Iconic American folk and rock artist Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature today by the Swedish Academy for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 to Ukrainian jewish parents fleeing racist persecution of pogroms, Bob Dylan revolutionized contemporary music and culture by fusing various influences.
Panoramic lyricism
His inspiration came from the Depression Era socialist protest folk songs of Woody Guthrie, the ecstatic soulfulness of rock n roll founding fathers Little Richard and Chuck Berry, the stream-of-consciousness writing of Irish novelist James Joyce, the imagery of urban surrealism of painter Edward Hopper, the romanticism of Scottish poet Robert Burns, and the raging, drunken lyricism of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas from whom he borrowed his stage name.
His music also reflects his contemporaries: the Beat poetry of Allen Ginsberg, the mythologized Americana of Jack Kerouac, the grittiness of legendary bluesman T-Bone Burnett, the apocalyptic surreal Christian imagery of country singer of Johnny Cash, the civil rights struggle and oratorical eloquence of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the gentle subversion offered by folk songstresses and his one time flame Joan Baez, to name but a few.
It was Bob Dylan who inspired the Beatles and countless others to go beyond trite pop music conventionality and be socially relevant. It was Bob Dylan’s songs that Jimi Hendrix further elevated with his guitar wizardry with is renditions of Dylan’s “All Along the Watch Tower” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” It was Bob Dylan’s membership into the supergroup Traveling Wilburys along with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty that made it all the more super. It is Bob Dylan that contemporary rock bands the likes of the Counting Crows, his own son Jakob Dylan’s the Wallflowers reference in their own songs. It was Bob Dylan who was played by Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and others in the movie I’m Not There.
To imbibe Dylan’s lyrics—inseparable and inconceivable without his music—is to revisit his contemporaries, his inspirations, his struggles, and his milieu in a most sublime and poetic experience.
Poetic license
That an esteemed literary award has honored a musician is not at all strange to any true student of the arts. Before the written word inadvertently dichotomized literature into words that were meant to be read and words meant to be said and sung, literature and song were once one and the same. Oral traditions such as myths and legends were far more beguiling and easier to tell, remember, and pass down from generation to generation with rhyme and rhythm as well as musical accompaniment.
Lyricism, literally, stems from lyrics.
Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine, acclaimed, “People who only experience poetry on the page might dissent, but this Nobel award is a way of bringing it all back home, of both reminding us of poetry’s roots and moving it forward through changing times.”
Booker Prize winner and acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie tweeted, “Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition. Great choice.”
Nonetheless, there was knee-jerk opposition.
Author Gary Shteyngart sarcastically wrote, “I totally get the Nobel committee. Reading books is hard.”
Novelist Jodi Picoult posted, “I’m happy for Bob Dylan, #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?”
Ultimately, it is Dylan’s own works that speak best for him:
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark
Easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred
“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
