Like the Lord, the Nobel committees work in mysterious ways. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology I also like a song called “Where Are You Tonight?” on the album “Street-Legal.” I’m not saying these are his best, but they’re two I’ve always liked. I love “Forever Young,” though it’s uncharacteristic. He is a scholar and a master of the genre.įavorite songs: I have too many favorite songs to name. Anyone who doubts that Dylan is a writer, or that songwriting is not an art, should read his memoir, “Chronicles,” or just his comments, here and there, on other people’s songs. But it is a beautiful acknowledgement that the “literature” that has always been the most familiar and meaningful to most people in the world is the literature of popular and folk songs. I’m never sure why any of them happen when they happen. I have no idea why it happened this year. He managed to capture and enhance the brilliant inventiveness and originality of American music, with its spectacular blending of races, faiths, and nations.įavorite songs: The anthem of my youth was “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” and I’ve always had a soft spot for the “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” He was for me and my entire generation the great folk poet, the voice of protest, anger, and a longing for justice, strangely intertwined with irony, desire, and apocalyptic hope. Though I confess I still cling to a forlorn hope that Philip Roth will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, I am utterly delighted that it went to Bob Dylan. Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor You’d be hard-pressed to find someone of my generation who is not thrilled to see Bob Dylan rewarded.Īs for why the committee might choose Bob Dylan in this very year? It’s anyone’s guess, but current world history includes a dangerous rise of violent, racist, misogynist forces in the U.S., so maybe they are trying to remind us to listen to ourselves, and hear our predicament once again in Bob Dylan’s powerful lyrical call to accountability.įavorite songs: “Hurricane,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” “The Ballad of Hollis Brown.” Perhaps one need not necessarily think of his work in relation to poetry the committee has extended the literature category this year to include songwriting - a great art form in its own right. But he is a minstrel, a joker, a visionary, a ministering force, a witness, a jack of hearts … Do his lyrics stand alone on the page? It’s an open question - some more than others. Though yes, he is influenced, as he says, by many poets. So it is hard to hear it as poetry alone, as it is song. His way of blending these tones is as much in his writing as in his extraordinary and unique singing voice. Tonally, he is able to be both romantic, ironic, and wry, accusatory yet nostalgic. Greatness in art also includes the ability to transform your medium and move it forward - and Dylan has done that with his unique blend of surrealism and gritty realism. And yet, however universal his lyrics, they stand alone, haunting, effortlessly original. The inventiveness of his imagery and his rhyme schemes is legendary. He tells a good story and creates great characters - take “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” The reach of his protest lyrics has transcended nations and languages even as its sound is so deeply American it transformed the range of the American language itself - which great art does for its language. He also created new forms of narrative structure. On a literary level, he continued and enriched the centuries-old ballad tradition, brought it into our time, made it politically relevant and searingly effective. To bring attention to his work now is to invite a whole new generation to listen to his masterful, nuanced rage regarding issues that press on us every bit as violently as they did when he wrote those songs. It addresses openly issues of criminal justice or injustice, poverty, racism, abuse of power. Jorie Graham, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory The Gazette asked poet Jorie Graham (“I can’t wait to hear his acceptance speech - I hope he writes a song”) and other Harvard scholars to share theirs. The honor, for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” stirred reactions nearly as passionate as those that have greeted Dylan’s music through the years. Iconic 75-year-old singer-songwriter Bob Dylan on Thursday became the first American since Toni Morrison, in 1993, to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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