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Durham E-Theses `This is what Salvation must be like after a While': Bob Dylan's Critical Utopia KOUVAROU, MARIA How to cite: KOUVAROU, MARIA (2011) `This is what Salvation must be like after a While': Bob Dylan's Critical Utopia, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1391/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 ‘This is what Salvation must be like after a While’: Bob Dylan’s Critical Utopia Maria Kouvarou MA by Research in Musicology Music Department Durham University 2011 Maria Kouvarou ‘This is what Salvation must be like after a While’: Bob Dylan’s Critical Utopia Abstract Bob Dylan’s work has frequently been the object of discussion, debate and scholarly research. It has been commented on in terms of interpretation of the lyrics of his songs, of their musical treatment, and of the distinctiveness of Dylan’s performance style, while Dylan himself has been treated both as an important figure in the world of popular music, and also as an artist, as a significant poet. In his prolific output Dylan deals with a number of recurring themes, which he constantly revisits and develops. One of these themes is the perpetual search for salvation, which runs throughout his entire work, while at the same time taking significantly different forms. I argue in this dissertation that Dylan’s search for salvation takes place within a distinct range of different contexts, which include the longing for social salvation, the striving towards individual fulfilment, the desire for salvation through romantic relationships, and the constant journey towards an idealized place that will bring about a sense of salvation and redemption, while at the same time the idea of religious salvation in a more general sense can also be seen as hovering over all of these more specific contexts. I aim to demonstrate that Dylan’s search for salvation has a strongly utopian character, a search for something characterized by hope, but which, however close it might seem to be, is nevertheless not achieved in reality. Drawing on approaches derived in part from the critical theorist Ernst Bloch and also on more recent writers on the concept of Utopia, I argue that it is through this utopian dimension that Dylan’s work also functions as critique. Dylan, in showing the world’s situation as it should be shows us simultaneously the way it actually is, and it is the gulf between these two that functions as critique. ii ‘This is what Salvation must be like after a While’: Bob Dylan’s Critical Utopia Maria Kouvarou MA by Research in Musicology Music Department Durham University 2011 Contents Abstract ii Title Page iii Declaration and Statement of Copyright iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Aims and Rationale 1 Conceptual Framework 4 Methodology 8 Issues in Dylan 16 Outline and Overview 32 In Conclusion 37 Chapter I: ‘The Times they are a-Changing’: Dreaming of Social and Political Salvation 38 ‘…Blowin’ in the Wind’: Searching for a Possible Answer 42 ‘There is no sense in trying’: The Sound of Hopelessness 46 Social Salvation will bring no Atonement to the Unrighteous 51 ‘…his case it is sealed’: When Justice is Unfair Where Can People Turn? 55 Using Irony as a Weapon 58 ‘Don’t Follow Leaders’: Opposition to a pre-Packaged Future 63 Desolation Row: Escaping Chaos 69 Chapter II: ‘But Sometimes a Man must be alone’: Salvation through Self 74 Forever Young: the Positive Effects of Constant Renewal 75 ‘I and I’: Multiplicity of the Identity and its Dangers 84 ‘When I paint my Masterpiece’: Drawing Inspiration 93 ‘Shot of Love’: Drug Influence on Bob Dylan’s Work 98 Chapter III: ‘Without your Love I’d be nowhere at all’: Salvation through Romantic Relationships 105 ‘…just like a Woman’: Women Dismissed 109 ‘Stay while the Night is still Ahead’: Sexual Suggestion 115 ‘…and still you’re not here’: Out of Reach 118 Finding ‘Utopia’ in Everlasting Love 122 ‘I ain’t Sayin’ you Treated me Unkind, but don’t Think Twice, It’s all Right’ 126 Chapter IV: ‘There are no Sins Inside the Gates of Eden’: The Place of Salvation 133 Perpetual Movement 135 Bringin’ it all back Home 139 Living in the City, Longing for the Countryside 142 ‘Nothing here now to hold them’: Places that Someone has to Leave 146 ‘This place don’t Make Sense to me no More’: Places of Insecurity 150 ‘Goin’ to Acapulco’: Places to be Reached 153 Existing and Non-Existing Places 156 Moving to the Spiritual Path 161 Chapter V: Conclusions 165 Appendix I: Travelling through musical styles: Dylan’s musical shifting 177 Appendix II: Social Salvation through Spiritual Salvation 186 Appendix III: ‘Sometimes a Man must be Alone’: the Importance of Solitude 191 Appendix IV: Isis, Johanna, Sara and more Goddess-like Figures 197 Appendix V: Locating Love 207 Bibliography 210 Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been completed if there was not for the support and help of certain people, who I would like to acknowledge. I am grateful to my parents for supporting me with every possible way, and for spending so many hours on the telephone, willing to listen to me and provide their precious advices. I am also deeply indebted to my supervisor, Professor Max Paddison, for being a patient and supportive guide through the whole process of my MA and who, with his careful, critical comments on the draft he managed to further broaden my perspective on the subject of this dissertation, and helped to make it realizable. v Introduction Aims and Rationale In this dissertation I aim to demonstrate the ways in which the notion of salvation is treated in the work of Bob Dylan. As Michael Gray points out, the continuous search for ‘salvation’ is constantly evident in Dylan’s songs. He writes: ‘In fact the quest for salvation might well be called the central theme of Bob Dylan’s entire output’.1 Steven Heine, in Bargainin’ for Salvation: Dylan, a Zen master? which explores the search for salvation through Dylan’s songs, supports Gray’s view and goes further by claiming that in the whole corpus of his work Dylan sees himself as an outcast constantly struggling to attain redemption, trying to find his way to the gates of heaven.2 This quest for salvation and redemption represents, of course, the strongly utopian character of Dylan’s music, where the imagery of ‘heaven’ signifies Utopia. The German critical theorist and Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, much of whose work focuses on the concepts of hope and of Utopia, has pointed out that, as far as the request for heaven and the life after death is concerned, ‘This is indeed the divine realm, that which appears at the end, or that which announces, that which the Messiah, which Christ brings….’3 Dylan, of course, does not give a specific religious character in his work that proclaims his appeals for heavenly paradise, apart from the small period of time when his work was overtly Christian during the late 1970s and the very beginning of the 1980s. As Mellers has argued, ‘Always Dylan’s ‘criticism of life’ involved the possibility for a “religious” interpretation. It was not specifically Christian and it did not need to be; given his Midwestern background, however, it is 1 Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan (Essex: Continuum Press, 2000), p.207-8 2 Steven Heine, Bargainin’ for Salvation: Dylan, a Zen master? (London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009), p.1 3 Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, transl. by Jack Zipes and Frank Meckelnburg (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989), p.6 1 surprising that in Slow Train Coming, it should have taken a Christian revivalist form.’4 It can be argued that it is perhaps not a particularly surprising development in a person’s life that they should turn their hopes directly to religion if they come to the realization that the pleasures of the world alone cannot provide a sense of salvation and spiritual fulfillment. Nevertheless, while religion might underlie a person’s world view, it might not necessarily take a specifically religious form. In McGregor’s view, religion had always been a constant subject of Dylan’s work, not only in terms of his use of biblical language and allusions, but also in terms of the perpetual handling of the issue of the relationship between Man and God.5 The theme of religious salvation has a persistent place in Dylan’s work, in images of sinners and saints, jokers and thieves and faith healers which are often present in his songs.

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