Dylan's Visions of Sin (84 page)

433
He sings “thoughts are”; as printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “heart is”.

434
See this page
.

435
What is printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
has much less sense of an exact fit: “The same thing I want from you today, / I
would want again tomorrow”.

436
Same rhyme, different reason, at the end of
Oh Sister
: “Oh, sister, when I come to knock at your door / Don’t turn
away, you’ll create sorrow / Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore / You may not see me tomorrow”. I for one have the distinct impression that she will see him tomorrow, given how
“tomorrow” follows so equably from “sorrow”; does it sound as though there may really be rupture? Time is an ocean but at least it isn’t that lonesome ocean.

437
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “wind”.

438
Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. He’ll be the Judge of that.

439
OED
, “ask”, 4c.

440
Philosophical Papers
(1961, 1979 edition),
see this page
.

441
Fletcher,
The Bloody Brother
(1625); both this and “heaven in a string” are in the
OED
, 1a, under
“string”.

442
When He Returns
: “The iron hand it ain’t no match for the iron rod” – or for the velvet glove (which is
not a matching glove).

443
The end of
Up to Me
has affinities with this: “And the harmonica around my neck, I blew it for you, free / No one else
could play that tune / You know it was up to me”.
What Was It You Wanted?
cannot bring itself to offer her the words of responsibility,
Up to You
.

444
Six participles spread through the first six verses, and then there is the intensification of this insistence with five of them
in this last verse.

445
Lyrics 1962–1985
,
see this page
.

446
T. S. Eliot,
Johnson as Critic and Poet
(1944);
On Poetry and Poets
(1957),
see this page
.

447
Playboy
(March 1978).

448
“But evermore a life behind”, even in the afterlife.
In Memoriam
XLI:

In Memoriam
, VII, mourning this same lost love, has a few affinities with
One Too Many Mornings
, in the street, the dark, the door, and the morning. Probably coincidences
only (though Dylan has mentioned Tennyson), but such analogues can remind us that great upward minds think alike.

449
I draw on my book
Tennyson
(second edition 1989), pp. 133–4.

450
See this page
on rhyme.

451
To be found, for instance, in
The Faber Book of Ballads
, ed. Matthew Hodgart (1965).

452
Song and Dance Man III
(2000),
see this page
.

453
At King Alfred’s School, Wantage, in my days (1942–1951), there were hardly any level playing-fields, but we knew
that we would be changing ends at half-time. Not to worry. To take into account, though.

454
The Poems of Tennyson
, ed. Christopher Ricks (1987), vol. I,
see this page
.

455
10 September 1864, to A. W. M. Baillie;
Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins
, ed. C. C. Abbott (1956 edition),
see this page
.

456
Dylan’s report of what it is like to fall short of inspiration is attached to
Caribbean Wind
(which was previously
unreleased) on
Biograph
:

“That one I couldn’t quite grasp what it was about after I finished it,” said Dylan. “Some times you’ll write something to be very inspired, and
you won’t quite finish it for one reason or another. Then you’ll go back and try and pick it up, and the inspiration is just gone. Either you get it all, and you can leave a few little
pieces to fill in, or you’re trying always to finish it off. Then it’s a struggle. The inspiration’s gone and you can’t remember why you started it in the first place.
Frustration sets in. I think there’s four different sets of lyrics to this, maybe I got it right, I don’t know. I had to leave it. I just dropped it. Sometimes that happens.”

457
Literary principles as against theory
(1985);
Essays in Appreciation
(1996),
see this page
.

458
This critical term, to
place
(to set within a context that makes such judgements possible), is from Henry James, himself a
master of love-lorn streetscapes and of the sadly human propensity to self-absorption.

459
Richard Steele,
The Tatler
, No. 5 (1709).

460
OED
, 2c.

461
One More Weekend
: “We’ll go someplace unknown / Leave all the children home / Honey, why not go alone / Just you and
me”.

462
Keats,
Ode to a Nightingale
(songbird par excellence): “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, / Nor what soft incense
hangs upon the boughs, / But in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet / Wherewith the seasonable month endows / The grass”.

463
Amos 9:5: “And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt.” 2 Peter 3:10: “But the
day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also.”

464
OED
, 2b:
U.S. slang
with American English (1869), “Among names of revolvers I remember . . . Black-eyed Susan”, and
Americanisms
(1888), “Texan for a revolver”.

465
And, elsewhere in Dylan, with seasonal change that is sadder than in
Moonlight
(where “The seasons they are
turnin’”).
Idiot Wind
: “I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned / Slowly into autumn”.

466
Of some punning lines in
The Merchant of Venice
(V, i), Dr Johnson wrote: “There is scarcely any word with which
Shakespeare so much delights to trifle as with ‘light’, in its various significations.” Again, of
Antony and Cleopatra
(I, iv), “The word ‘light’ is one of
Shakespeare’s favourite play-things.”

467
Numbers 6:24.

468
Absolutely imperative (given the absence of a comma before “people”), the apostrophe in “’round”.
[Square people, stay right where you are.]

469
Dylan: “‘Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.’ That scares the shit out of people” (
Biograph
).

470
As against, and perhaps actively against, the other sense of
do for
: “To ruin, damage, or injure fatally, destroy, wear
out entirely”.

471
Tindale’s translation (1526). In the King James Bible: “And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank
have ye?”

472
Biograph. “Tucson” / “one of my boys”. (Not that he has only two sons.) Like God, words and
pronunciation move in a mysterious way. “I certainly didn’t intend . . .”

473
C. S. Calverley mockingly apprehended what had happened when “for ever” became “forever”:

Calverley lauds the innovator:

But in men’s hearts shall be thy throne,

While the great pulse of England beats.

Thou coiner of a word unknown

To Keats!

474
11 Outlined Epitaphs
: “above the bells of William Blake” (
Lyrics 1962–1985
, 1985,
see this
page
).

475
In our world, this would need to be “I need! I need!”, as in the child’s cry “Need candy!”

476
William Blake’s Writings
, ed. G. E. Bentley, Jr (1978), vol. I,
see this page
.

477
Rolling Stone
(22 November 2001).

478
Angelina
. The previous instances are from
Sign Language
,
Handy Dandy
, and
Neighborhood Bully
.

479
Richard III
, V, ii.

480
George Herbert,
Discipline
.

481
Wilfred Mellers reviewed
Planet Waves
(
New Statesman
, 8 March 1974):

The first version is as guileless as a white gospel song, though its “gift to be simple” doesn’t preclude subtlety: consider the reverberation of
Dylan’s voice at the end of the stanzas, or his unexpected
speaking
of the words about the surrounding light. The second version of the song apparently debunks the first, banishing hymnic
innocence with fast, parodistic country rock; yet even the parody is heart-felt, the first version is not discredited.

482
For melisma,
see this page
.

483
“Whose mind is stayed on thee”. Whose mind? There are moments when the two are of one mind: “song be
sung” / “song always be sung”; “have a strong city; salvation” / “have a strong foundation”; “the truth may” / “May you always know the
truth”; “stayed” / “stay”. These, and
God, righteous, keep, for ever
.

484
Rhyming with “Capture your soul and hold it for ransom”. The
handsome / ransom
rhyme had tickled Byron (
Don Juan
,
II, v, st. 9), but closer by is Bruce Springsteen: “So you fell for some jerk who was tall, dark and handsome, / Then he kidnapped your heart and now he’s holding it for ransom. / Well,
like a mission impossible I’m gonna go and get it back. / You know I would’a taken better care of it, baby, than that” (
I’m a Rocker
). The printed version in
Lyrics
1962–1985
(1985) had been, not “Capture your soul”, but “Capture your heart”. At first he gave us “your heart” but he wanted “your soul”.

485
See this page
, on faith.

486
Dylan’s song on the soundtrack of
Gods and Generals
(2003).

487
Emily Dickinson: “It was not Death, for I stood up, / And all the Dead, lie down – / It was not Night, for all the Bells / Put out their Tongues, for Noon”. A. E. Housman:
“When the bells justle in the tower / The hollow night amid, / Then on my tongue the taste is sour / Of all I ever did”.

488
Playboy
(March 1978).

489
If this miracle is in the hinterland of Dylan’s words there, the link might be that the verses of 1 Corinthians
immediately preceding the great chapter 13 on charity ask: “are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues?”

490
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
,“stupid”, which is uncharitable in comparison with “fool-ish”. 1
Corinthians 1:20: “hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”

491
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “no claims”; he sings “no false claims”.

492
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “won’t mess up your day”, which was too close to the condescending
sarcasm of the bumper-sticker that told people (other people, natch) that one nuclear bomb could ruin your whole day. The smug bares its gums.

493
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “ain’t no accident”. The secure swiftness, rhythmical and syntactical,
that cuts from the one to the other, not needing even the verb “to be”, “Love’s that pure, no accident”, is paralleled elsewhere in the song, when Dylan – who
had printed “Will not deceive you or lead you to transgression” – sings “Will not deceive you, lead you into transgression”. Confident at the wheel.

494
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “Never needs to be proud, restlessly yearning”. The praise of “love
that’s pure” in “Never needs to be proud, loud” recalls St Paul: “charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly”.

495
Rolling Stone
(15 October 1981).

496
Belacqua, in
A Wet Night
(
More Pricks than Kicks
, 1934).

497
I draw on an essay of mine on
Loneliness and Poetry
(
Allusion to the Poets
, 2002).

498
Anthony Scaduto,
Bob Dylan
(1971, revised edition 1973),
see this page
.

499
Quoted in Scaduto,
Bob Dylan
,
see this page
.

500
The sleeve-notes to
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
.

501
Interview with Dave Fanning,
Irish Times Magazine
(29 September 2001).

502
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “sang”, but he sings “sung”. See T. S. Eliot on Tennyson,
see this page
.

503
Irish Times Magazine
(29 September 2001).

504
Newsweek
(6 October 1997).

505
Interview with Serge Kaganski,
Mojo
(February 1998).

506
Liner-notes to
The Times They Are A-Changin’
(1964);
Lyrics 1962–1985
,
see this page
.

507
As printed in
Lyrics 1962–1985
, “stayed”; some of us think that he sings at least a suggestion of
“stared”, which would go with everything that we hear about eyes in the song, including “She called with her eyes / To the tune I’s a-playin’” and “That of
all the eyes out there / I could see none”. The first four verses each mention eyes, hers and his and others’; if we look for “eyes” in the last verse, we find “Then
looked for the girl / Who’d stayed for so long”, which picks up – at some distance – “With a long-distance look / Her eyes was on fire”. Like all those eyes, she
did not stay till the final end.