I liked your transformation of the Dadaist poem int blues. If I’m reading you right about purposely mixed diction though, I think the blues folks were careful about sound when doing so. E.g,
The lights is on people, but it happens just the same.
The lights is on, happens just the same.
In the swaying nights, you can hear the flames.
Rings true partly because “is” is more propulsive than “are.”
But “those” here isn’t as propulsive as either “the” or “them.”
I heard those shrill bells, there was spinning in the dust.
When I heard those shrill bells, there was spinning in the dust.
When the levee breaks, the dams is torn apart.
I’m going to read some more of your blog. Have you put that poem to music yet?
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Originally Posted by FrankHudson
Yes, this move to random connections and purposefully mixed diction is an old Modernist literary tactic that was at least 50 years old when Dylan started putting it to use in popular song lyrics. It originated during WWI when what passed for conventional wisdom was easily questioned by a group of artists who called themselves by a nonsense word: Dada. Some Dada lyrics and poems were just not-actual-words sounds, essentially pointing out the arbitrariness of language itself (rock'n'roll derivation, Gerry Goffin's lyrics to Barry Mann's "Who Put the Bomp...") Others used made up words or words used in nonsense ways. (Rock'n'roll derivation: I Zimbra by the Talking Heads, lyrics adapted from Dadaist Hugo Ball).
As you point out though, this kind of purposeful destruction or ignoring of normal use of language easily crosses over into meaning for a listener as the linguistic mind finds patterns just as the eye does looking at clouds or starfields.
I've translated some Dada poets myself, and it's a real challenge trying to figure out what to, well figure out as a distinct image, and what was intended to be a impenetrable random set of words.
Here's one of the most popular pieces done for my Parlando Project, translated from Dadaist Tristan Tzara "The Death of Apollinaire," a elegy written about the writer who died of the 1918 flu pandemic while still recovering from his war wounds just before the WWI armistice.
play my English translation and performance of The Death of Apollinaire
I think Tzara was sincere in writing this, or at least that was my best sense after translating it from French, other translators differ.
But when I was presented with the challenge of translating one Dadaist Hugo Ball it was a lot tougher to decide what to make into a perceptible English image and what to leave as random combinations. I wrote about that process in some detail on my blog, but the choice I ended up making was to make it into a blues (a move Dylan often choose too). After all, it's just not Dadaists who make us wonder what they're talking about, when blues like "Smokestack Lightning" are not exactly straightforward narratives even if they have undeniable power.
blog post about translating Hugo Ball's The Ghost into Ghost Blues
Here's a book that helped me consider how framing and expectations can change how one reads a song lyric compared to Modernist poetry. It takes a bunch of transcribed Blues lyrics and prints them as if they are Modernist verse, as if the pre-war Blues folks where Modernists like e e cummings or those Dadaists.
The Blues Line book listing on Goodreads
It took me a few years to decide. Yes, they were Modernists. Bob Dylan was smarter, he figured this by 1965 or so. |