, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” is cited by diehard acolytes as his “Bringing It All Back Home” album’s lasting statement—a seven-minute masterpiece taking down all of society’s false gods, an accumulation of half a decade’s sneering, clear-eyed observations.”
