 "Bob Dylan 101: A Harvard professor has the coolest class on campus")
For the Harvard classics professor Richard F Thomas, who has been gently teased by colleagues for teaching a freshman seminar about Bob Dylan - as well as for the students who sometimes get double takes for choosing the course - the announcement of the newest Nobel laureate in literature was hailed as vindication. And cause to break out celebratory cupcakes at the fortuitously timed Thursday afternoon session.
Thomas uses the course, simply called "Bob Dylan," to put the artist in context of not just popular culture of the last half-century, but the tradition of classical poets like Virgil and Homer. The class follows Dylan's career chronologically, listening to selections from most of his dozens and dozens of albums while also reading his memoir, Chronicles, which Thomas calls in the course description "a work of genius, a sprawling Dylan prose song posing as an autobiography."
"One of the coolest things is learning about Bob Dylan from a world expert on Virgil," said Ethan McCollister, 18, from East Montpelier, Vermont. "Both are poets, and both are lyricists even more than that."
Each session features student presentations, and on Thursday it was Jake Suddleson's turn to go first after Thomas played "Diamonds and Rust," which recounts Joan Baez's memories of her romantic relationship with Dylan.
A discussion about the complicated relationship between the two segued into Suddleson's presentation on "Just Like a Woman." He described the lingering mystery over the subject of the song, Baez or perhaps the model and heiress Edie Sedgwick. Or, as Thomas suggested, perhaps it was about both or neither.
Suddleson, 18, from Los Angeles, asked his classmates if they thought the song was misogynistic, citing the chorus that includes the words "she aches just like a woman/But she breaks just like a little girl."
He said he thought they merely reflected Dylan's own heartbreak. But Sam Puopolo, 19, from Manhattan, disagreed. "It seems like he is infantilising the woman," he argued.
Thomas brought the discussion back to Baez's "Diamond and Rust." It was a reminder, he suggested, of Dylan's genius at obfuscation, recalling the lyrics, "You who are so good with words/And at keeping things vague."
But keeping things vague is not part of an academic's job description. Before class, we talked with Thomas about the class, the intergenerational appeal of Dylan and just how deep into Greek and Roman literature the latest Nobel laureate seems to have read. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You've taught the class four times since 2004. What was the reaction from your Harvard colleagues initially?
The [course] committee at first didn't want to accept it, but they were eventually convinced. The process was like what the Nobel Prize committee must have gone through, realising just what Dylan is. He's not just a protest singer, or a pop singer, but a phenomenon who rolls into his art lots of disparate musical, literary and other strands.
What does Dylan mean to 18-year-olds like your students?
A lot of them obviously come to him through their parents, maybe even their grandparents. Each time I've taught the class, there have been a few students who know him pretty much as well as I do. He's alive for them. Others know him through something like the movie Hurricane [about the boxer Rubin Carter, which includes Dylan's song of the same name]. Others are taking it out of a curiosity to see why their parents have been so obsessed with him their entire lives.
Much has been said by scholars like Christopher Ricks and Sean Wilentz about the way Dylan draws on English ballads, American folk music, minstrel songs, blues, the Bible. Your scholarly article Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan unpacks a less noted aspect of his lyrics - allusions to ancient Greek and Roman literature. What's your impression about how deeply he knows that literature?
He did Latin in school in Hibbing, I'm not sure how much. He's always read eclectically. That's why I think in recent years he's come to classics stuff. I started teaching the seminar after I noticed some of the classical layers, particularly since 2001, in songs like "Lonesome Day Blues."
As you note, that song includes allusions to Huckleberry Finn and a Japanese gangster novel. Where do the classical references come in?
There's a stanza that goes: "I'm gonna spare the defeated - I'm gonna speak to the crowd/… I'm goin' to teach peace to the conquered/I'm gonna tame the proud." That's pretty much a direct quote of lines spoken in the Aeneid by the ghost of Aeneas's father, Anchises, who he sees in the underworld, and who basically says to him: "Other people will make sculpture. Your art, your job as a Roman, is to 'spare defeated peoples, tame the proud.'"
What about other Latin and Greek poets?
The album "Modern Times," from 2006, includes 18 lines from Ovid's exile poems. Other people had noticed them, but I've found a few extras. There's also a reference to The Odyssey on a song from "Tempest" (2012) called "Early Roman Kings." The title turns out to be a reference to a Latino gang in the Bronx in the 1960s. But there's also a direct quote from Robert Fagles's translation of The Odyssey at the end of the song. . It's undeniable.
Is there any kind of analogy in the classical world to the kind of hybrid performer-writer figure that Dylan is?
Not really. There were people called rhapsodes, who would sing Homeric songs at Greek festivals. But they were craftsmen, rather than figures who were creating the songs.
What about Dylan just as a writer?
In his intertextuality, he's like Virgil or Ovid: someone who came late enough in the tradition and has enough tradition behind him - T S Eliot wrote about this - that he can control it and also be part of it, recreating and refreshing it. I don't see any difference between a poet like Catullus or Virgil and Bob Dylan. I think they are doing the same things. It has to do with control of language, connecting of lyrics and melodies. That's what makes it timeless. If I tried to teach a course on Herman's Hermits, no one would turn up.
You've never met Dylan. If you did, what would you ask him?
Whatever I asked him, he wouldn't tell me. Dylan is very careful at controlling what he gets asked.
Thomas uses the course, simply called "Bob Dylan," to put the artist in context of not just popular culture of the last half-century, but the tradition of classical poets like Virgil and Homer. The class follows Dylan's career chronologically, listening to selections from most of his dozens and dozens of albums while also reading his memoir, Chronicles, which Thomas calls in the course description "a work of genius, a sprawling Dylan prose song posing as an autobiography."
"One of the coolest things is learning about Bob Dylan from a world expert on Virgil," said Ethan McCollister, 18, from East Montpelier, Vermont. "Both are poets, and both are lyricists even more than that."
Each session features student presentations, and on Thursday it was Jake Suddleson's turn to go first after Thomas played "Diamonds and Rust," which recounts Joan Baez's memories of her romantic relationship with Dylan.
A discussion about the complicated relationship between the two segued into Suddleson's presentation on "Just Like a Woman." He described the lingering mystery over the subject of the song, Baez or perhaps the model and heiress Edie Sedgwick. Or, as Thomas suggested, perhaps it was about both or neither.
Suddleson, 18, from Los Angeles, asked his classmates if they thought the song was misogynistic, citing the chorus that includes the words "she aches just like a woman/But she breaks just like a little girl."
He said he thought they merely reflected Dylan's own heartbreak. But Sam Puopolo, 19, from Manhattan, disagreed. "It seems like he is infantilising the woman," he argued.
Thomas brought the discussion back to Baez's "Diamond and Rust." It was a reminder, he suggested, of Dylan's genius at obfuscation, recalling the lyrics, "You who are so good with words/And at keeping things vague."
But keeping things vague is not part of an academic's job description. Before class, we talked with Thomas about the class, the intergenerational appeal of Dylan and just how deep into Greek and Roman literature the latest Nobel laureate seems to have read. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You've taught the class four times since 2004. What was the reaction from your Harvard colleagues initially?
The [course] committee at first didn't want to accept it, but they were eventually convinced. The process was like what the Nobel Prize committee must have gone through, realising just what Dylan is. He's not just a protest singer, or a pop singer, but a phenomenon who rolls into his art lots of disparate musical, literary and other strands.
What does Dylan mean to 18-year-olds like your students?
A lot of them obviously come to him through their parents, maybe even their grandparents. Each time I've taught the class, there have been a few students who know him pretty much as well as I do. He's alive for them. Others know him through something like the movie Hurricane [about the boxer Rubin Carter, which includes Dylan's song of the same name]. Others are taking it out of a curiosity to see why their parents have been so obsessed with him their entire lives.
Much has been said by scholars like Christopher Ricks and Sean Wilentz about the way Dylan draws on English ballads, American folk music, minstrel songs, blues, the Bible. Your scholarly article Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan unpacks a less noted aspect of his lyrics - allusions to ancient Greek and Roman literature. What's your impression about how deeply he knows that literature?
He did Latin in school in Hibbing, I'm not sure how much. He's always read eclectically. That's why I think in recent years he's come to classics stuff. I started teaching the seminar after I noticed some of the classical layers, particularly since 2001, in songs like "Lonesome Day Blues."
As you note, that song includes allusions to Huckleberry Finn and a Japanese gangster novel. Where do the classical references come in?
There's a stanza that goes: "I'm gonna spare the defeated - I'm gonna speak to the crowd/… I'm goin' to teach peace to the conquered/I'm gonna tame the proud." That's pretty much a direct quote of lines spoken in the Aeneid by the ghost of Aeneas's father, Anchises, who he sees in the underworld, and who basically says to him: "Other people will make sculpture. Your art, your job as a Roman, is to 'spare defeated peoples, tame the proud.'"
What about other Latin and Greek poets?
The album "Modern Times," from 2006, includes 18 lines from Ovid's exile poems. Other people had noticed them, but I've found a few extras. There's also a reference to The Odyssey on a song from "Tempest" (2012) called "Early Roman Kings." The title turns out to be a reference to a Latino gang in the Bronx in the 1960s. But there's also a direct quote from Robert Fagles's translation of The Odyssey at the end of the song. . It's undeniable.
Is there any kind of analogy in the classical world to the kind of hybrid performer-writer figure that Dylan is?
Not really. There were people called rhapsodes, who would sing Homeric songs at Greek festivals. But they were craftsmen, rather than figures who were creating the songs.
What about Dylan just as a writer?
In his intertextuality, he's like Virgil or Ovid: someone who came late enough in the tradition and has enough tradition behind him - T S Eliot wrote about this - that he can control it and also be part of it, recreating and refreshing it. I don't see any difference between a poet like Catullus or Virgil and Bob Dylan. I think they are doing the same things. It has to do with control of language, connecting of lyrics and melodies. That's what makes it timeless. If I tried to teach a course on Herman's Hermits, no one would turn up.
You've never met Dylan. If you did, what would you ask him?
Whatever I asked him, he wouldn't tell me. Dylan is very careful at controlling what he gets asked.
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