BOB DYLAN’s Nobel prize
in literature and the others
“…No
words are needed for those who understand music,” said a Zen Buddhist
parable.
And, meanwhile Dylan was speechless, one of the
others - who doesn’t understand music -, speaking out in front of his own
audience at the University of…., like a lion king giving a verdict on Dylan’s
Nobel, had said: “El próximo se lo darán a un futbolista.” I guess he feel so
superior that he doesn’t want to be in the same box with Bob Dylan. He wants to
be the one and the only taking part of the show he referred when he added… “hoy en día la sociedad está marcada por el espectáculo en todas las
actividades, también en la cultura y la política.”
But who cares? Nobody! This is exactly his
problem. He criticized Dylan’s Nobel only because he is the one who has failed
to be a serious one. Being honest, this one in question is very well known
because all of his professional carrier as a writer has been marked for
scandals which have helped him to be selling his books and, also, to win all
kind of prices, titles, honoris causa’s and you named, even the Nobel prize in
literature… So what? One punch more
direct to the eye of ‘another real good contender’ - as García Márquez was and
Bob Dylan is-, has to be no more than another try to be in the buzz for
something more noble that to be the unfaithful husband: a most recent revival
of interest in him. Anyway, to be or not to be, despite his boxer qualities had
he listened at least ones the story of Hurricane?
I don’t think so. But in one way or another – bad footballer, good boxer, once on upon time he was also the
Nobel laurate and there, in his own boxer ring, ‘can be but one king’,
thundered the boxer or the writer?
Still, what is important here is to see how
sometimes people who doesn’t deserve ‘to be’, sooner or later, show us in the
most funny way his true colors or - as Jesús y María could say: “nos muestran
el cobre.” And yes, I’m using Spanish words because one of the first things who
made me fell in love with Bob Dylan’s songs was exactly that in many of his
lyrics he use names, sayings and words in Spanish: my mother tongue! In these
days of war against the immigrants I have to remember, for instance, ‘Deportees’, one of his songs about the
deportation of non-documented Mexicans in America! Because no matter what -60’s
of 70’s, the Dylan’s work seems, now, so relevant and, undoubtedly, is set to
be even more in the… Times… of the man of the year and the years to come!
To say that a songwriter doesn’t deserve to win
a Nobel prize in literature because of… is, simply, deny what literature is all
about. It’s denied the literature’s roots and his origins. It’s denied the
classics. It’s denied Homerus and his Odysseus’ canto, the Ramayana, the troubadours
at the kingdoms service and so and so… All we know today as literature is
founded in songs or cantos or poems or lyrics and so. All of these compiling
works were much more than beautiful poetry. These cantos were used, as today, to
tell true stories, to transmit messages, to connect people and, also, as entertainment -one of the most significant literature’s functions – ad-látere of others such
as social, cultural and political activities. The problem of the literature
today is exactly that, thanks writers as the good boxer, the literature world
is changing in a bored academic-matter. No wonder why the young people today
prefer the political-business social media-show than to read a good novel or
create scenarios where the poets could read loud their works or, why not, speak
out in the middle of the public squares of the universities. Public squares that
now and then are more scenarios of mass murders or, simple, boxing rings.
By the listening Bob Dylan’s work nobody could
denied that every song is a story perceived as tragedy, as drama, as epopee, as
comedy, as romantic novel, as terrific fiction, as metaphor, as sweet dream or
as terrible war. Ones we have climbed this particular way of understanding,
that we will appreciate that such as creative process is also our own choice
because every metaphor produces its own forms of prejudice… that whereof one cannot speak, one must be
silent…
Bob Dylan regarded songwriting as the higher
art because by singing one can confront us with our own realities and universal
problems. He has accomplished what King Lear couldn’t: to fill de gap between
generations. One of the reasons, perhaps, to the Nobel prize ceremony he has chosen* let us ‘see and hear’ -in the
sweet voice of Patti Smith his touching song,
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall… and… “all of the sudden much of the bookish poetry
in our word felt anaemic” -beautiful
words Horace Engdahl, a Swedish literary historian and critic and member of the
academy has said as response to all who doesn’t understand what literature is
all about!
To Bob Dylan and all of songwriters in this
world with love!
*I've right read that it was Patti Smit who had chosen this song in particular and it was de Nobel organization who invited her to sing at the ceremony... Sorry, I apologize!
Carmen Socorro Ariza-Olarte
