Philosophizing Disgrace: Anatomy & Analysis of Dylan’s Hard Rain Adam Cottrel
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The poetic quality of Bob Dylan’s lyrics has been described as everything from “the perfect role model to present aspiring artists” (Paglia 262)1 to “silly without the music” (Christgau 63).2 While they may very well stand as the former, they most assuredly cannot be construed as the latter, if only because the proposition has never actually been tested. Up to now, Dylan enthusiasts and detractors alike have tended to elaborate—and recently with great detail—on the question “How do his lyrics rank amongst the great poetry of the past?” and have assumed they are either the best of his generation or simply irrelevant. To the extent that anyone has seriously bothered to tackle the question in recent years, the answer usually resembles the one put forward by Christopher Ricks, who declares quite confidently, “Dylan has always had a way with words. He does not simply have his way with them, since a true comprehender of words is no more their master than he or she is their servant” (11). To this one might well ask: but how does one decipher quality in poetry, and how must we read and eventually come to an understanding of his lyrics? It is my contention that there is a knowable, unequivocal, and essentially irrefutable answer to the question, and that this answer is found when one is inclined to juxtapose his lyrics with those of Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. To begin it is surely acceptable to believe that literature can be studied, criticized, and placed into a ranking order of quality. The difference with Frye and the critics who preceded him are that while the past has been infatuated with the fashionable, Frye tries to clear a path in critical response to the experience. He regards this process as one that must separate the primary source, from its critical commentary. Frye states, “Art, like nature, has to be distinguished from the systematic study of it, which is criticism. It is therefore impossible to ‘learn literature’: one learns about it in a certain way, but what one learns, transitively, is the criticism of literature” (11). This leaves the critical response—or secondary literature—to be “studied” and the poem—or primary source—to be experienced. Frye admits, “literature is not itself an organized structure of knowledge, the critic has to turn to the conceptual framework of the historian for events, and to the philosopher for ideas” (12). This does not diminish literature vis-a-vis its peers though; it merely leaves it open to be experienced in a way solely unique to other varied disciplines. In doing so, Frye has built a literary map of critical interpretation. His efforts spawned the second essay of four contained within Anatomy that speaks directly to this investigation. Frye’s concern lies in the fact that literature is without set of technical vocabulary. Which poses two problems: 1) there is no word for a work of literary art that supersedes a trivial preference in definitions, and 2) the use of word “symbol,” which Frye uses as meaning “any literary structure that can be isolated for critical attention” (71).
aegis 2006
[Dylan] has consistently improved whatever he stole, and his lies have been more revealing than the truth. Dylan came to the public as a vortex of selfishness with a carefully hidden self. He freed the characters of archaic America—Sweet Marie, the Jack of Hearts, Mrs. Henry, Napoleon in rags—into the screech of rock and roll, deepening both in the process. —John Leland
