University Honors Program, Brown Bag Talk (February 12, 2007):
“Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait of a Young Artist”*
by Dr. James Bense
In his autobiography (Chronicles: Volume One published in
2004), Bob Dylan stunned fans and reviewers by coming forth from what had long
been his remarkably unyielding inwardness, to illuminate segments of his life
in a voice that is brilliantly fluent and self-revealing. Everyone who had followed Dylan for decades
felt a temporary sense of unreality about this new voice that was impossible to
have imagined, from the halting, often cryptic, incoherence of his
interviews. It was as though a new
Dylan, someone with whom we were totally unacquainted, had suddenly materialized. The sections of his book describing his early
days in
To begin with Dylan’s
telling of his own story reveals his understanding of the pervasiveness of
unconscious skepticism, that is a kind of disbelief that hides its own denials,
and while inactive much of the time, can be pernicious in its desire to conform
the beliefs of others as a way of reinforcing itself. As I hope to make clear, this is one of
several indicators of Dylan’s independent awareness of the complex challenges
posed by Emerson’s idealism. Dylan’
sketches of the people with whom he crossed paths early on in
This is not the simple
inference to be drawn, however, from Dylan’s recollections of Jon Pankake, a
folk music authority, who would later co-author a positive review of Dylan’s
first album. But recalling his initial
encounter with Pankake, Dylan describes him as “part of the folk police, if not
the chief commissioner, [who] wasn’t impressed with any of the new talent”
(248). Pankake approaches Dylan as
though from a sense of duty to put him on notice: “You’re trying hard, but you’ll never turn
into Woody Guthrie” (250). Moreover,
Pankake introduces Dylan to an album by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, an already
accomplished Guthrie disciple, as though to show Dylan not only how far he is
from Elliott’s level as a performer, but also that Elliott had already achieved
what Dylan had just recently been inspired to attempt—that is, to absorb as
much of Guthrie’s genius as possible.
After Pankake had
“let” Dylan listen to the Elliott record several times, Dylan was temporarily
overwhelmed, but he quickly resolved to pretend that Elliott’s music and
Elliott did not exist: “I felt like I
had nowhere to go, felt like one of the dead men walking through
catacombs. It would be hard not to be
influenced by the guy I just heard. I’d
have to block it out of my mind, though, forget this thing, tell myself I
hadn’t heard him and he didn’t exist. He
was overseas in
Dylan’s portrait of
Pankake reveals a form of disbelief in the possibilities of the here-and-now
that is an important focal point of Emersonian transcendentalism. It is in fact the first thing addressed by
Emerson in the opening words of his first book entitled Nature: “Our age is
retrospective. It builds the sepulchers
of the fathers. It writes biographies,
histories, and criticism. Why should not
we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and
philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us,
and not the history of theirs?” (7). As
these questions suggest, to claim to believe that such profound aspects of
human experience have occurred in the past but are no longer possible reflects
a skepticism that may assume the form of a dogmatic certainty about the
past. Dylan’s recollection of Pankake’s
aggression as a guardian of folk music registers an encounter with what Emerson
repudiates as the unsupportable outlook of a “retrospective” age. The “also” on which Emerson bases the
prospect of “an original relation to the universe” not only exposes the denial
inherent in such dogmatic insistence or coerciveness, but also opens the way to
a relation between present and past that maximizes the demands to be made of
present human endeavors. Emerson has
been misunderstood as an idealist who rejects human history, when it is just
such an unacknowledged rejection that Emerson’s statements (as quoted) expose
on the part of a false historical consciousness. Dylan would continue to find himself on a
collision course with different aspects of this false consciousness as his
phenomenal emergence as an original artist and charismatic figure increasingly
made him a focal point of the misguided expectations of others.
Other parallels with
Emerson’s idealism (that may be said to arise unexpectedly in Chronicles) add to Dylan’s self-portrait
a different kind of coherence and spiritual depth than could be expected or
inferred from Dylan’s music alone.
Dylan’s initial reactions to Woody Guthrie’s music reveal a paradoxical
situation that corroborates what Emerson envisions about an individual’s
seeking of an “unattained but attainable self” (239). American philosopher Stanley Cavell has
illuminated this relationship, which is about recognizing, being attracted to,
a new sense of ourselves through what we admire in others. Cavell explains: “To recognize the unattained self is, I
gather, a step in attaining it.” This
does not mean there is one ultimate self that we never completely reach. Rather, “the self is always attained, as well
as to be attained.” So that “(. . . unless you side . . . [toward
a further possibility]), you are left [in a position Emerson negates], left in
conformity” (12). Emerson
admonishes: “Your genuine action will
explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing” (266). Dylan has similarly observed: “People talk, act, live as if they’re never
going to die. And what do they leave
behind? Nothing. Nothing but a mask” (cited in Cohen 231).
Dylan conveys his own
understanding of what Cavell sees as a fundamental aspect of “Emersonian
perfectionism,” an “attraction” toward someone else who represents “the
unattained but attainable” within ourselves, as Dylan describes gaining an
immediate sense of new self-awareness while being enthralled by Woody Guthrie’s
music: “That day I listened all
afternoon to Guthrie as if in a trance and I felt like I had discovered some
essence of self-command, that I was in the internal pocket of the system
feeling more like myself than ever before” (244). But Emerson and Cavell also see this process
of discovery as having a potential pitfall.
Genius may be the enemy of genius when it leads someone to idolize
someone else. Dylan registers the power
of the attraction he felt towards Guthrie as temporarily sweeping him over the
edge into this downfall—and again, he portrays himself in a comic posture: “Woody’s songs were having that big an effect
on me, an influence on every move I made, what I ate and how I dressed, who I
wanted to know, who I didn’t” (247). But
Dylan also authenticates his experience with Guthrie’s music as one of
heightened receptivity—and a profound step toward his own self command through
a series of violent metaphors: Guthrie’s
songs made Dylan’s “head spin,” made him “want to gasp.” Guthrie “was so poetic and tough and
rhythmic.” “[H]is voice was like a
stiletto”—“the way everything just rolled off his tongue”—his “perfected style
of singing,” his way of throwing sounds “like a punch.” But this violence was accompanied by a
revelatory experience: Guthrie’s songs
impressed Dylan with their “infinite sweep of humanity” (244).
Considering this kind
of relationship from a Kantian perspective, Cavell observes of Emerson that he
“shows the intelligible world to be entered into whenever another represents
for us our rejected self, our beyond. . .” (58). In his essay on “Self-Reliance,” Emerson
calls attention to this by saying “I will stand here for humanity” (267). Cavell links Emerson’s stance to Immanuel
Kant’s “two standpoints.” Kant
establishes the possibility of our freedom and our humanity by attributing our
ability to think about these things to a standpoint of our existence that is
independent of the “natural necessity” of this world, in which it must be said
that every event has a cause (60). For
Kant, it is this autonomous standpoint that makes possible our access to a
realm of freedom that he refers to as a “kingdom of ends” (41-42). Dylan’s sight of the “infinite sweep of
humanity” in Guthrie’s music conveys a comparable revelation of a different
standpoint or perspective from which Dylan becomes aware of Guthrie’s standing
for humanity. In this Emersonian
context, Cavell notes that “Emerson . . . describes the true man as ‘measuring’
us” (58). Finding in Guthrie’s songs the
“infinite sweep of humanity,” Dylan goes on to say that “Woody Guthrie tore everything
in his path to pieces” (244). Guthrie’s
vision appeared to Dylan to overshadow every other along the creative path his
songwriting and performing.
Here is the substance
of Guthrie’s vision as Dylan perceived it:
“Guthrie divides the world between those who work and those who don’t
and is interested in the liberation of the human race and wants to create a
world worth living in” (245).
Notwithstanding questions that might be asked about “those who work and
those who don’t,” the intelligible world that Guthrie stood for, as Dylan
recalls it, aligns Guthrie with Emerson and Kant in terms of his commitment to
the possibility of freedom and humanity from an autonomous standpoint that
shows them to be possible. Dylan’s
wholehearted allegiance to the integrity and intelligibility of Guthrie’s humanity
invites further consideration about whether Dylan, despite his expressions of
pessimism about the corrupt state of the world, might be aligned after all with
Emerson as a voice of American idealism.
I think the answer is a qualified “yes.”
But rather than weigh and balance the evidence along that line, I would
rather move on to a couple remaining focal points that seem to me more
interesting.
First, in connection with Emerson, Cavell
has issued a rebuttal in response to the claim that moral perfectionism
(particularly Emerson’s or Nietzsche’s, which Nietzsche got from Emerson) is
elitest or shows a possibility that pertains only to the most able, gifted
individuals. And Cavell’s rebuttal takes
the form of a prediction about the universal nature of human potential in a
democratic culture: He says “the good of
the culture to be found is already universally distributed or else it is
nothing—which is to say, it is part of what it is to be a moral person” (cited
in Rhu 70). In view of the significance
that Cavell gives to Emerson’s perfectionist design on readers, his assertion
implies that while the genius of Emerson’s writing presents a unique
achievement, the intelligibility of Emerson’s thinking is too finely attuned to
human experience to be found only as a result of Emerson’s power to inspire. My tracking of Dylan’s recollections about
the influence of Guthrie as a demonstrable occurrence of the attraction toward
an unattained but attainable self, that is toward self-intelligibility, as a
result of recognizing something within ourselves by discovering it in someone
else, does, I think, partly confirm Cavell’s prediction (and one should add,
Emerson’s prediction) that this form of inspiration, of self-awakening, has the
broadest possible relevance to human experience.
But if this is so, it raises an obvious
problem in connection with initial Dylan’s rise as a charismatic figure who was
immediately proclaimed to be the “voice” or “conscience” of a generation—a
generation of young idealists, during the tumultuous 1960s, who gave rise to the
promise or the possibility of a millennial America. Speaking of Dylan’s phenomenal influence
during the 1960s folk revival, Greil Marcus has insightfully observed that “he
symbolized . . . a whole way of being in the world.” At a deeper level, “he embodied a yearning
for peace and home in the midst of noise and upheaval, and in the aesthetic
reflection of that embodiment located both peace and home in the purity, the
essential goodness, of each listener’s heart” (20-21). But this glimmering of a millennial awakening
was not to last. As Dylan’s appearance
and music changed, his “performance now seemed to mean that he had never truly
been where he had appeared to be only a year before, reaching for that
democratic oasis of the heart—and that if he had never been there, those who
had felt themselves there with him had not been there.” Dylan’s devoted listeners, Marcus (31) explains,
felt tricked and betrayed.
Once again, as was the case with the purist
skepticism of a folk music guardian, Dylan was confronted with the coercive
expectations of an unconscious skepticism, that is, one which hides its own
denials, and this time as a mass phenomenon.
But, an obvious question arises:
was Dylan’s attraction to Guthrie truly analogous with Dylan’s
inspiration of the members of a generation?
They did not turn to Dylan—to his representativeness—as Dylan had turned
to Guthrie, which was to further his development as a musical artist. But this view of the comparison misses an
essential point that applies to both situations: that the outcome of the attraction toward an
exemplary figure, whether a mentor in a line of endeavor, or an exemplary model
or loved one, must always be a movement toward individuation.
Emerson says, “to believe that what is true
for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.”
Thus, it is evident that the genius of Dylan’s early songs did function
in a strikingly Emersonian manner, elevating Dylan in the minds of many as
their “voice” or “conscience.” But
Emerson goes on to say, “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts: they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty” (259).
Thus—the elevation of Dylan as a collective act—by itself and nothing
more—reveals what Emerson and Dylan both see as a false position for claiming a
new consciousness: Dylan’s listeners
attributing to Dylan what Emerson would insist they needed to recognize within
themselves. The result of Dylan’s
allegiance to Guthrie moved him in the other direction, as he recalls feeling
elevated by Guthrie’s songs, “instantly risen up . . . to an honorable knight”
(247). And while Dylan reveals that he
went through a phase of idolizing Guthrie, he soon outgrew this
dependence. As he learned Guthrie songs,
he felt he was hearing Guthrie’s spiritual voice. “One thing for sure,” Dylan recalls, “Woody
Guthrie had never seen nor heard of me, but it felt like he was saying ‘I’ll be
going away, but I’m leaving this job in your hands. I know I can count on you’” (246).
In Chronicles,
Dylan’s critique of the inauthenticity of personal aspirations engendered by
American society focuses on its source, not in the movement, but in the
mainstream of popular culture itself.
While reading newspapers during his early days in
(Concluding remarks and
a viewing of part of a Dylan concert video.)
Notes
* This talk is an
abridged and modified version of my review of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One in The
Journal of Mind and Behavior, 26 (2005): 125-36.
** Marcus comments on
a “memoir” by Casey Hayden entitled “The Movement” (209-12).
Works Cited
Cavell, Stanley. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The
Constitution of
Emersonian Perfectionism.
Cohen, Scott. “Bob
Dylan Not Like a Rolling Stone Interview.” Reprinted in
Younger Than That Now: The
Collected Interviews of Bob Dylan.
Dylan, Bob. Chronicles: Volume One.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
Essays & Lectures.
1983. (Nature originally
published in 1836; “History,” and “Self-Reliance” in Essays: First Series originally published in 1841)
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Edited and translated
by Mary Gregor.
Marcus, Greil.
Holt and Company, 1997. (Subsequently entitled The Old, Weird
Rhu, Lawrence F. Stanley Cavell’s American Dream:
Shakespeare, Philosophy, and