Some Perspectives on Dylan: How Much Credit can We Afford Him?

Heavenly Graces vs. Literary Criticism

            “Music and history don't exist for Ricks' own metaphorical convenience” (Yaffe 28).  David Yaffe, in “Tangled up in Bob,” takes a hard line in describing Christopher Ricks’ Dylan’s Visions of Sin.  Yaffe claims that, while Ricks has made profound discoveries in the realm of Dylanology, he takes too much liberty in his comparisons between Dylan songs and the Bible, Donne, Keats, Milton, and Homer.  Ricks has acknowledged his presumption to a certain extent, but defends his work by stating, “I certainly don't make many claims for allusion” (Yaffe 27).  Ricks work is exploratory, simply trying to make comparison, not claiming that Dylan had an elaborate scheme to follow a labyrinthine progression of the seven deadly sins, four cardinal virtues, or three heavenly graces.  There are simply elements of such sins, virtues, and graces in Dylan’s work.  Yaffe particularly criticizes Ricks’ lyrical leaps to compare other poetry in his description of “Blind Willie McTell,” claiming Ricks takes too much freedom in his comparison, dancing around the actual meaning behind the words.  Both Yaffe and Ricks accede that Dylan “has a way with words” (Yaffe 27), but while Ricks make the jump to the scholarly, Yaffe hesitates to read beyond the cultural context of the song.

            Christopher Ricks, an Oxford professor of poetry, writes to an audience inside a belvedere of vast knowledge of poetry.  His ideas are largely concerning the potential parallels of “Blind Willie McTell” to other literary works of varied antiquity, namely the Bible.  Ricks assays the line in the song:  “But power and greed and corruptible seed/ Seem to be all that there is” (qtd in Ricks 71).  Ricks proceeds by pointing a finger at the Old Testament:  “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (qtd in 71), and then jumps to its New Testament counterpart:  “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible” (qtd in 71).  Enter the heavenly grace hope, per Christopher Ricks:  “with the New Testament offering its hope” (71).  Ricks has clearly put a lot of thought into this connection, squeezing so much out of two lines.  The sin Ricks had been dealing with in the chapter was envy, a close cousin to the deadly one:  greed.  Fortunately, Ricks possesses a heavenly grace in his corner to counter the envy:  hope. 

            Yaffe makes a point of returning to the basics in “Tangled up in Bob:”  “Over twenty pages of precious wordplay and meta-Dylan references (to “Gotta Serve Somebody”), Ricks does not even mention that Dylan was not merely summoning up William Tell” (28).  In Yaffe’s view then, Dylan was simply tipping his hat to William Tell, and Ricks tried to read too much into the lyrics of the song, which is a part of, after all, a song.  A song is meant to be listened to, not read.  Yaffe’s opinion does not dismiss Dylan as completely non-literary; he simply opines that Ricks uses Dylan’s work to play out an elaborate spiritual battle through his explanations.  Therefore, the disagreement is not on the level of Dylan’s literary prowess, rather Yaffe’s altercation lies in Ricks’ interpretation, or Ricks’ analogous tone in extrapolating meaning in the words.

            Ricks, on the other hand, is writing for the purpose of putting “Blind Willie McTell” into a literary context.  He refrains from making a blanket statement of absolute authoritarian purpose.  Ricks does not claim that all of the allusions to the Bible are intentional, merely that they are there.  Although out of this context, Ricks makes the statement to the Boston Globe:  “I don't think that 'Lay, Lady, Lay' is an allusion to 'Come, Madam, come’ I think that there are an extraordinary number of affinities between the Donne poem [“To His Mistress Going to Bed”] and the Dylan song, and the affinities…are very illuminating” (Yaffe, 27).  Ricks, in general, would have audiences listen to Dylan with a more acute ear, rather than writing him off as a pop icon. 

            Ricks and Yaffe are on the same page in regards to Dylan possessing a viable literary savvy.  However, Yaffe contends that Ricks uses Dylan to suit his own agenda, rather than letting Dylan’s words speak for themselves.  Ricks would say that his explanations are simply to be used to grasp the gravity of Dylan’s work, and place a Dylan record on a shelf a little higher up than it had been.