Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize speech: 'What does it all mean?'

Folk song writer Bob Dylan talks about inspiration for song writing & how great songs are pure poetry just as the greatest of literature is.

NOBEL PRIZE & SONGWRITING

Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize speech: 'So what does it all mean?'

Folk musician Bob Dylan, the surprise 2016 Nobel Prize Winner in literature, finally delivered his Nobel lecture within the deadline.

This means he will retain his prize and receive the prize money.

Dylan's acceptance speech was delivered to the Swedish Academy, which selects the prize winner, by the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden. Bob Dylan will now be able to collect the $923,000 in prize money that comes with the prize.

The requirement to receive the prize is that a Nobel lecture be given that is either "a short speech, a performance, a video broadcast or even a song – and must be held within six months of 10 December, the date of the Nobel prize ceremony and the anniversary of the death of the prize’s founder Alfred Nobel" (Source: Guardian here).

FIRST SONGWRITER TO WIN NOBEL PRIZE

Dylan is the first songwriter to win the prestigious Nobel prize for literature.

Dylan says, "when I first received this Nobel prize for literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature,” and this is the theme of his Nobel lecture.

After he won the prize, Dylan was at first reluctant to even acknowledge that he had won the prize. A big social media debate over whether songwriting was literature or not quickly followed. Surprisingly, Dylan didn't even show up in person to accept the prize. But, in the end, his Nobel Lecture is truly a thought-provoking achievement worth listening to. 

SONGWRITING INSPIRATIONS

Dylan starts off the lecture talking about the musician Buddy Holly whose rock music changed his life and inspired him to write songs during his teenage years.

Later in the lecture, Dylan talks about the classical literature that inspired him such as Moby Dick, The Odyssey and All Quiet on the Western Front.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

Dylan notes the importance of listening:

"By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details."

Then Dylan turns to poetry. As Dylan notes later in the lecture, to "know what it means" is not so important as that it "sounds good" when you listen to it: 

"You know what it's all about. Takin' the pistol out and puttin' it back in your pocket. Whippin' your way through traffic, talkin' in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you've heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. And you're pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You've seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen."

SO, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

At the end of his lecture, Dylan reflects on what it all means:

"So what does it all mean? Myself and a lot of other songwriters have been influenced by these very same themes. And they can mean a lot of different things. If a song moves you, that's all that's important. I don't have to know what a song means. I've written all kinds of things into my songs. And I'm not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don't think he would have worried about it either – what it all means."

"John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare, wrote these words, "The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests." I don't know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good."

So in the end, the famous songwriter in his last moment Nobel lecture how song is poetry and this poetry is literature, comparable to the great literatures found throughout the ages. 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/05/bob-dylan-delivers-nobel-prize-literature-lecture-just-in-time

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/06/05/listen_to_bob_dylan_s_nobel_lecture_video.html

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