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Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize for literature - Livemint

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Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize for

literature
Nothing in the pantheon of 20th century ballads, folk songs and rock can equal the
diversity of Bob Dylans poetry

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Dipankar De Sarkar

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Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize for literature - Livemint

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature for having created new poetic expressions within
the great American song tradition, according to the Nobel Foundation. Photo: AFP

Well, the times they most certainly are a-changin. And if you thought that was the
most clichd opening of all, remember this: when Bob Dylan wrote this song back in
1964, the eponymous track of his third album, it was nothing short of revolutionary.
Every teenagers blood boiled to it.
Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature for having created new poetic expressions
within the great American song tradition, according to the Nobel Foundation.
Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Dylan was a great
poet in the English speaking tradition. For 54 years now hes been at it, reinventing
himself, constantly creating a new identity.
For at least a week now, fans of the singer-songwriter have held their breaths in
anticipation of a long-demanded honour. But new poetic expressions will leave them
underwhelmed. Is that it? Really?
Dylan deserves the Nobel, they will tell the committee, because he is, well, Dylan, the
writer of 37 studio albums who turned around everything about songwriting and
performing with his twangy nasal voice and a style of harmonica playing thatthough
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Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize for literature - Livemint

it was thought to be so bad at the timehas been copied since by every three-chordknowing punk guitar player.
Also Read: Distilling Bob Dylan into 17 syllables
But today the art form must step asideeven though Dylan, born Robert Allen
Zimmerman, bent it to mould everything that followed in Western popular music. It is
his words that have won him the 2016 Nobel.
Nothing in the pantheon of 20th century ballads, folk songs and rock can equal the
diversity of Dylans poetry: the volcanic rage of Hard Rain; the death knell sounded for
old order in The Times; the wistful look-back of My Back Pages; the anguish of
Blowin in the Wind, the anthem of every generation since Dylans; the unbearable
heartache of Most of the Time (I dont compromise and I dont pretend/I dont even
care if I ever see her again/Most of the time); the tenderness of Love Minus Zero/No
Limit.
In The Times They Are A-Changin, Dylan tells senators, Congressmen, mothers and
fathersanyone whod bother to listen to his plaintive croak back in 1964:
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin
And the rst one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin
And he updated it in 2000, in The Essential Bob Dylan. In Things Have Changed, a song
that won the Oscar for the best movie song in 2001, he sang:
People are crazy and times are strange
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Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize for literature - Livemint

Im locked in tight, Im out of range

I used to care, but things have changed
But Dylan, who has now won the Nobel, an Oscar, an honorary Pulitzer and several
Grammies, does care. Every album of his stands testimony to that. And that is why
this award is Dylans for an entirely different reason: it encompasses every living
breathing fuming word ever written in the grand American tradition of song-writing.
Written by every wandering minstrel, every barefoot hobo hitching a ride in a wagon
train, every Woody Guthrie singing about the Dust Bowl famine, every black slave
howling for their rights, every white teenager wanting to pull down the architects of
war, every old-before-their-time suicidal 20-something writing and singing in the
mournful exile of a bedsit.
Also Read: The Bob Dylan crossword
The Nobel committee is spot on in xing his oeuvre within that tradition.
That is why the Nobel is Dylans, but not his alone.
Dipankar De Sarkar

TOPICS: BOB DYLAN NOBEL PRIZE LITERATURE POETRY

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