Death and Transcendence in the Lyrics of Conor Oberst Diplomarbeit
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“A Hopeless Romantic?” Death and Transcendence in the Lyrics of Conor Oberst Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Alina Stockinger am Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Begutachter Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Hugo Keiper Graz, 2008 2 Ich möchte meinem Betreuer Hugo Keiper dafür danken, dass er uns Studierenden die Möglichkeit bietet, im literaturwissenschaftlichen Neuland der Rock- und Poplyrics zu forschen, wo es noch viel Platz für neue Ideen und Gedanken gibt und dessen literarische Wurzeln oft auch im klassischen Kanon englischer und amerikanischer Literatur vergraben liegen. Ohne Professor Hugo Keipers motivierende, unterstützende und geduldige Betreuung hätte ich es nicht gewagt, dieses spannende und noch wenig erforschte Gebiet zu betreten. An dieser Stelle möchte ich mich auch bei den folgenden Menschen bedanken: Diana – danke, dass du mich auf allen meinen Wegen liebevoll und mit unendlicher Geduld unterstützt. Javi – danke für deine ansteckende Lebensfreude. Nikola und Martin – danke für eure große Hilfe bei der Umschlaggestaltung. Jan – danke, dass du mir spannendes philosophisches Material zum Thema Tod herausgesucht hast und Benji – danke, dass du mir zu Weihnachten 2006 meine erste Bright Eyes-CD geschenkt hast. 3 Für Diana und Billa. 4 Table of Contents Introduction, Theory, Methods, and Background Information Introduction: Mysterious death and its many roles in this paper…………………………. 7 Theory: Authorship and Romanticism…………………………………………………… 9 Methods: Literary approaches……………………………………………………………. 12 Structure and terminology ……………………………………………………………….. 17 Text, music, and voice……………………………………………………………………. 18 Background: The beginning of a career ………………………………………………….. 20 Politics and protests………………………………………………………………………. 22 Inspirations, influences, and intertextuality………………………………………………. 24 Chapter 1: “Part of the puzzle” and universal oneness. Death awareness and ‘carpe diem’. Romantic transcendentalism. “The Big Picture”. Time and transience. Oberst’s awkward introductions. “At the Bottom of Everything”. Predestination and freewill. Romantic transcendence…………………………………………………………………... 27 Oberst’s cosmic puzzle……………………………………………………………………. 29 A song of Romantic transcendentalism? …………………………………………………. 35 Enigmatic introductions…………………………………………………………………… 38 Finding “The Big Picture” “At the Bottom of Everything”………………………………. 42 Determinism and freewill………………………………………………………………… 43 Chapter 2: Death as a liberating force. Plato, the ‘cage metaphor’, and “Landlocked Blues”. Nihilism and the motif of ‘Todessehnsucht’. Metamorphoses of the ‘clouded mind’. Questioning the (im)mortal soul in “Don’t Know When But A Day Is Gonna Come”. The peregrination of life and the metaphor of the circle. A cage called life………………………………………………………………………….. 47 Escaping life ………………………………………………………………………………. 49 5 Cures for the blues – alcohol, writing, and singing ………………………………………. 50 Flee from the “horror vacui”………………………………………………………………. 52 “Landlocked Blues”: Modernist or Romantic?…………………………………………… 53 Problems of fragmented reading…………………………………………………………... 54 Oberst’s lyrical development: Abandoning ‘Todessehnsucht’…………………………… 55 The “clouded mind” in search of clarity and purification…………………………………. 55 The (im)mortal soul……………………………………………………………………….. 58 Concluding the “cage metaphor” and introducing the idea of returning home…………… 59 ‘Peregrinatio’: Returning ‘home’ and realisations of the circle metaphor……………….. 60 Chapter 3: Oberst’s Apocalypse. “Four Winds” and its relation to Ezekiel, Eliot, Yeats, and Blake. The Dylan/Oberst comparison. Cruel and soothing death in the apocalyptic “No One Would Riot for Less”. Apocalyptic writings ……………………………………………………………………… 65 The winds of change………………………………………………………………………. 66 Oberst’s wasteland………………………………………………………………………… 67 An eponymous “school of meditation”……………………………………………………. 71 Parallels between “Four Winds and “The Second Coming”……………………………… 72 Cassadaga: The lyric persona’s personal place of rebirth………………………………... 74 Political readings of “Four Winds”……………………………………………………….. 76 Oberst vs. Dylan…………………………………………………………………………… 77 Cruel heartless Death in “No One Would Riot for Less”…………………………………. 81 Chapter 4: Death & Love. Personifications of Death. “A Poetic Retelling of an Unfortunate Seduction”, “Hotel California”, and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. Eros and Thanatos…………………………………………………………………………. 85 Oberst’s “Night-Mare Life-in-Death”……………………………………………………... 86 “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”……………………………………………………………… 89 6 Summary, Results, and Conclusion Characteristics of Oberst’s lyrics of death and transcendence…………………………….. 92 The song-poems of “A Hopeless Romantic”? ……………………………………………. 94 References 1. Primary Sources 1.1. Conor Oberst………………………………………………………………….. 99 1.2. Others…………………………………………………………………………. 99 2. Secondary Sources 2.1. Printed Literature……………………………………………………………… 100 2.2. Online 2.2.1. Interviews and articles…………………………………………………. 102 2.2.2. Wikipedia articles……………………………………………………… 103 2.2.3. Youtube videos………………………………………………………… 103 2.2.4. Forum discussion………………………………………………………. 104 2.3. Films…………………………………………………………………………… 105 Appendix 1: List of Songs ………………………………………………………………... 106 Appendix 2: Lyrics 1. “The Big Picture”………………………………………………………………….. 107 2. “At the Bottom of Everything”…………………………………………………….. 109 3. “Landlocked Blues”………………………………………………………………... 110 4. “Four Winds”………………………………………………………………………. 111 5. “No One Would Riot For Less”……………………………………………………. 112 6. “A Poetic Retelling of an Unfortunate Seduction”………………………………… 113 Appendix 3: Summaries 1. Summary…………………………………………………………………................ 115 2. Zusammenfassung…………………………………………………………………. 116 7 Introduction, Theory, Methods, and Background Information Introduction: Mysterious death and its many roles in this paper We understand then do we not? What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted? What the study could not teach – what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not? Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman’s three short lines sum up one of the main concerns of this introductory chapter – that death is actually inaccessible and not understandable as far as its very nature is concerned. After death, we no longer have the ability to make ourselves heard. Whitman’s contemporary, Emily Dickinson elegantly alludes to the inadequacy of words when it comes to describing death in her poem “There’s something quieter than sleep”: “We – prone to periphrasis,/ Remark that birds have fled!” She expresses the same thought in poetic terms as Paul Tillich does in philosophical terms when he says that death is “the unknown which by its very nature cannot be known” (cited in Edwards 1978/1994: 55). There is no solution, there is no answer to the mystery of death, as is affirmed by Whitman’s question: “We understand then do we not?” (cf. “Restless Explorations”, Smith 2007:4). The very uncertainty of its nature puts death at the core of every religion, and Barloewen even calls it “der entscheidende Topos, um die Unterschiede der Kulturen auf der Erde zu begreifen” (1996:25). However, death does not only differentiate various cultures and religions from each other – it also shapes the identity of each individual since “the way people look at death and dying is invariably connected to the way they look at life” (Stannard 1975:xv). While we can experience the death of others and the feelings resulting from losing someone, we will never be able to know death as personal experience until we die ourselves and with us the ability to communicate our state in death. Nevertheless, the famous doctors Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Raymond Moody published their empirical data including hundreds of reports from people who claim to have had out-of-body experiences and seen their relatives and friends who had died before them, when they were physically dead. 1 Aware of the impossibility to prove these reports true, Kübler-Ross and Moody try to overcome the finality of death by presenting something where there probably is nothing. In his polemical essay “My Death”, philosopher A.J. Ayer recounts his out-of-body experience when he was clinically 1 E.g. in Moody, Raymond A. (1975). The Investigation of a Phenomenon – Survival of a Bodily Death . Georgia: Mockingbird Books. 8 dead for four minutes; he claims to have seen a painful red light and some cosmic guardians, and remembers that he had to bring order into the chaos of the universe by extinguishing the red light. Ayer, however, believes that this was a delusive memory based on the story he had heard from a friend years ago. Ayer rationally explains his vision by claiming that there is no evidence that the brain stops working at the same moment as the heart stops to beat (cf. 1988/1994:226-36). Like Ayer, many scientists argue that a person should be considered ‘dead’ only when the loss of consciousness is irreversible.2 The above debate, however, does not change the fact that we simply do not know what happens after our death or if anything happens at all. This impossibility to explore death scientifically is what makes it such a mysterious and attractive topic for philosophy and literature. When talking and writing about death, however, it is important to notice that the images connected to death and a possible afterlife as well as all discourses about death, come from “life itself” and from “the present world” (Ernst 1991:205). Or as Arleen Beberman puts it: “If we think or