charlesdarwin wrote:
While I’m broadly in sympathy with the aims of this thread, which I take to be an exploration of the possibilities suggested by Scott Warmuth’s investigation into Dylan’s sources and his use of them, nothing I have so far read here, fascinating though much of it is, has convinced me that we are gaining anything other than a slightly better understanding of Dylan’s methods of composition.
I’d just like to very briefly address the “code” question for the moment, and my objections to that idea may be loosely classified under two headings – aesthetic & practical.
Firstly, aesthetic – Dylan, to my mind, has always revelled in allowing multiple uncertain interpretations of his work, the idea that he would simply “codify” his references to allow a sufficiently knowledgeable person, someone in possession of a key, to arrive at a definitive “solution” which closes down all other possibilities seems to go against all his artistic principles.
Secondly, among many practical questions - How could he be sure that any code would be recognized or solved, and if he couldn’t be sure, why bother encoding his writing in the first place, whom is he addressing?
People often desire a “through line” when confronted by a vast mass of heterogeneous material, be it the works of Shakespeare, the events surrounding an assassination, or Dylan’s “biographical” writing and recent albums etc. To find a key, a grand cryptogram revealing the identity of the true author, a conspiracy that reaches all the way into the government, or in the case of Dylan, a set of coded references designed to lead only those truly worthy to his secret meaning is one way of keeping the cold wind of chaos at bay.
CD,
1. With regard to your assessment of how far we've gotten in this thread: for my part, I am just at the beginning of my working through all of this and so what I am writing here is aimed at preliminaries -- are there incorporations? How would we know? I think this is pretty well settled. There are incorporations and while
how Warmuth found so many remains unknown, I think we have a good sense of how one might do that.
And then, we have asked how me might approach incorporations if we believe that's what they are. That is, I think we have moved
beyond just talking about Dylan's
methods of composition. To my mind, Warmuth's approach, which focuses on what he calls codes, is an
interpretation of what the incorporations
mean. He seemed to be implying that the incorporations, and so Dylan''s writing, mean just what the answer to a secret code is.
Now, I don't think Warmuth has found any actual codes, only difficult to identify passages from other texts. And in that sense, we could say that, as I have understood Warmuth's work on his "codes",
his interpretation looks to be unpersuasive and unfruitful. Despite my real doubts about the whole "secret code idea", I have to admit that Warmuth's apparent failure to find them doesn't mean there isn't some kind of more complex puzzle in some or all of Dylan's writing. I don't think we can rule it out just because Warmuth's version hasn't panned out....yet.
2. As to your objections to the idea of there being puzzles at all in Dylan's writing, I disagree with your reasons -- that (a) you believe Dylan has sought multiple interpretations in the past, and that (b) you believe Dylan would not put in a puzzle if he could not expect people would find or solve them .
To your first objection: Since it's not possible to know what Dylan intends with regard to his work (or anything I suppose), we have to consider any sound argument for an interpretation of what Dylan might be up to with his writing. You may think it is less likely that Dylan has chosen to include coded puzzles, and so might I, but we're just arguing about greater or lesser probability. And the idea that Dylan has preferred there be multiple meanings to his writing is as much conjecture as the idea of puzzles. And even the, if we accept your position, it wouldn't make a change of heart by Dylan impossible.
To your second objection: I agree with revelator that the
unlikelihood of the codes or puzzles being recognized and solved can't be seen as powerful evidence against their being there.
If they exist, they may be only for a few friends. Or for no one but himself.
Revelator's points about why people make art or pursue projects are are right on the money. And we just can't know what motivation Dylan might have had for writing anything, and that applies to the supposition of there being puzzles.
His reasons can only be supposed.
What is left is for a person who suspects that there are puzzles/codes to make a powerful case that there are such things.
For me, I am more inclined to believe that these many, many incorporations are an intensification of Dylan's practice of writing in a literary style -- of referencing other art and texts (while embracing "low culture") in a way that creates complex meanings, subtexts, and immense depth.