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E-book Dylan's Autobiography of a Vocation : A Reading of the Lyrics 1965-1967

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Penilaian

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Th e following book on Bob Dylan’s songs does not directly concern Bob Dylan a.k.a Robert Zimmerman, either the actual person or the musical-cultural celebrity. Nor does it claim to make claims about what Bob Dylan intended in or when composing any one of his songs. Instead, I mostly refer to Bob Dylan’s work and certain biographically relevant events in terms of a fi gure named “Dylan” (minus quotation marks) who I maintain subtends the songs otherwise authored by the other Bob Dylan. Extending the referential range of Jack Kerouac’s continuous autobiographical writings, thatDylan fi gure allegorically pens an ongoing, palimpsest autobiography, less linear than revolving in both his songs and albums. I discuss all of each album-period’s songs; and I rearrange their sequence not by their appearance on Dylan albums or by strict discographical chronology, but rather the better to show variations on a theme or, specifi cally, diff erent aspects of Dylan’s subterranean concerns as a musical-lyrical artist. His continuous autobiography, that is, pointedly deals with issues aff ecting his vocation: he wants his songs—and he inscribes this desire in them—to help him and, as a corollary, potentially others to face an environment that consists of the ineluctable catastrophe and opportunity that we otherwise call existence. In the following chapters, I variously refer to this bottom line as the “existential real,” or simply “the real,” or the “existential.” Th is “existential” is not reducible to any fi xed apprehension of the irrational; it is not “existential ism ,” not a portable or even quasi-systematic concept that one might plug into this or that experience to account for it. Rather, it more resembles Wallace Stevens’ epiphany of the poetic moment Th ey will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.We shall return at twilight from the lecturePleased that the irrational is rationalUntil fl icked by feeling, in a gildered street,I call you by name, my green, my fl uent mundo.You will have stopped revolving except in crystal. But where Stevens’ “fl uent” muse would supposedly deliver him up to the clear fullness of what he elsewhere calls a vital “plain sense of things,” Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna,” to take just one of his analogous muse fi gures, would bring him in subjective proximity to a contentless and therefore indiff erently “revolving” real. “Blowin’ in the wind” from the beginning, the existential for Dylan exists only in a state of becoming within a fi eld of subjective apprehension. For those reasons, it manifests itself in his songs as a virtually endless procession of images and insights at diff erent times throughout his songwriting career. In a 1966 lyric, for example, he can articulate disappointment at how others (alias his audience) fail to discern his work’s concerted quest to come upon the real. But in another song, “Dark Eyes” in 1985, he can register how others, whether they know it or not, equally despair from being haunted by the real: “A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.” I use “spiritual” to designate both this view of others and Dylan’s lyrical eff orts to front the real on subjective terms. All aspects of this vision fund his ongoing spiritual autobiography. His songs show him multitudinously calibrating his experiences of external and internal events against the horizon of his oncoming awareness of the Absurd. Th e way I see it, the vocational project primarily to situate his work in that context begins full force in the creatively explosive period beginning with his 1965 songs in and around Bringing It All Back Home , and reaches a momentary resting point as recorded in the lyrics comprising John Wesley Harding (1967).

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

920 REN d

Penerbit

USA : Bloomsbury Academic., 2017

Deskripsi Fisik

226 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781501328541

Klasifikasi

920

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Biography, Obituary

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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