NP: Dylan on Moby-Dick

[Erik T. Burns]

I think Bob was trolling those Swedes with his mock book reports. 

-----Original Message-----
From: "Allan Balliett" <allan.balliett at gmail.com>
Sent: ‎6/‎6/‎2017 12:08
To: "Laura Kelber" <laurakelber at gmail.com>; "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: Re: NP: Dylan on Moby-Dick

It also contains an account of the career defining aisthesis he experience through Buddy Holly at a concert in Duluth in 1959.


Nice blog post on the lecture here: 


http://www.daysofthecrazy-wild.com/bob-dylan-attends-buddy-holly-show-january-31-1959/



The lecture isn't long so, if I don't take the time to share it here now I have to go outside and continue planting okra, here it is. (For those who do not have the time to read it, the last line is “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me
tell the story," which I feel I've understood for the first time. 


Oh, and it contains this putdown of Dylanologists: "John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare, wrote thesewords, “The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves, thenests.” I don.t know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs tosound good. "


Apologies for the crudeness of text formatting


-Allan in WV, who needs someone to tell him about the audio for this lecture since he refuses to listen to anything Dylan has recorded since Blood on the Tracks 


Bob Dylan's Nobel Lecture 


When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how mysongs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I.m going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but Ihope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful. 


If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I.d have to start with Buddy Holly. Buddydied when I was about eighteen and he was twenty-two. From the moment I first heard him,I felt akin. I felt related, like he was an older brother. I even thought I resembled him. Buddyplayed the music that I loved – the music I grew up on: country western, rock .n. roll, andrhythm and blues. Three separate strands of music that he intertwined and infused into onegenre. One brand. And Buddy wrote songs – songs that had beautiful melodies andimaginative verses. And he sang great – sang in more than a few voices. He was thearchetype. Everything I wasn.t and wanted to be. I saw him only but once, and that was afew days before he was gone. I had to travel a hundred miles to get to see him play, and Iwasn.t disappointed. 


He was powerful and electrifying and had a commanding presence. I was only six feetaway. He was mesmerizing. I watched his face, his hands, the way he tapped his foot, hisbig black glasses, the eyes behind the glasses, the way he held his guitar, the way hestood, his neat suit. Everything about him. He looked older than twenty-two. Somethingabout him seemed permanent, and he filled me with conviction. Then, out of the blue, themost uncanny thing happened. He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something I didn.t know what. And it gave me the chills. 


I think it was a day or two after that that his plane went down. And somebody – somebodyI.d never seen before – handed me a Leadbelly record with the song “Cottonfields” on it.And that record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I.d never known. It was like an explosion went off. Like I.d been walking in darkness and all of thesudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must haveplayed that record a hundred times. 


It was on a label I.d never heard of with a booklet inside with advertisements for other artists on the label: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, JeanRitchie, string bands. I.d never heard of any of them. But I reckoned if they were on thislabel with Leadbelly, they had to be good, so I needed to hear them. I wanted to know allabout it and play that kind of music. I still had a feeling for the music I.d grown up with, but forright now, I forgot about it. Didn.t even think about it. For the time being, it was long gone. 


I hadn.t left home yet, but I couldn.t wait to. I wanted to learn this music and meet the peoplewho played it. Eventually, I did leave, and I did learn to play those songs. They weredifferent than the radio songs that I.d been listening to all along. They were more vibrant andtruthful to life. With radio songs, a performer might get a hit with a roll of the dice or a fall ofthe cards, but that didn.t matter in the folk world. Everything was a hit. All you had to do wasbe well versed and be able to play the melody. Some of these songs were easy, some not. I had a natural feeling for the ancient ballads and country blues, but everything else Ihad to learn from scratch. I was playing for small crowds, sometimes no more than four orfive people in a room or on a street corner. You had to have a wide repertoire, and you hadto know what to play and when. Some songs were intimate, some you had to shout to beheard. 


By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia seashanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and youlearn the details. 


You know what it.s all about. Takin. the pistol out and puttin. it back in your pocket. Whippin. your way through traffic, talkin. in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man andthat Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you.ve heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in aboggy creek. And you.re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heardthe muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You.ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick aknife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen. 


I had all the vernacular all down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went over my head – thedevices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries – and I knew all the deserted roads thatit traveled on, too. I could make it all connect and move with the current of the day. When Istarted writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, and I usedit. 


But I had something else as well. I had principals and sensibilities and an informed view ofthe world. And I had had that for a while. Learned it all in grammar school. Don Quixote,Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver.s Travels, Tale of Two Cities, all the rest – typicalgrammar school reading that gave you a way of looking at life, an understanding of humannature, and a standard to measure things by. I took all that with me when I startedcomposing lyrics. And the themes from those books worked their way into many of mysongs, either knowingly or unintentionally. I wanted to write songs unlike anything anybodyever heard, and these themes were fundamental. 


Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in grammar school


– I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and TheOdyssey. 


Moby Dick is a fascinating book, a book that.s filled with scenes of high drama and dramaticdialogue. The book makes demands on you. The plot is straightforward. The mysteriousCaptain Ahab – captain of a ship called the Pequod – an egomaniac with a peg legpursuing his nemesis, the great white whale Moby Dick who took his leg. And he pursueshim all the way from the Atlantic around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Hepursues the whale around both sides of the earth. It.s an abstract goal, nothing concrete ordefinite. He calls Moby the emperor, sees him as the embodiment of evil. Ahab.s got awife and child back in Nantucket that he reminisces about now and again. You can anticipatewhat will happen. 


The ship.s crew is made up of men of different races, and any one of them who sights thewhale will be given the reward of a gold coin. A lot of Zodiac symbols, religious allegory,stereotypes. Ahab encounters other whaling vessels, presses the captains for detailsabout Moby. Have they seen him? There.s a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of thevessels, and he predicts Ahab.s doom. Says Moby is the incarnate of a Shaker god, andthat any dealings with him will lead to disaster. He says that to Captain Ahab. Anothership.s captain – Captain Boomer – he lost an arm to Moby. But he tolerates that, and he.s happy to have survived. He can.t accept Ahab.s lust for vengeance. 


This book tells how different men react in different ways to the same experience. A lot ofOld Testament, biblical allegory: Gabriel, Rachel, Jeroboam, Bildah, Elijah. Pagan names as well: Tashtego, Flask, Daggoo, Fleece, Starbuck, Stubb, Martha.s Vineyard. ThePagans are idol worshippers. Some worship little wax figures, some wooden figures.Some worship fire. The Pequod is the name of an Indian tribe. 


Moby Dick is a seafaring tale. One of the men, the narrator, says, “Call me Ishmael.”Somebody asks him where he.s from, and he says, “It.s not down on any map. Trueplaces never are.” Stubb gives no significance to anything, says everything is predestined.Ishmael.s been on a sailing ship his entire life. Calls the sailing ships his Harvard and Yale.He keeps his distance from people. 


A typhoon hits the Pequod. Captain Ahab thinks it.s a good omen. Starbuck thinks it.s a bad omen, considers killing Ahab. As soon as the storm ends, a crewmember falls from theship.s mast and drowns, foreshadowing what.s to come. A Quaker pacifist priest, who isactually a bloodthirsty businessman, tells Flask, “Some men who receive injuries are led toGod, others are led to bitterness.” 


Everything is mixed in. All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible, Hindu myths, Britishlegends, Saint George, Perseus, Hercules – they.re all whalers. Greek mythology, the gorybusiness of cutting up a whale. Lots of facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil


– good for coronation of royalty – noble families in the whaling industry. Whale oil is used toanoint the kings. History of the whale, phrenology, classical philosophy, pseudo-scientifictheories, justification for discrimination – everything thrown in and none of it hardly rational.Highbrow, lowbrow, chasing illusion, chasing death, the great white whale, white as polarbear, white as a white man, the emperor, the nemesis, the embodiment of evil. Thedemented captain who actually lost his leg years ago trying to attack Moby with a knife. 


We see only the surface of things. We can interpret what lies below any way we see fit.Crewmen walk around on deck listening for mermaids, and sharks and vultures follow theship. Reading skulls and faces like you read a book. Here.s a face. I.ll put it in front of you.Read it if you can. 


Tashtego says that he died and was reborn. His extra days are a gift. He wasn.t saved byChrist, though, he says he was saved by a fellow man and a non-Christian at that. Heparodies the resurrection. 


When Starbuck tells Ahab that he should let bygones be bygones, the angry captainsnaps back, “Speak not to me of blasphemy, man, I.d strike the sun if it insulted me.” Ahab,too, is a poet of eloquence. He says, “The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron railswhereon my soul is grooved to run.” Or these lines, “All visible objects are but pasteboardmasks.” Quotable poetic phrases that can.t be beat. 


Finally, Ahab spots Moby, and the harpoons come out. Boats are lowered. Ahab.s harpoon has been baptized in blood. Moby attacks Ahab.s boat and destroys it. Nextday, he sights Moby again. Boats are lowered again. Moby attacks Ahab.s boat again. Onthe third day, another boat goes in. More religious allegory. He has risen. Moby attacks onemore time, ramming the Pequod and sinking it. Ahab gets tangled up in the harpoon linesand is thrown out of his boat into a watery grave. 


Ishmael survives. He.s in the sea floating on a coffin. And that.s about it. That.s the whole story. That theme and all that it implies would work its way into more than a few of mysongs. 


All Quiet on the Western Front was another book that did. All Quiet on the Western Front isa horror story. This is a book where you lose your childhood, your faith in a meaningfulworld, and your concern for individuals. You.re stuck in a nightmare. Sucked up into amysterious whirlpool of death and pain. You.re defending yourself from elimination. You.re being wiped off the face of the map. Once upon a time you were an innocent youth withbig dreams about being a concert pianist. Once you loved life and the world, and nowyou.re shooting it to pieces. 


Day after day, the hornets bite you and worms lap your blood. You.re a cornered animal. You don.t fit anywhere. The falling rain is monotonous. There.s endless assaults, poisongas, nerve gas, morphine, burning streams of gasoline, scavenging and scabbing for food,influenza, typhus, dysentery. Life is breaking down all around you, and the shells arewhistling. This is the lower region of hell. Mud, barbed wire, rat-filled trenches, rats eating theintestines of dead men, trenches filled with filth and excrement. Someone shouts, “Hey, youthere. Stand and fight.” 


Who knows how long this mess will go on? Warfare has no limits. You.re being annihilated,and that leg of yours is bleeding too much. You killed a man yesterday, and you spoke tohis corpse. You told him after this is over, you.ll spend the rest of your life looking after hisfamily. Who.s profiting here? The leaders and the generals gain fame, and many othersprofit financially. But you.re doing the dirty work. One of your comrades says, “Wait aminute, where are you going?” And you say, “Leave me alone, I.ll be back in a minute.” Then you walk out into the woods of death hunting for a piece of sausage. You can.t see how anybody in civilian life has any kind of purpose at all. All their worries, all their desires –you can.t comprehend it. 


More machine guns rattle, more parts of bodies hanging from wires, more pieces of armsand legs and skulls where butterflies perch on teeth, more hideous wounds, pus coming outof every pore, lung wounds, wounds too big for the body, gas-blowing cadavers, anddead bodies making retching noises. Death is everywhere. Nothing else is possible.Someone will kill you and use your dead body for target practice. Boots, too. They.re yourprized possession. But soon they.ll be on somebody else.s feet. 


There.s Froggies coming through the trees. Merciless bastards. Your shells are running out.“It.s not fair to come at us again so soon,” you say. One of your companions is laying in thedirt, and you want to take him to the field hospital. Someone else says, “You might saveyourself a trip.” “What do you mean?” “Turn him over, you.ll see what I mean.” 


You wait to hear the news. You don.t understand why the war isn.t over. The army is sostrapped for replacement troops that they.re drafting young boys who are of little militaryuse, but they.re draftin. .em anyway because they.re running out of men. Sickness andhumiliation have broken your heart. You were betrayed by your parents, yourschoolmasters, your ministers, and even your own government. 


The general with the slowly smoked cigar betrayed you too – turned you into a thug and amurderer. If you could, you.d put a bullet in his face. The commander as well. You fantasizethat if you had the money, you.d put up a reward for any man who would take his life byany means necessary. And if he should lose his life by doing that, then let the money go tohis heirs. The colonel, too, with his caviar and his coffee – he.s another one. Spends all histime in the officers. brothel. You.d like to see him stoned dead too. More Tommies and Johnnies with their whack fo. me daddy-o and their whiskey in the jars. You kill twenty of .em and twenty more will spring up in their place. It just stinks in your nostrils. 


You.ve come to despise that older generation that sent you out into this madness, into this 


torture chamber. All around you, your comrades are dying. Dying from abdominal wounds,
double amputations, shattered hipbones, and you think, “I.m only twenty years old, but I.m 
capable of killing anybody. Even my father if he came at me.” 




Yesterday, you tried to save a wounded messenger dog, and somebody shouted, “Don.t 
be a fool.” One Froggy is laying gurgling at your feet. You stuck him with a dagger in his
stomach, but the man still lives. You know you should finish the job, but you can.t. You.re on 
the real iron cross, and a Roman soldier.s putting a sponge of vinegar to your lips. 




Months pass by. You go home on leave. You can.t communicate with your father. He said,
“You.d be a coward if you don.t enlist.” Your mother, too, on your way back out the door,
she says, “You be careful of those French girls now.” More madness. You fight for a week
or a month, and you gain ten yards. And then the next month it gets taken back. 




All that culture from a thousand years ago, that philosophy, that wisdom – Plato, Aristotle,
Socrates – what happened to it? It should have prevented this. Your thoughts turn
homeward. And once again you.re a schoolboy walking through the tall poplar trees. It.s a 
pleasant memory. More bombs dropping on you from blimps. You got to get it together
now. You can.t even look at anybody for fear of some miscalculable thing that might
happen. The common grave. There are no other possibilities. 




Then you notice th

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