\n<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
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\nBob Dylan\u2019s corpus is one continually engaged with appropriation and pilfering. This paper will look, predominantly, at three songs from his 1960s\u2019 trilogy \u2013 \u2018She Belongs To Me\u2019 from Bringing It All Back Home<\/em> (1965), \u2018Visions of Johanna\u2019 from Blonde on Blonde<\/em> (1966), and \u2018Desolation Row\u2019 from Highway 61 Revisited<\/em> (1965) \u2013 arguing that, in these songs, Dylan problematizes the interrelationship between art, theft, and ownership. I argue that, similar to the urban artist Banksy, Dylan challenges, toys with, and appropriates cultural images in order to continually question the concept of proprietorship whilst rescuing cultural images from esoterica and attempting to put them back into the public domain.<\/div><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>L\u2019\u0153uvre de Bob Dylan continue \u00e0 \u00eatre sujette \u00e0 l\u2019appropriation et au pillage. Cet article \u00e9value, principalement, trois chansons qui font partie de la trilogie d\u2019albums parue pendant les ann\u00e9es 60 \u2013 She Belongs To Me<\/em> de l\u2019album Bringing It All Back Home<\/em> (1965), Visions of Johanna<\/em> de Blonde on Blonde<\/em> (1966), et Desolation Row<\/em> de Highway 61 Revisited<\/em> (1965). Je cherche soutenir qu\u2019\u00e0 travers ces chansons Dylan propose des nouveaux probl\u00e8mes quant \u00e0 l\u2019interrelation entre l\u2019art, le vol et la propri\u00e9t\u00e9. Mon argument est que, \u00e0 l\u2019instar de l\u2019artiste urbain Banksy, Dylan joue avec les images culturelles et se les appropries en m\u00eame temps qu\u2019il les met \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9preuve afin de mettre en doute le concept de propri\u00e9t\u00e9. \u00c0 travers ses \u0153uvres, Dylan r\u00e9cup\u00e8re ces images \u00e0 partir de leur marginalit\u00e9, pour les replacer dans un espace publique.<\/div>
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Michael Rodgers | University of Strathclyde<\/p>\n
Relationships of Ownership:
\nArt and Theft in Bob Dylan\u2019s 1960s Trilogy<\/h4>\n
In the sleeve note to Bringing It All Back Home<\/em> (1965), Bob Dylan, in his Ginsbergian free-form poem, claims that \u201cthe Great books\u2019ve been written. the Great sayings have all been said\u201d (6). Dylan, however, seems too self-assured an artist to accept this idea, too fertile an artist to accept the finality of artistic output. Instead, Dylan appears to rebel against the notion of closure through interweaving the themes of art and theft\u2014letting (what seem to be) apparent antonyms complement one another as a way of creating new work. This paper will argue that Dylan\u2019s corpus challenges, toys with, and appropriates cultural images, in order to continually question the concept of ownership. Rather than be content with letting images set, Dylan seems to avoid allowing artistic icons, images, and rebuses to stagnate or become fixed and, instead, subjects them to radical metamorphoses and proffers phantasmagorical alternatives or adaptations. What is problematic, however, is whether the radically altered forms he presents belong to Dylan himself, act simply as tools for his poetic expression, or are an ensemble of others<\/em>\u2019 work. This paper will look, predominantly, at three songs from his 1960s\u2019 trilogy (\u201cShe Belongs To Me\u201d from Bringing It All Back Home<\/em>, \u201cVisions of Johanna\u201d from Blonde on Blonde<\/em> (1966), and \u201cDesolation Row\u201d from Highway 61 Revisited<\/em> (1965)) arguing that, in these songs, Dylan is theorizing the topics of art, theft, and ownership.<\/p>\n In doing so, I argue that Dylan appropriates and rescues cultural images from esoterica and attempts to put them back into the public domain. For Dylan, however, this accessibility does not equate to easiness. Although he asks his listeners to work hard for particular references, importantly, he rewards them if they are prepared to do so. In allowing his listeners to contribute to the songs through their own cultural knowledge, in defamiliarizing and lampooning normal perspectives and preconceptions, and in modifying images, Dylan persistently alludes throughout his works to what he calls \u201crelationships of ownership\u201d in \u201cGates of Eden\u201d (1965). As Jonathan Lethem argues, \u201cIt becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across forms and genres in the realm of cultural production\u201d (60). Ultimately, I wish to illustrate the extent to which Dylan\u2019s imagistic lyrics are integral to the ways in which notions of theft and ownership are theorized.<\/p>\n The degree to which Dylan\u2019s songs <\/em>\u2018steal\u2019, or borrow, can be seen, for example, in the similarities between \u201cI Dreamed I Saw St Augustine\u201d (1975) and Alfred Hayes\u2019s poem \u201cI Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night\u201d (1930), and \u201cA Hard Rain\u2019s A-Gonna Fall\u201d (1962) and the ballad of \u201cLord Randall\u201d (Trager 234). Jon Pareles details one particularly alert Dylan fan who noticed numerous references between Love and Theft<\/em> and Junichi Saga\u2019s Confessions of a Yakuza<\/em> (1991) (1). The title itself comes from Eric Lott\u2019s study of minstrelsy (Lethem 59). However, this topic is not always talked about disparagingly. Often, theft is one equated with humour, justification, delight even. What is interesting is that the topics of art and theft appear to be completely dichotomous\u2014art is something that one makes, creates, and gives, whereas theft entails taking, stealing, and appropriating. In this respect, Jonathan Lethem argues that:<\/p>\n The cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange is that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, whereas the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection\u2026Art that matters to us \u2013 which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience \u2013 is received as a gift is received. (65)<\/p>\n Art theft is a well-known and not uncommon crime, yet the possibility of art appropriating, or stealing, other<\/em> art is even more contentious. When art starts to thieve (for example, when it harnesses something already existing through pastiche or bricolage such as in \u2018Pop Art\u2019), it is often viewed negatively (as if its worth is somehow impure or mongrelized). The law of intellectual property may protect a work of art through copyright or patents, yet the cerebral concept itself cannot be subjected to proprietorship. As Pareles argues, \u201cCourts are not the best place for aesthetic distinctions\u201d (2). Indeed, for reader-response criticism, once something is published it can be said to belong to the public domain at large. In light of this, what seems crucial is the interrelationship between art, theft, and ownership. Are there limits to what can be stolen? Should we steal if it has beneficial or aesthetic merit? Are artists exempt from moral law?<\/p>\n The relationship between art and morality has been an ongoing topic since the time of the ancient Greeks and is still being passionately contended in the present day by critics such as No\u00eb<\/em>l Carroll, Tom Sorell, and Rosalind Hursthouse.[1]<\/a> There are two arguments. One is that art, in its representation of real life, should be bound by the same moral laws that govern our own world. Novels that present evil figures who wreak havoc only to be thwarted by the protagonist or be subjected to some kind of divine retribution have been pervasive because, essentially, they provide us with some kind of moral lesson (\u201cthis will be the result if you act without a moral schema\u201d). Such didactic fiction, however, sits alongside other (predominantly twentieth-century) novels that present ambiguous denouements and \u201clet-offs\u201d for culprits\u2014which is a lot harder for readers to deal with (arguably, because the moral laws that we are governed by do not take effect). Aristotle, espousing the opposing view that literature has a beneficial role to play in our lives, argues that literature allows the temptation in our lives to be alleviated so that we can live out or experience such moral deviance. It can be argued that the realm of art\u2014like that of comedy, say\u2014is exempt from moral law. After all, although we have censorship and bowdlerisation for books that contain questionable material (Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover <\/em>[1928] or Lolita<\/em> [1955] come to mind), we do not have (at least in the West) something resembling the world depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four <\/em>(1948), where characters, or authors for that matter, are suppressed in what they are allowed to write about; in other words, we have no moral criteria for what a text should<\/em> contain. Such freedom of speech allows writers and musicians to write about, enact even, scenarios that would otherwise be forbidden in the real world.<\/p>\n A Dylan song that amalgamates the themes of art, theft, ownership, and morality is \u201cShe Belongs to Me\u201d from Bringing It All Back Home<\/em>. The image on the front of the album cover, containing a distinctive lens-type framed shot of Dylan and a mysterious female, surrounded by a menagerie of magazines, albums, and paintings, serves to immediately articulate the album\u2019s concern with recursion or mise en abyme<\/em> (the idea of \u201cpictures within pictures\u201d) \u2014 something that foregrounds the song\u2019s relationship with theft. \u201cShe Belongs to Me\u201d is the second song on the album and contains five six-line verses concerning a female artist and another figure (referred to only as \u201cyou\u201d) who is in complete admiration of her. The lyrics of the first two verses are as follows:<\/p>\n She\u2019s got everything she needs The use of anaphora in the first verse (repeating the pronoun \u201cshe\u201d at the start of the first five lines) is partly due to Dylan\u2019s appropriation of the Blues\u2019 form and serves to highlight just how much an impact the woman makes on the speaker \u2014 which is somewhat ironic given how he or she seems to lampoon the extent to which the other<\/em> figure covets the woman. The fact that \u2018she\u2019 is repeated so often serves to cement her anonymity and also reads as a highly possessive and misogynistic pronoun (an idea strengthened by the song\u2019s title). Dylan seems to suggest that, as an artist, the woman appears to have everything she needs; that is, there is not anything in the world that does not belong to her because of her occupation. Given that he tells us \u201cshe don’t look back\u201d, Dylan establishes a relationship between her artistic prowess and a visionary element. It seems that only banal people would be bothered looking at the past or be content with past achievements.[2]<\/a> It also suggests (but negates) having to \u201crun from the law\u201d \u2014 something that adds to this feeling of artistic assuredness and self-possession. Dylan then alludes to the artistic technique of chiascuro<\/em>, given that \u201cshe can paint the daytime black\u201d but refers to it in such a way that it simultaneously reads simply as hyperbolic description of her artistic powers in being able to transform night into day and vice versa. The speaker goes on to describe the gradual reduction in height of the other figure (starting off \u201cstanding\u201d and ending on his \u201cknees\u201d) which may suggest genuflection (an idea that is linked to the \u201cbow\u201d and \u201csalute\u201d in the last verse). This lionizing of the woman is preceded by the line, \u201cproud to steal her anything she sees\u201d. What is interesting here is that the only things that could really be stolen (in a traditional context) would be physical objects, yet the \u201canything\u201d seems to include, literally, anything <\/em>she sees \u2014 things such as landscapes, people, and weather (which cannot literally be stolen). The fact that he \u201cends up peeking through her keyhole\u201d, although suggesting sexual innuendo, seems instead to simply demonstrate his curiosity at what changes or adaptations the woman will make to these things once inside her workroom (which, presumably, he cannot gain access to).<\/p>\n The third verse strengthens the woman\u2019s seeming assuredness but also raises the issue of consequence:<\/p>\n She never stumbles The suggestion that \u201cshe\u2019s got no place to fall\u201d might appear to be foreboding whereby the need for poise, and a lack of safety (suggestive of tightrope walking), may impede her ability or, alternatively, suggest an element of hubris. Apparently birthless (\u201cShe\u2019’s nobody\u2019s child\u201d), and otherworldly as a consequence of her lack of ties, alongside being outside the law, this female artist seems to have an empyrean status. The fact that Dylan gives her immunity from the \u201cLaw\u201d (something important enough to deserve a capital letter) furthers the extent to which she appears to be of a higher order than the other figure, yet, ultimately, she is still possessed by Dylan himself through the creative act. Presumably, the other figure, governed by society\u2019s virtuous Christian morality (where \u201cThou Shalt Not Steal\u201d has been imbibed), will have consequences to deal with at a later date because of his actions. An element of self-reflexivity emerges as we progress through the song, since the idea that art is situated outside the moral realm sits alongside the suggestion that art may be thought of as recursive ownership (the addressee who steals for the woman and whom she \u201ccollects\u201d, the speaker who claims to possess the woman, Dylan\u2019s creation of the speaker).[3]<\/a> The toing and froing between different claims to ownership, of course, even extends to the listener, who is in doubt as to whether he or she can be said to lay claim to their own imaginative conception of the woman. The idea of the buck of ownership stopping at Dylan is a curious one, something forever problematized through both cover versions and creative reimagining.<\/p>\n A similar song that interweaves the themes of art, theft and morality is \u201c4th<\/sup> Time Around\u201d from Blonde on Blonde<\/em>, a song which is notable for the speaker\u2019s inability to understand reciprocal exchange or the acts of giving and receiving. The idea that \u201c4th<\/sup> Time Around\u201d might be a parody or homage to The Beatles\u2019 \u201cNorwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown\u201d (1965), given their similar melody and lyrical quality, is suggested by Trager (195) and Wilentz (118). If true, it continues the tradition of Dylan borrowing when comprising his own songs.<\/p>\n \u201c4th<\/sup> Time Around\u201d contains five nine-line verses that again focus on an unnamed woman but, this time, includes the \u2018I\u2019 of the speaker. Concerning an anonymous trio\u2019s love triangle \u2014 a speaker\u2019s remembrance of a break-up with a past lover (of which this is perhaps the fourth occurrence) \u2014 the song is notable for its vitriol and how much the speaker acts the clown:<\/p>\n When she said I stood there and hummed In the first verse, we are told that the speaker \u201cgot up to leave\u201d in the midst of their argument, hums, taps on her drum and asks \u201cHow come?\u201d after being told that \u201cEverybody must give something back\/For something they get.\u201d These childish responses are amplified when the speaker tells us that he \u201cgallantly handed her [his] last piece of gum\u201d (Dylan 1966, 6, 10, 11, 17-18) in response to her assertion about exchange. The speaker\u2019s offering acts as a cruel reply that illustrates the extent to which he thinks he will solve the reciprocal conundrum, but instead, it only serves to infuriate her. Indeed, it is specifically this lack of understanding reciprocal exchange that, ostensibly, makes the speaker morally reprehensible.\u00a0 As a result, we can perhaps infer that what the speaker has received far outweighs his<\/em> paltry gift. After the woman chokes on the gum and falls to the floor, the speaker decides to cover her up, looking through her drawer, \u201cfilling up [his] shoe\u201d and bringing it to the addressee, presumably female, again referred to only as \u201cyou.\u201d The last verse, dwelling on the speaker\u2019s relationship with this new woman, mentions that he \u201cnever took much.\u201d Again, the speaker seems to suggest that he is one who continually pilfers, conveying an image of someone completely reprehensible. However, this image is also one heavily distorted by boyish naivet\u00e9 and Socratic irony and actually works in such a way as to make the whole affair extremely humorous.<\/p>\n It may be that the speaker is acting as raisonneur<\/em> for Dylan\u2019s peculiar relationship to ownership and artistic licence. In the song, the speaker realises that he has left his shirt and goes back to retrieve it (has this been given<\/em> and then thought better of or is the realization post-coital?). He asks for some expensive rum, is refused, but then steals from the woman\u2019s drawer. In the final verse, when he returns to the new lover, the speaker appears to give this new woman the previous lover\u2019s money (\u201cI filled up my shoe and brought it to you\u201d). He then details never \u201ctaking much,\u201d not asking for her help, and chastising the new lover for wanting support from him. The idea of the new lover\u2019s image being \u201csupported\u201d by the previous lover (albeit by \u201cJamaican rum\u201d), something that the elliptical silence seems to suggest (\u201cI tried to make sense\u201d), demonstrates a lack of understanding related to receiving and giving.<\/p>\n As previously mentioned, the speaker\u2019s feigned naivet\u00e9 has worked well in being able to mask just how morally reprehensible he appears to be and in avoiding having to lose what is his. However, this feigning does not mask the seeming epiphany he has when he sees the picture of his new lover. His silence, his \u2018trying to make sense\u2019 of the picture, amalgamates the themes of art, theft, reciprocity, and morality. What must be kept in mind, however, is that the song itself, something that moves us as a piece of art, can be thought of as Dylan<\/em>\u2019s gift (related to what Lethem calls \u201cgift economy\u201d). In this light, Dylan escapes accusations of siding wholeheartedly with a suspect speaker given that the song acts as artistic compensation for the kleptomania of the speaker.<\/p>\n Dylan\u2019s concern with theft extends not only to issues of belonging and possessiveness but also to the artistic image itself. \u201cVisions of Johanna,\u201d the third song from Blonde on Blonde<\/em>, is arguably Dylan\u2019s most poetic composition, referred to by the former British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion as \u201cthe best lyric song ever written\u201d (Burns 23), and is distinctive for Dylan’s nasal, sibilant delivery which serves as a kind of musical impasto. Indeed, the song\u2019s relationship with the artistic image, and its cryptic lyrics, evokes Horace\u2019s idea of ut pictura poesis<\/em>. In the fourth verse, the speaker refers to the image of Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s Mona Lisa<\/em> (1503-1506):<\/p>\n Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Having lamented the inside quiddity of museums\u2014places that, for the speaker, serve only as static compendiums of life\u2014he quickly conjures up the image of a gallery (another quiet place for solemn reflection) by introducing the Mona Lisa<\/em>.[4]<\/a> Having introduced this well-known image, Dylan then seems to go off tangentially, referring to moustaches and knees. However, with the image of the Mona Lisa<\/em> only recently given to us, listeners may be able to make the connection to Marcel Duchamp\u2019s painting L.H.O.O.Q<\/em> (1919), which is simply a replica (or \u201cready-made\u201d) of the Mona Lisa<\/em> adorned by a child-like moustache and goatee-beard. The Duchamp reference, therefore, can be seen as an example of the kind of appropriation and reworking of an iconic image that Dylan perpetrates.[5]<\/a> Further, the apparent nonsensicality of the \u201cone with the mustache\u201d not being able to find her knees is again lessened if we remember that the Mona Lisa<\/em> canvas extends to just below the waist. Thus, Dylan has not only introduced the realm of art explicitly by referring to the Mona Lisa<\/em>, he has also subtly alluded to another artist whose preoccupation was with changing and challenging ubiquitous cultural images. The fact that Dylan does this so obliquely, almost at a third degree of separation from the initial image, allows this new reference to the Mona Lisa<\/em> to be seen as yet another reworking of an already appropriated image \u2014 allowing Dylan\u2019s own<\/em> objective to be articulated through hybridizing or adopting two existing cultural markers and making something new. In this respect, it could be said that Dylan avoids any accusations of theft given the obliqueness of the allusions. Dylan\u2019s allusion to Duchamp here is subtle, yet if the listener is prepared to work for it, he or she is rewarded a rich bounty of meaning. For example, in referring to Duchamp and the Surrealists, artists who \u201cbelieved that objects in the world possess a certain but unspecifiable intensity\u2026dulled by everyday use and utility\u201d (Lethem 62), we can perhaps determine what this verse of \u201cVisions of Johanna\u201d is \u201cgetting at\u201d is the ability to look at the world differently and defamiliarise, critique even, our normal reactions to it. In the line succeeding the Duchamp reference \u2014 \u201cOh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule\u201d – it again appears cryptic enough to suggest oblique meaning. The situation that the verse places us in \u2014 looking at art in some kind of gallery inhabited where women are being critiqued \u2014 evokes T.S Eliot\u2019s \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d (1915), specifically the refrain in which Prufrock refers to the \u201cwomen [who] come and go\/Talking of Michelangelo\u201d (Eliot 11). Just like the cruel lampooning of these women’s assumed or ostensible knowledge in \u201cPrufrock,\u201d Dylan seems to appropriate Eliot\u2019s well-known image yet appears to use it briefly before hybridizing Duchamp and Eliot\u2019s images into his own<\/em> acerbic account of the folly of these particular spectators. As a result, Dylan harnesses people\u2019s pre-existing thoughts of these cultural markers, but asks them to couple, or reconcile, them in a literal blending of art and theft.<\/p>\n When, in the succeeding, and final, verse, the speaker refers to a \u201cfiddler\u201d who \u201cnow steps to the road\/He writes everything\u2019s been returned which was owed,\u201d it is as if Dylan is also returning the images he has \u201cborrowed\u201d in the song. In this respect, we could argue that the song itself does the opposite of the museum it criticises by collecting, or collating, fresh things in a state of continual flux, rather than putting them in a place where dust settles on antediluvian exhibits. As Pareles argues, \u201cIdeas aren\u2019t meant to be carved in stone and left inviolate; they\u2019re meant to stimulate the next idea and the next\u201d (Pareles 1). One important feature, in this respect, of the Blonde on Blonde <\/em>album is a photograph of Dylan with a pair of pliers in one hand and a painting in the other that appears both on its back cover and in the sleeve note:<\/p>\n Fig. 1: Photograph from back cover, and inside sleeve note, of Blonde on Blonde<\/em>, 1966.<\/p>\n The photograph seems to suggest that Dylan is about to change, through creative force, the original image and therefore serves as a pictorial metaphor for Dylan\u2019s objective to appropriate, and modify, cultural images and return them to the public domain to allow people to look at them in a different light.[6]<\/a> When Nicholas Roe talks of Dylan\u2019s hunger being for \u201canother\u2019s world and others\u2019 words\u201d, referring to him as a \u201ccultural ragman,\u201d (Corcoran 86), it strengthens the view that Dylan\u2019s ulterior artistic motive is in hybridizing art and theft in creating anew.<\/p>\n One particular song that seems perpetually preoccupied with the appropriation, defamiliarization, and modification, of cultural images is that of \u201cDesolation Row\u201d from Highway 61 Revisited<\/em>. Where \u201cVisions of Johanna\u201d can be seen as a song that touches upon the idea of appropriating images, \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d which is also keen to avoid stasis and the idea of images setting, is a song seemingly devoted to it. The final song on Highway 61 Revisited<\/em>, \u201cDesolation Row\u201d is highly unusual in its length and particularly distinctive in its harmonic coupling of Dylan\u2019s acoustic playing and Mike Bloomfield\u2019s electric improvisation. It is a song where Dylan continually mixes the \u201cimage-cement\u201d of the past and present, always offering new takes on what seem omnipresent cultural references. Frank Kermode and Stephen Spender argue that, in \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d \u201chistory [is] seen flat, without depth, culture heroes of all kinds known only by their names, their attributes lost by intergenerational erosion\u201d (qtd. in Corcoran 34). \u201cDesolation Row\u201d has ten twelve-line verses that contain what seem \u201ca deliberate cultural jumble\u201d (Corcoran 34) \u2014 something equivalent almost to the technique of horror vacuii<\/em> employed by painters such as Hieronymus Bosch. John Burns, making another connection to Eliot (who appears in the song alongside Ezra Pound), observes that \u201cWith its lovely, beguiling melody and its seemingly endless parade of bizarre characters, it is one of Dylan\u2019s most memorable songs, presenting perhaps his most sustained and complex evocation of a phantasmagorical modern wasteland of the soul\u201d (36).<\/p>\n The song\u2019s opening lines act to introduce listeners to the strange world they are about to enter: \u201cThey\u2019re selling postcards of the hanging\/They\u2019re painting the passports brown.\u201d[7]<\/a> This macabre defamiliarization of normal activity sets the mood of a song in which numerous references to familiar activities take on sinister new forms. What seems extraordinary, however, is the number of allusions and references that the song makes to mix high art and popular culture:<\/p>\n \u2018Cinderella\u2019 – title character from classic folk-tale about recognition after oppression. What is notable is that these references are not simply given in a list fashion as provided above. Instead, characters adorn costumes, cloaks, and disguises, often of other cultural figures (Cinderella puts her hands into her back pockets \u201cBette Davis style.\u201d Einstein is disguised as Robin Hood. The Phantom of the Opera is in a \u201cperfect image of a priest\u201d). The effect is one that hybridizes these disparate dramatic personae in ways that are both hugely entertaining and particularly defamiliarizing.[8]<\/a> As with the passages discussed from \u201cVisions of Johanna,\u201d it is as if Dylan once again commandeers existing preconceptions of cultural figures and transmogrifies them into new<\/em> characters (but with all their precedent meaning). As Kermode and Spender note, it seems to be only their names that have currency in this apocalyptic world, perhaps testament to the persistence of cultural icons in the public psyche.[9]<\/a> One particularly interesting scenario related to this appears in the second verse:<\/p>\n Cinderella, she seems so easy When Romeo enters the scene and proclaims \u201cYou Belong to Me\u201d to Cinderella, he seems to be conforming not to the title character from Romeo and Juliet<\/em> but to the braggadocio image of our modern-day conceptions of a \u201cRomeo\u201d (very close to the lustful, licentious Casanova figure who enters in the seventh verse). The meeting of these two cultural sources (Shakespeare and fairytale) is wonderfully apt given the romantic theme of both texts. However, when the Romeo of Dylan\u2019s song makes his possessive claim, it seems that the sentiment is not acceptable to others in the song given that the ambulances soon come to collect the wounded character. The fact that this \u201csomeone\u201d tells Romeo that he is in the \u201cwrong place\u201d is laden with dramatic irony: does the \u201csomeone\u201d know who Romeo is (and the play from which he comes), or is he simply asking him to leave this peculiar place, one where ownership and possessing simply do not exist, because of what he has said? The paradox suggested in this verse is reminiscent of \u201cShe Belongs To Me\u201d not only through Romeo\u2019s assertion \u201cYou Belong to Me I Believe\u201d (note the capitalization), but also through the themes of theft and art: is possession impossible in this realm, or is it that everything belongs to everyone, therefore making private ownership defunct?<\/p>\n The theme of ownership is also evoked in the penultimate verse:<\/p>\n Praise be to Nero\u2019s Neptune The above verse opens with an allusion to \u201cNero’s Neptune\u201d and refers to the two major poets of the Modernist movement fighting it out in the captain\u2019s tower, perhaps for control over the direction of Modernism. The explicit reference to Eliot is accompanied by a series of references to the sea and seagoing, including one that appears to allude to the conclusion of \u201cThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\u201d:<\/p>\n I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.<\/p>\n I do not think that they will sing to me. Eliot\u2019s poem, like \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d is a dramatic monologue: \u201cA kind of poem in which a single fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silent audience of one or more persons. Such poems reveal not the poet\u2019s own thoughts but the mind of the impersonated character, whose personality is revealed unwittingly\u201d (Baldick 72). Arguably the most famous exponent of the genre was Robert Browning and, given the reference to \u201cNero\u2019s Neptune,\u201d the theme of ownership (through the genitive case), and the genre of \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d \u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d (1842), Browning\u2019s most famous dramatic monologue, may also be evoked. In Browning\u2019s poem, the Duke of Ferrara, who is in pursuit of a new duchess, tells the story of his last duchess, whose portrait is hidden behind a curtain, to an emissary (presumably of the prospective duchess). His possessive nature, shown as a result of the poem\u2019s genre (as well as its content), reaches its peak at the poem\u2019s denouement where he points to one of his prized art objects: a bronze statue of Neptune taming a seahorse (could the duke\u2019s Neptune be equated to \u201cNero\u2019s Neptune\u201d?). \u201cDesolation Row,\u201d then, might be said to make a set of generic and imagistic allusions to \u201cMy Last Duchess.\u201d The song\u2019s literary allusions to Eliot and Browning once again indicate how Dylan seems to appropriate literary images and characters, only to subject them to the same distortion and doctoring as the other popular or mythological figures. Eliot, for example, is being laughed at as he struggles with Ezra Pound (figures presumably unknown to the calypso singers). Once more then, figures from high art are mixed with, and undermined by, purveyors of popular culture.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n The theme of ownership evoked by the Browning allusion is continued in the final verse, one that brings the song to a climax:<\/p>\n Yes, I received your letter yesterday This verse serves to articulate just how despondent the speaker has become and chastises the letter-sender for his or her question because of how obvious the answer seems to be. More interesting is the fact that the speaker says that he knows the people that the letter-sender refers to (arguably all the people that the listeners have heard about in the previous eleven verses) and that they are all \u201cquite lame\u201d (banal or worthless) and that to spice them up he had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name. What is important, however, is that, by having the ability to change their faces, personalities, and names, Dylan foregrounds his own artistic prerogative of reworking and re-enlivening cultural images of the past.[11]<\/a> The fact that these people have been metaphorically brought into Dylan\u2019s own workshop and subjected to rigorous mannequin-work, suggests that Dylan (and\/or the speaker) now lays claim to owning <\/em>the reworked images. His frustration at how stagnant these cultural figures of yore have become (before the reworking) acts as a precursor to the final two lines of the song, \u201cNot unless you mail them\/From Desolation Row.\u201d Given the second-person address, it may be that Dylan is now referring to the listeners of the song and, thus, it suddenly changes their position from casual spectators to involved inhabitants of \u201cDesolation Row.\u201dIn doing so, Dylan not only changes the images we thought we knew but also ends the song by suggesting that his listeners, given their new proximity to the aforementioned figures, may be subjected to the very same metamorphosis, making the delayed inversion all the more powerful and terrifying.<\/p>\n In the free-form poem included in the sleeve note to Bringing It All Back Home<\/em>, Dylan includes a question supposedly asked by his recording engineer: \u201ci’m here t\u2019 pick up you and your latest works of art. do you need any help with anything?\u201d (3). There follows a \u201cpause,\u201d a page of Dylan’s thoughts poured onto paper where he tells us that \u201cI am about t\u2019 sketch You a picture of what goes on around here sometimes,\u201d and an \u201cend of pause\u201d which is then followed by Dylan’s response \u201cyes. well i could use some help in getting this wall on the plane\u201d (6). Dylan alludes to the fact that everything he has just talked about, the subject matter of his songs, have been splattered, Jackson Pollock-style, on a cement canvas that he now wants to transport. Thus, this apparently static object, a hunk of wall, is being loaded onto a plane bound for an unknown destination, and arguably acts as a metaphor for how his images have been collected and are in perpetual motion.[12]<\/a> Dylan has appropriated these images and references and leaves it up to the reader to guess where they will be dropped again and, if so, what they will look or sound like. When, in \u201cIt\u2019s Alright Ma (I\u2019m Only Bleeding)\u201d (1965), Dylan sings \u201che not busy being born is busy dying,\u201d he seems to mean that things must be constantly reinvented in order to escape decay. It seems to perfectly summate his artistic practices and intentions: a predilection for appropriating images, subjecting them to cultural reworkings, and in perpetually challenging the concept of artistic ownership.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> See No\u00eb<\/em>l Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001) and \u201cArt and the Moral Realm\u201d in Peter Kivy, The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics<\/em> (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Tom Sorell, Moral Theory and Anomaly<\/em>, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001); and Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> D.A Pennebaker\u2019s documentary about Dylan\u2019s 1965 tour of Britain, was entitled \u201cDon’t Look Back\u201d (1967). Also, in the sleeve note to Bringing It All Back Home<\/em>, Dylan talks about not wanting \u201ct\u2019 be bach. mozart. tolstoy. joe hill. gertrude stein or james dean\/[as]they are all dead\u201d (6), yet his proclivity for looking at the past for inspiration is unquestionable.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> A similar kind of meta-appropriation occurs in the narration of Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s short story \u201cRecruiting\u201d (1935).<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> The fact that \u201cMona Lisa musta had the highway blues\u201d establishes a relationship between da Vinci\u2019s painting and the stretch of highway that runs from Louisiana to Minnesota, known also as \u201cU.S Route 61.\u201d It appears a pun is being made here given the tradition of blues music to appropriate.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> The irony is that Duchamp\u2019s \u201cready-made\u201d work is being used again. His other most famous \u201cready-made\u201d is Fountain<\/em> (1917).<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> \u201cTombstone Blues\u201d (1965) is similar in this inversion of perspective and sense (\u201cThe sun\u2019s not yellow it\u2019s chicken\u201d) and its inclusion of cultural figures (such as Paul Revere, John the Baptist, Cecil B. DeMille). Also, the line \u201cbent out of shape by society\u2019s pliers\u201d from \u201cIt\u2019s Alright Ma (I\u2019m Only Bleeding)\u201d seems similar to figure 1\u2019s sentiment; however, the song is concerned with the stifling, negative effect of society rather than a creative reworking.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> These lines may refer to, respectively, the Duluth hangings of the 1920s and that US government agents\u2019 passports at this time were brown.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> This switching of cloaks and disguises, reminiscent of Shakespeare\u2019s Twelfth Night<\/em> [1601-1603], also occurs in \u201cLily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts\u201d (1975).<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> In Bob Dylan: Chronicles Vol 1<\/em> (2004), Dylan observes: \u201cI’d been raised in a cultural spectrum that had left my mind as black as soot. Brando. James Dean. Milton Berle. Marilyn Monroe. Lucy. Earl Warren and Krushchev, Castro. Little Rock and Peyton Place. Tennessee Williams and Joe DiMaggio\u201d (35-36).<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> Dylan\u2019s cultural jumble of creative output can be thought of as analogous to William Burroughs and his \u201ccut-up\u201d technique \u2014 \u00a0a figure who \u201cwas interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot, and the least imitative of authors was no plagiarist at all\u201d (Lethem 60).<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> The idea of Dylan not allowing images or words to stagnate can be seen in several instances, such as in \u201cSubterranean Homesick Blues\u201d (1965), where the words that appear in the video differ from the published lyrics (for example, \u201c20 dollar bills,\u201d \u201csuckcess,\u201d \u201cman whole,\u201d \u201cIt don\u2019t matter,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d \u201cWatch it!,\u201d \u201cHere they come!,\u201d \u201cDig yourself\u201d). In the difference between live performance and the published lyrics (for example, specific words and emphasis in his performance of \u201cDesolation Row\u201d in Live 1966: The \u201cRoyal Albert Hall\u201d Concert<\/em>; and in \u201cLily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts\u201d (1975) where the idea of\u00a0 \u201cdrillin\u2019 in the wall\u201d (verse one), keeps pace with the narrative through verse eight (\u201cdrillin in the wall kept up\u201d) until the very end of the song (\u201cand cleaned out the bank safe, it\u2019s said they got off with quite a haul\u201d).<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> A literal re-enactment of this scenario has taken place now on numerous occasions in relation to Banksy\u2019s work, where people whose walls have been painted on have cut out the wall in question (see Works Cited).<\/p>\n Baldick, Chris. The Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms<\/em>, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.<\/p>\n \u201cBansky Graffiti Removed from Wall.\u201d BBC News Online<\/em> 11th<\/sup> Feb 2008. <http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/england\/bristol\/7238555.stm>. Web 12th<\/sup> August 2010.<\/p>\n Burns, John. Series of Dreams: The Vision Songs of Bob Dylan<\/em>. Kirkcudbright: Glen Murray Publishing, 2008.<\/p>\n Corcoran, Neil. ‘Do You, Mr Jones?’ Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors<\/em>. London: Chatto and Windus, 2002.<\/p>\n Dylan, Bob. Bob Dylan: Chronicles (Vol 1)<\/em>. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.<\/p>\n —. Blonde on Blonde<\/em>, Columbia, 1966. CD.<\/p>\n —. Bringing It All Back Home<\/em>. Columbia, 1965. CD.<\/p>\n —. Highway 61 Revisited<\/em>, Columbia, 1965. CD.<\/p>\n Eliot, T.S. Selected Poems<\/em>. London: Harcourt Brace, 1964.<\/p>\n Lethem, Jonathan, \u201cThe Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.\u201d Harper\u2019s Magazine, Feb 2007, 59-71.<\/p>\n Pareles, Jon. \u201cPlagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage?\u201d New York Times<\/em>, July 12th<\/sup>, 2003. <http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/07\/12\/arts\/music\/12DYLA.html<\/a>>. Web. 7 August 2010.<\/p>\n Trager, Oliver. Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia<\/em><\/a>. New York: Billboard Books, 2004.<\/p>\n Wiletz, Sean. Bob Dylan in America. <\/em>London: The Bodley Head, 2010.<\/p>\n This article is licensed under a \u00a0Creative Commons 3.0 License<\/a> although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed, or the author has exercised their right to fair dealing\u00a0under the\u00a0Canadian Copyright Act<\/em>.<\/p>\nArt, Stealing, and Morality<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nShe’s an artist, she don\u2019t look back
\nShe\u2019s got everything she needs
\nShe\u2019s an artist, she don\u2019t look back
\nShe can take the dark out of the nighttime
\nAnd paint the daytime black
\nYou will start out standing
\nProud to steal her anything she sees
\nYou will start out standing
\nProud to steal her anything she sees
\nBut you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
\nDown upon your knees (Dylan 1965, L1-12)<\/p>\n
\nShe\u2019s got no place to fall
\nShe never stumbles
\nShe\u2019s got no place to fall
\nShe\u2019s nobody\u2019s child
\nThe Law can\u2019t touch her at all (Dylan 1965, L13-18)<\/p>\n
\n\u201cDon\u2019t waste your words, they\u2019re just lies\u201d
\nI cried she was deaf
\nAnd she worked on my face until breaking my eyes
\nThen said, \u201cWhat else you got left?\u201d
\nIt was then that I got up to leave
\nBut she said, \u201cDon\u2019t forget
\nEverybody must give something back
\nFor something they get\u201d<\/p>\n
\nI tapped on her drum and asked her how come
\nAnd she buttoned her boot
\nAnd straightened her suit
\nThen she said, \u201cDon\u2019t get cute\u201d
\nSo I forced my hands in my pockets
\nAnd felt with my thumbs
\nAnd gallantly handed her
\nMy very last piece of gum (Dylan 1966, L1-18)<\/p>\nAppropriating the Image<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\nVoices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
\nBut Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
\nYou can tell by the way she smiles
\nSee the primitive wallflower freeze
\nWhen the jelly-faced women all sneeze
\nHear the one with the mustache say, \u201cJeeze
\nI can\u2019t find my knees\u201d
\nOh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
\nBut these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel (Dylan 1966, L29-38)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Dylan-Pliers.jpg\" "\\"Dylan")
<\/a><\/p>\nChanging the Image<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n\u2018Bette Davis\u2019 – American actress famed for playing cold characters.
\n\u2018Romeo\u2019 – one of the two \u2018star-crossed lovers\u2019 in Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet<\/em> (1597).
\n\u2018Cain & Abel\u2019 – the two sons of Adam and Eve (in the Hebrew Bible). \u2018Hunchback of Notre Dame\u2019 – novel by Victor Hugo (1831).
\n\u2018Good Samaritan\u2019 – biblical reference, connotes \u2018loving thy neighbour\u2019.
\n\u2018Ophelia\u2019 – character in Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet<\/em> (1603), potential wife of the eponymous hero.
\n\u2018Noah\u2019 – biblical figure.
\n\u2018Einstein\u2019 – theoretical physicist and intellectual.
\n\u2018Robin Hood\u2019 – heroic rebel in English folklore.
\n\u2018Phantom of the Opera\u2019 – novel by Gaston Leroux (published serially between 1909 and 1910).
\n\u2018Casanova\u2019 – Venetian adventurer and author synonymous with womanizing.
\n\u2018Titanic\u2019 – doomed steamship that sank in 1912.
\n\u2018Nero\u2019 – Roman emperor.
\n\u2018Neptune\u2019 – Greek god of the seas.
\n\u2018Ezra Pound\u2019 – major poet\/figure of the modernist movement.
\n\u2018T.S Eliot\u2019 – major poet\/figure of the modernist movement, famed for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock<\/em> (1915) and The Waste Land<\/em> (1922).<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt takes one to know one,\u201d she smiles
\nAnd puts her hands in her back pockets
\nBette Davis style
\nAnd in comes Romeo, he\u2019s moaning
\n\u201cYou Belong to Me I Believe\u201d
\nAnd someone says, \u201cYou\u2019re in the wrong place my friend
\nYou better leave\u201d
\nAnd the only sound that\u2019s left
\nAfter the ambulances go
\nIs Cinderella sweeping up
\nOn Desolation Row (Dylan 1965, L13-24)<\/p>\n
\nThe Titanic sails at dawn
\nAnd everybody\u2019s shouting
\n\u201cWhich Side Are You On?\u201d
\nAnd Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
\nFighting in the captain\u2019s tower
\nWhile calypso singers laugh at them
\nAnd fishermen hold flowers
\nBetween the windows of the sea
\nWhere lovely mermaids flow
\nAnd nobody has to think too much
\nAbout Desolation Row (Dylan 1965, L97-108)<\/p>\n
\nI have seen them riding seaward on the waves
\nCombing the white hair of the waves blown back
\nWhen the wind blows the water white and black.
\nWe have lingered in the chambers of the sea
\nBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
\nTill human voices wake us, and we drown. (Eliot L124-131)<\/p>\n
\n(About the time the doorknob broke)
\nWhen you asked how I was doing
\nWas that some kind of joke?
\nAll these people that you mention
\nYes, I know them, they\u2019re quite lame
\nI had to rearrange their faces
\nAnd give them all another name
\nRight now I can\u2019t read too good
\nDon\u2019t send me no more letters, no
\nNot unless you mail them
\nFrom Desolation Row (Dylan 1965, L109-120)<\/p>\nNotes<\/h4>\n
Works Cited<\/h4>\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/88x31-1.png\" "\\"88x31")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"