This has been a question haunting the literary and music world.
For some, Dylan's identity as a songwriter surpasses that of a singer or guitarist. For others, it is the musicianship that has been of paramount importance. But even when fans are divided, they are happy to agree that Dylan will remain an inspiration regardless of the Nobel. For Chandrabindoo frontman Anindya Chattopadhyay, it is the musician's identity of Dylan that surpasses that of his identity as a poet. "I am sure the members of the Nobel committee must have also grown up on Dylan's songs. When they judged the lyrics, the tunes must have haunted them too. This wasn't the case when Tagore got the Nobel in literature for 'Gitanjali'. The committee members might not have had any musical reference point while judging the translated lines from 'Gitanjali'," Chattopadhyay says. What with the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Anton Chekov, WH Auden, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain never having got the Nobel prize for literature, Chattopadhyay is happy that committee finally gave the award to a 75-year-old Dylan. "It has set a new trend of acknowledging song writers on this platform," he points out. Describing Dylan as an "amazing songwriter", Singer-songwriter-composer Anupam Roy says, "It's better not to dissect him and compare his lyrics versus music. Dylan's poetry without his voice, without his tunes are good enough. But they come together. That is Dylan. That's his music."
According to music director Prabuddha Banerjee, Dylan is a greater poet than a musician. "I would have said that even if he hadn't got the Nobel. The beauty of Bob Dylan lies in the fact that in his writings, the line between lyrics and poetry got blurred. If somebody with the right kind of expressions reads out his lyrics, he will create an experience of similar intensity as his songs."
As an example, he points to the lyrics of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" -
"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?/
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?/
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains/
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways/
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests/
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans/
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard/
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard/
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall..." (Have a listen)
Banerjee points at the "allegorical quality" in Dylan's lyrics. "Nowhere does he use the word revolution and yet he conveys his thoughts by using the allegory of hard rain. In the same song, he writes:
'I saw a white ladder all covered with water/
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken/
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children/
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard/
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall...'
Here the lyrics have a strong visual quality to them too," he says.
Another striking lyrics that Banerjee refers to is from the song "I Pity The Poor Immigrant". The lines go like:
"I pity the poor immigrant/
Who wishes he would've stayed home/
Who uses all his power to do evil/
But in the end is always left so alone/
That man whom with his fingers cheats/
And who lies with ev'ry breath/
Who passionately hates his life/
And likewise, fears his death..."
These words, Banerjee says, are "mundane" but are used to express "timeless wisdom". Dylan the musician, Banerjee believes, appeals to everyone because of being a complete package which has the right mix of style, arrogance and attitude. He even goes on to say that Dylan is an "ordinary guitarist". "I have personally heard many street musicians abroad who are perhaps better guitarists than he is. Dylan's music is elementary and very basic in nature. His words are powerful and they aid in a fantastic communication with the masses. His music isn't esoteric and yet when combined with the lyrics, the music becomes esoteric in nature," Banerjee says.
On the late recognition of Dylan by the Nobel committee, Banerjee feels it will not have any impact on the "discovery" of the legend by the masses. While many laureates are often discovered only after they get the Nobel, Dylan has long established a connection with the masses. As a result, unlike other year's the announcement of Dylan's name immediately resulted in mass euphoria. In a way, it only shows the mastery of Dylan who despite having penned songs with deep philosophical resonances was also able to enter the collective consciousness of the masses. Therein lies the key to Dylan's immortality. The Nobel announcement is but an incidental occurrence when posterity looks up to the man who told the world to be Forever Young. (TNN)
Now Read This
5 decisions that made the Nobel Prizes look bad
Nobel Prizes cannot be revoked, so the judges must put a lot of thought into their selections for the six awards, which will be announced in the next two weeks. A discovery might seem groundbreaking today, but will it stand the test of time? Prize founder Alfred Nobel wanted to honor those whose discoveries created "the greatest benefit to mankind." Here are five Nobel Prize decisions that, in hindsight, seem questionable:
When a German who organized poison gas attacks won the chemistry prize:
Fritz Haber was awarded the 1918 chemistry award for discovering how to create ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gases. His method was used to manufacture fertilizers and delivered a major boost to agriculture worldwide.
But the Nobel committee completely overlooked Haber's role in chemical warfare during World War I. Enthusiastically supporting the German war effort, he supervised the first major chlorine gas attack at Ypres, Belgium, in 1915, which killed thousands of Allied troops.
When the medicine committee awarded a cancer discovery that wasn't:
Danish scientist Johannes Fibiger won the 1926 medicine award for discovering that a roundworm caused cancer in rats. There was only one problem: the roundworm didn't cause cancer in rats. Fibiger insisted his research showed that rats ingesting worm larvae by eating cockroaches developed cancer. At the time when he won the prize, the Nobel judges thought that made perfect sense. It later turned out the rats developed cancer from a lack of vitamin A. Oops.
When chemistry prize honored man who found use for DDT, which was later banned
The 1948 medicine prize to Swiss scientist Paul Mueller honored a discovery that ended up doing both good and bad. Mueller didn't invent dichlorodiphenyltricloroethane, or DDT, but he discovered that it was a powerful pesticide that could kill lots of flies, mosquitoes and beetles in a short time. The compound proved very effective in protecting agricultural crops and fighting insect-borne diseases like Typhus and Malaria. DDT saved hundreds of thousands of lives and helped eradicate malaria from southern Europe. But in the 1960s environmentalists found that DDT was poisoning wildlife and the environment. The U.S. banned DDT in 1972 and in 2001 it was banned by an international treaty, though exemptions are allowed for some countries fighting malaria.
When the man who invented lobotomy won the medicine prize
Carving up people's brains may have seemed like a good idea at the time. But in hindsight, rewarding Portuguese scientist Antonio Egas Moniz in 1949 for inventing lobotomy to treat mental illness wasn't the Nobel Prizes' finest hour. The method became very popular in the 1940s, and at the award ceremony it was praised as "one of the most important discoveries ever made in psychiatric therapy."
But it had serious side effects: some patients died and others were left severely brain damaged. Even operations that were considered successful left patients unresponsive and emotionally numb. The method declined quickly in the 1950s as drugs to treat mental illness became widespread and it's used very seldom today.
When India's Mahatma Gandhi didn't win the peace prize
The Indian independence leader, considered one of history's great champions of non-violent struggle, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize no fewer than five times. He never won. The peace prize committee, which rarely concedes a mistake, eventually acknowledged that not awarding Gandhi was an omission. In 1989, 41 years after Gandhi's death, the Nobel committee chairman paid tribute to Gandhi as he presented that year's award to the Dalai Lama. (AP)
Thoughts?