“Let me forget about today until tomorrow”
– Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan was edgy. He smoked. He didn’t care what people thought. He was guru of folk music, neither a singer nor a poet but rather a song and dance man:Bob Dylan\’s Interview on YouTube
And now, he is known as one of the most iconic and revolutionary songwriters of his time. “Mr. Tambourine Man”, featured on his fifth album “Bringing It All Back Home”, was released in March 1965 during the heart of the 1960’s political revolution. Dylan sings (in his own style) about a progressional journey from the public world to an understanding of his own individual consciousness. Essentially, this song explores the principles Blake addresses in “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”. Evenmoreso the overall message of “Mr. Tambourine Man” is strikingly similar to Blake’s .
The song came at a paramount time in history, when millions of young adults were beginning to release wild and unexplained emotions. It was a time that pulled everything away from the group and turned all towards the individual. So what’s any of this got to do with Blake? The two artists overlap in a lot more ways than you’d think.
Firstly, both artists created their work during a time of revolution: Blake composed “Songs of Innocence” in 1789 on the brink of the French Revolution and “Songs of Experience” was written around 1792, with events leading up to Louis XVI’s execution. As I’ve stated above, Dylan wrote his song during the heart of the political revolution in U.S.A.
Another way in which the two artists are similar is the voice used within their pieces. Blake composed both his books of poetry in an interactive and engaging dialogue – many of the poems are told over again with a different outlook. Similarly on this notion, the perspective Blake’s speaker takes in his opening poem of “Songs of Experience” could very well be the interactive Tambourine Man that Dylan addresses in “Mr. Tambourine Man”. On the flip side, the “child” within the first stanza of “Introduction” could also be the speaker of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”. For example Dylan begins is song exclaiming “Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me”. Paralleling this, Blake’s speaker encounters a child who states: “Pipe a song about a Lamb!”…and then “Piper, pipe that song again.”. With the chorus Dylan repeats in “Tambourine Man”, it is obvious that the two speakers asking for another tune could be the same person.
In regards to the meaning of Dylan’s song – despite his reluctance to acknowledge the ‘subtleties’ or obvious poetic allusions it holds – it is clear that he explores the very truth of mystery and touches on the transcendence of art and music to which Blake addresses within “Songs of Experience” and “Songs of Innocence”. Indeed, the speaker in “Mr. Tambourine Man” is on a journey to find himself and can only find it through the assistance of that Tambourine Man, and in this case, Blake.
I think you’re spot on about Blake and Dylan writing in times of cultural upheaval. They were both kind of counter-culturalists in my imagination. Dylan made his fame through his topical folk songs that criticized the politics and cultural norms of mid-century America (a genre he eventually rejected). And many of Blake’s poems in “Songs of Experience” do something similar, e.g. “The Garden of Love” and “The Schoolboy.”
I would also want to add a small point about the role that imagination plays in Blake’s poetry and Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” (This is kind of what I wrote my assignment about!) You’re right to point out that both Blake and Dylan, passing as children, address some singer and ask him to play a song. But more than art, I think, Blake and Dylan are concerned with art as a gateway to creativity. “Mr. Tambourine Man” is one of Dylan’s most bizarre and trippy songs (people thought it was about LSD) and, similarly, lots of Blake’s work is strange and surreal. Both men occasionally suspend reality to achieve some greater artistic purpose (think of Blake’s “Red Dragon” paintings or his “Little Girl/Boy Lost” poems) and don’t apologize for it. Neither artist shied away from things that simply “didn’t make sense” and perhaps even consciously rejected them.
I completely agree with you, Mary and with you Katherine, but I also want to add that I think another key difference between “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Blake’s works is the fact that while both styles of artistic creation are esoteric and difficult to analyze, it is hard to understand the themes of The Door’s famous song whereas the concepts behind Blake’s poems, once retrieved, express feelings that almost everyone can relate to on some level. I think its interesting that in being inaccessible, Blake is still the voice of the majority of humanity.
I thought this was a very interesting analysis. The setting in which each artist created their works was something that I never would have thought about, and I think that the fact that both artists created these works during times of, as Katherine said, “cultural upheaval” makes your analysis even stronger. And i agree with Katherine’s point of each using their art as a medium for making commentary on the situation that was surrounding them. I also really liked the connection you made between “Introduction” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the idea of a “journey” that you mentioned is something that both Blake and Dylan seem to be on in each of their works.
Very interesting analysis, Mary. I found this blog entry particularly amusing because it did not involve a direct connection with William Blake. You explained the premise of Bob Dylan’s song and described how the countercultural and revolutionary vibe of the 60s paralleled the revolutionary vibe that surrounded Blake’s time. It is also intriguing how Dylan references the Bible in some of his songs and holds many views similar to the ones expressed in Songs of Innocence/Experience. Blake was as much a key figure in the Romantic movement as Dylan was in the 60s counterculture movement. I did my blog entry on The Doors and had similar things to say about Blake’s rebellious nature.
Mary,
I think you make a good case here for viewing Dylan as “Blake-like”—in his use of a child-like narrator, his appeals to altered realms of existence, his alliance with protest and rebellion.
But I’d be interested if there was also, as Kevin puts it, a more “direct connection” between Dylan and Blake. Is there anything in “Tambourine Man” that makes you think that Dylan had Blake in mind as he wrote it? (Perhaps you’ve said this and I missed it?)
~jh