Quote:
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.
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Oh I know all about Dada (I'm an arts graduate)!
I don't believe Dylan was a dadaist though. Many of his lyrics - in fact most - make good sense, and have a poetic charge. Even if his poetic
techniques were sometimes crude, amateurish, there are plenty of beautiful images in his songs, some of them stunning. He always took music dead seriously, even when he was trying to be funny - just not in the same way as many of his fans did. I don't think he meant to feed the nerds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankHudson
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.
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Yes, that's a kind of additional angle. You have a few possibilities:
1. Complex poetry that means something, and is understood correctly (as the poet meant it).
2. Complex poetry that means something, but is incomprehensible..
3. Complex poetry that means something, but is misinterpreted (given the wrong meanings).
4. Complex poetry that means something, but is perceived as Dada-ist nonsense (assumed to have no meaning at all).
5. Dada-ist wordplay that is clearly nonsense..
6. Dada-ist wordplay that is perceived to be complex poetry (and thereby misinterpreted).
7. Dada-ist wordplay that accidentally evokes unintended meaning.
IMO, Dylan, at different times, was responsible for 1-4. I can accept occasionally he was responsible for 5-7. And of course sometimes he just wrote fairly straightforward song lyrics, not "poetry" at all, except in the sense that they rhymed and scanned!
John Lennon was never really much good at 1-4. But (at least in I Am the Walrus) he had a good crack at 6. (His books, btw, used sardonic neologisms based on puns, with occasionally unintentional surrealist impact - i.e., they sometimes worked as 7.)
Leonard Cohen, meanwhile, barely wrote
complex poetry at all. He had the skill to use common language to express deep meanings - just the occasional striking image - seemingly surreal, but loaded with meaning. ("You notice there's a highway that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder"; "The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor"; "I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet".)
(Rest of your post is great stuff, no further comment here.
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