By Ratan Bhattacharjee
“Music was my refuge . I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” Maya Angelou in ‘Gather Together in My Name’
Poetry is unthinkable without musical cadence and rhythm. Bob Dylan the poet was born with music and all the mistakes and misconception seemed to have occurred there and many still are unable to regard him as a poet unless they expand and redefine literary boundaries. Since 1901 , the Nobel Prize Committee never saluted any musician and song writer as a Laureate for this honour. Bob’s songs inspired the Nobel Committee members to expand the horizon of poetry and accommodate a space for songs. A ‘better late than never’ decision is finally taken by the Committee in spite of the protest and dissent from a few members such as the French writer Pierre Assouline who finds it funny to see Bob’s name as a Nobel Laureate. Bob Dylan’s name appeared much below Haruki Murakami or Philip Roth but he finally emerged as the winner to get 18 carat gold and a cash certificate for $925000.
“My range is limited,” wrote Bob Dylan the mind-blowing rock singer of America since the turbulent sixties .He was born not with a silver spoon in his mouth but with songs and a poetic mind to mould the music He is now the Nobel Laureate 2016 in Literature. It is a ground-breaking choice of a poetic mind that became the icon of music for the marginalised and his songs were almost like anthems for the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements. He has been writing his own songs for over five decades and has also succeeded as a performing artist.
In my college days I was a fan of Sachin Dev Barman’s folk songs and when I joined a college in the North East I would listen with rapt attention to the folk songs of Goalpara. Tagore was a fan of Lalan Fakir’s folk songs and Baul lyrics. He used them so skilfully in his devotional songs of Gitanjali which won him the prestigious Nobel Prize in 1913. The metamorphosis of songs into literature requires a great poetic mind that is sensitive to rhyme and rhythm which the likes of Tagore and Sachin Dev Barman and Bhupen Hazarika possessed. Today when newspaper headlines announce that Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize 2016 for his songs I felt that the Nobel Committee is finally able to accept the redefining of literature as crafted by Bob Dylan and to do justice to a great man of folk literature who has all his life sung for peace. The recognition that comes for Dylan is also an acknowledgement that he is no less a poet. He was not prepared for the bang after so many whimpers about his poems which are performed by him as songs.
Finally the barrier between the two worlds of Music and Poetry has dissolved and the contours of poetry are redefined. In 1993 Toni Morrison got the Nobel Prize and America was waiting for another writer or poet to get it again. But this year America got the recognition for its most popular icon of rock at par with great Nobel Laureates like WB Yeats, Tagore Samuel Beckett or Gabriel Garcia Marquez . Only George Bernard Shaw got both the Oscar and the Nobel Prize. Bob Dylan got the Oscar and Nobel along with the prestigious Grammy Award . His basic inspiration was from the folk songs. Swedish Academy considered Bob Dylan as the creator of new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition and in fact for the first time redefined the boundaries of literature in a healthy way. But in a musical career spanning half a century, Bob Dylan did not have a smooth sailing. He had his critics who went to the extent of saying that he has no voice. Bob wrote with a note of frustration, “Some of the music critics say I can’t sing; I croak. ..sound like a frog .They say my voice is shot; That I have no voice.”
Dylan is called a plagiarist for using quotes from Jack London in ‘Chronicles,’ from one Japanese poet in ‘Love and Theft’ and from Ovid in ‘Modern Times’. But these are not new things. The icon of British literature, Shakespeare is also criticised as a crow with the feathers of a peacock. Many, still after four hundred years of his death are busy finding fault with his borrowing this and that line from some unworthy people of his time trying to prove him to be a plagiarist..His 38 Studio Albums have sold 125 million copies around the world and can be called a living legend. But Bob Dylan too learnt in the same humble way from the past tradition. With the sensitivity of the past in his backbone, he continued writing. He who is the ‘brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition, himself said : “It all came out of traditional music , traditional folk music , traditional rock and roll and traditional big band swing orchestra music .. I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs.” Dylan’s caravan too goes while the nasty low minded critics bark constantly at him. Even in the Nobel Committee his name is vehemently opposed by some poets and writers of the stature of Irvine Welsh saying that honouring him (Dylan) with the Nobel Prize is ‘ill conceived nostalgia award made for senile gibbering hippies.’
As the son of a shop owner in a poverty stricken family, he saw suffering and sadness from close quarters. Sara Danius , the permanent Secretary of Swedish Academy rightly observes about this great son of Duluth Minnesota, that his writings cover ‘ from high to low, from black to white.’ Times they are a changin’ and the recognition for a song writer like Bob Dylan was the need of the hour to have a break-through in a real sense for the bold voice for the marginalised Those who try to prove that his nomination for the Nobel was a funny thing, might not have heard his songs in the Album, ‘Tangled up in Blues’ and songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ or The Times They are a changin and his Album ‘Bringing it All Back Home’’.
Describing herself as a ‘Lover of Bob Dylan’ the spokesperson of Nobel Committee Sara Danius’ rightly justified his songs as comparable to that of the Greek writers Sappho which were also written for performance. Still we recall the golden days of the Album release of Blonde and Blonde of 1966. It is not for nothing that he left behind many a writer like Philip Roth or Hakuni Marakumi. Since 2013 Bob Dylan’s name has come before the Nobel Committee but they too required courage for this ground- breaking decision. Salman Rushdie is overwhelmed by the decision of the Committee. He says, “ Dylan towers over everyone.” Dylan himself knew that this recognition is problematic for the intellectual elites who did not readily agree that he is a poet. Now the whole world recognises him as a poet who ranks at par with Yeats, Tagore and Tony Morrison.
Elvis freed our body through his songs. Bob Dylan frees our mind. He said about his song, “I am speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.” He succeeded long ago when his poetry made him a singer. But the recognition finally came in his life time and he becomes a living legend now that his songs have made him a poet.
(Ratan Bhattacharjee is Associate Professor and Head Post Graduate Dept of English, Dum Dum Motijheel College and can be reached at [email protected])
About the Writer :Ratan Bhattacharjee is the Associate Professor and Head , Post Graduate Dept of English , Dum Dum Motijheel College and may be contacted at [email protected]
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