Ok so this is not really related to Wo! business but it will interest die-hard Dylan fans out there.
A symposium for Dylan obsessives has convened for a fan meeting in America.
Except these are no ordinary obsessives but groups of scholars and academics (or Dylanologists as they call themselves), including dons of Oxford and Harvard, who are meeting to rapturously gush on the poetry, romance and beauty of Dylan’s stunning body of work.
On Tuesday, a whole crowd of them wrapped up a four-day symposium, billed as the largest ever of its kind, at the University of Minnesota in the state where Dylan was born.”Dylan has entered my day job,” said Richard Thomas, a professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University who lectured on Dylan’s similarity to ancient epic poets like Ovid and Virgil.
“I’ve come to see him as someone as worthy as the great poets on whom I’ve been fortunate enough to work.”
The article goes on to muse on the Dylan’s reaction to his analysts:
And what does the cryptic singer think of this kind of attention?
Well, he once famously derided Dylanologists who “dissect my songs like rabbits.”
But that is not likely to stop the dissecting.
Take British literary critic Christopher Ricks, a 73-year-old professor of poetry at Oxford University who in 2003 published Dylan’s Visions of Sin, a 500-page examination of biblical themes in Dylan’s music.
“I should think people need to explain themselves if they’re not intrigued, enthralled and obsessed with Dylan,” Hicks said during a lecture at the symposium.
“Those of us who are, we don’t have any explaining to do.”
Vindication at last!
Love the music. Not a fan of the guy. Dylan sold out with his Victoria Secret Ad. Yes I know it was a joke on his comments in the 60s, but I don’t buy it.
but then again as Dylan says just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.
Art for Art’s sake i say!
this has been a dilemma for me- but now I’ve stop interrogating the lives and personalities of my favourite artists- it only leads to disillusionment and despair i tell you!!
Ted Hughes was completely ruined for me with the Sylvia Plath saga and now even Camus is under attack learning about his wife’s clinical depression and her nervous breakdown (she needed over 23 elecric shock therapies) to deal with the emotional fall-out from the master Absurdist infidelities.
For your sanity’s sake its best to keep politics out of art and check your feminist outrage at the door.
Or Perhaps artists are just bastards :)
moral- just embrace the art and don’t read the biography!