Last Thursday it was announced that Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize for literature and while some might cry “JUDAS!” I canât help but reply with “play it f**king loud!” While Leonard Cohen realises that we already know Dylan is great when he says this award is like âpinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountainâ (just as the man himself says, “you donât need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”), the acknowledgement of Dylanâs lyricism as poetry sets a precedent on how we look at music and lyrics from now on.
For six decades, Dylan has developed and changed his style from folk to rock, turning tragedy into beauty with three chords and his words as he sings “for the loser now will be later to win.” But while in one song he may be inspiring hope, in another he brings us back to reality: âBut even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand nakedâ (another reason to not want Trump to win, so we donât have to picture that). As the secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius puts it, âHe’s a great poet â a great poet in the English-speaking tradition. For 54 years he’s been at it, reinventing himself constantly, creating a new identity.â
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His versatility and ability to make words his own is what has made him this mysterious voice of the world, one that has caused great division. The people that love him make him individually their own, which, former poet laureate Andrew Motion says means, âwe can feel a curiously personal kind of pleasure in this tremendous honouring of himâ. After growing up in a household where Dylan is referred to as âUncle Bobâ, Motionâs sentiment rang true. However, the sceptics have also had their say, questioning how much of a poet he really is. I mean, just take this section from Mr. Tambourine Man and decide:
Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
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But itâs so easy to just pick a song of Dylanâs and say itâs poetry. Itâs the idea of pop music that makes people question Dylanâs win. But just like how heâs evolved over 50 odd years, so has poetry and literature. More and more people are finding poetry unapproachable without realising that because you might listen to music youâre also involving yourself in poetry and literature. Of course, what makes the lyric is also the music and the voice and it can be strange to read lyrics on a piece of paper. But all art forms intertwine that I wonât be surprised if soon the Nobel prize for literature will be won by another singer-songwriter â someone just had to go first.
While I, and so many others, have written and spoken about this controversial win, the winner has responded in perfect Dylan style: with silence. Obama put it perfectly when he congratulated him on the win saying that, “You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise.” Itâs that mystery around him that keeps you intrigued. Heâs created this character that ties in with his many personas in his song writing. Because you know the lyrics, you think you know the man. I like to picture him as part of the cynics, thinking to himself, “you just want to be on the side thatâs winning.”