Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was awarded to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Since his debut in 1962, he has repeatedly reinvented his songs and music. Bob Dylan has also written prose, including his memoirs ‘Chronicles‘.
Bob Dylan Songs
One of my favourites is ‘Mr. Tambourine Man‘ a song with “a bright, expansive melody and has become famous for its surrealistic imagery” said someone more articulate than me.
Listen along with the beautiful lyrics (below the video).
Mr Tambourine Man Lyrics
( The lyrics call on the title character to play a song and the narrator will follow. Interpretations of the lyrics have included a paean to drugs such as LSD, a call to the singer’s muse, a reflection of the audience’s demands on the singer, and religious interpretations – Wikipedia.)
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreamingTake me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
( William Ruhlmann, writing for the AllMusic web site, has suggested the following outline of the song’s lyrics: “The time seems to be early morning following a night when the narrator has not slept. Still unable to sleep, though amazed by his weariness, he is available and open to Mr. Tambourine Man’s song, and says he will follow him. In the course of four verses studded with internal rhymes, he expounds on this situation, his meaning often heavily embroidered with imagery, though the desire to be freed by the tambourine man’s song remains clear.” – Wikipedia)
Nobel Lecture
Bob’s Nobel lecture is a beautiful read. But its even better to hear. See below.
It talks about his inspiration and how books he read influenced his songs – “the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybody ever heard, and these themes were fundamental.“
Nobel Prize ceremony
“Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’” Dylan said in a thank-you speech.
He skipped the Nobel prize ceremony due to “pre-existing commitments”. Dylan later apologized for not being able to attend the ceremony and expressed surprise over being chosen for an honour given to literature heavyweights such as Ernest Hemingway and Albert Camus.
“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” he said.
Book influences (listed in the Nobel lecture)
- Don Quixote
- Ivanhoe
- Robinson Crusoe
- Gulliver’s Travels
- Tale of Two Cities
- Moby Dick
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- The Odyssey
Read the Nobel lecture for a more detailed review of Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.
Bob Dylan Quotes
Let me ask you one question
― The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about WILL COME TRUE. It’s a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It’s best to keep that all inside.
― The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966
Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean.
No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.
The truth was obscure,
Too profound and too pure,
To live it you had to explode.
Walkin’ through the leaves fallin’ from the trees,
Feelin’ like a stranger nobody sees…
The worth of things can’t be measured by what they cost but by what the cost you to get it, that if anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and that there are some things that will never wear out.
― Chronicles: Volume One
When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it – don’t back down and don’t give up – then you’re going to mystify a lot of folks.
I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.
It’s like my whole life never happened,
― Bob Dylan (lyrics)
When I see you, it’s as if I never had a thought.
I know this dream, it might be crazy,
But it’s the only one I’ve got.
The line it is drawn
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The new order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.
Books by Bob Dylan
Chronicles: Volume One
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The Lyrics 1961-2012
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The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966
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The Nobel Lecture
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