NP: Dylan on Moby-Dick

[Mark Kohut]

"It's All Good", as Bob Dylan is always singing.

On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 7:34 AM, Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think Bob was trolling those Swedes with his mock book reports.
> ------------------------------
> 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
>
> [The entire original message is not included.]
>
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