But that is not all. The scenery now moves more to the West, to the British and American civilization. Is it any better there?. It moves to the port of Liverpool where the Titanic is due to depart for its maiden voyage on April 14th 1912. This ship with its 16 watertight compartments was regarded as unsinkable. The idol of western naval technology. People are summoned to give praise to this ship which is qualified as Nero's Neptune. Nero was emperor of Rome (AD 37-68). In July 64 two thirds of Rome burned and Nero was accused in the ancient times of being the incendiary. He was a symbol of cruel dictatorship and persecution of christians. He committed suicide in 68.
Neptune in Roman mythology is the god of the sea. Origianlly a god of springs and streams he became identified with the Greek god of the sea Poseidon. These images now work out as follows: Western technology is an idol just as Neptune was an idol. Nero's dictatorship ended in destruction and suicide and this symbol of western civilization will end up in the same way. And it did when it struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank within three hours. 'Broken Idols'. But even on this ship -bound for destruction- the struggle goes on and on. People have to decide: 'Whose side are you on?'. There is a fight in the captain's tower of the Titanic. The captain's tower is the place where the decisions are taken. Will we go on like this is the decision to be taken. Yes, the Titanic sails at dawn, on a new day in a new era of optimism. But they will not make it. The struggle for purity and moral values goes on even in the minds of some of the great poets of this century like Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and T.S. Eliot (1888-1965). In 1924 Pound settled in Rapollo in Italy and during World war II he sent fascist propaganda from Rome to the US. He was arrested by the Americans in 1945, declared psychologically unfit to stand trial for treason and sent to a mental hospital in Whashington. Is this the reason for his fight with T.S. Eliot in the captain's tower?. Do the same anti- semitic feelings also linger more to the West - in the land supposed to be of milk and honey?
In the meantime life goes on. In the middle of this struggle life in it's beauty goes on -icicles hanging down, wedding bells ring and angels sing-calypso singers laugh and fisherman hold flowers, flowers they received from their lovers saying goodbye to them and waving their handkerchiefs as the Titanic slowly and majestically leaves the port of Liverpool. Nothing can disturb this picture. Nobody has to think too much about the upcoming disaster of Desolation Row. Lovely supernatural mermaids flow, 'the fishes will laugh and the seagulls they'll be smiling' as this ship sails...But it is like a 'stillness in the wind, just before the hurricane begins'
Regards
Kees de Graaf
Subject of the Post: More Thoughts on Eliot and Pound
Date Added: 03/09/1999
alan michaelso wrote:
Why did Dylan chose two known anti-semites, Ezra Pound and T S Eliot as characters in Desolation Row?
Stephen Scobie responded:
Consider their position. They are in the "captain's tower" of the Titanic as it goes down. Many possible interpretations, but it would seem to me that Pound and Eliot are here being used as classic textbook examples of the mainline academic tradition of modernist poetry, and that Dylan is claiming that, as such, they are irrelevant to what is really happening, down here in Desolation Row. Their whole ship is going down under them, & they are left squabbling on the bridge.
In a broader context: I don't see much influence from Pound in Dylan's writing, but the ironic thing is that there does seem to me to be a fair amount of Eliot. Even the title of this song itself, "Desolation Row," seems like a variation on Eliot's "The Waste Land."
Subject of the Post: Pound and Eliot contrasted with the calypso singers
Date Added: 03/09/1999
Lawrence Bullock wrote:
His intent, as I understand was to point up a poetic rivalry and to counter with an observation that folk poets such as calypso singers were possibly beyond such mundane things as who was "right" when it came to writing poetry.
Joe Cliburn added:
Maybe a contrast between the "scholarly" poetic rivalry & the street poetry of the calypso singers?
Subject of the Post: This is getting ridiculous: More Thoughts on Eliot and Pound
Date Added: 03/09/1999
jason wrote:
eliot and pound worked together on eliot's supposed masterpiece, "the wasteland." however, this fact didn't surface until after the song was written, in 1967, so it's not what dylan was talking about. in many ways, "the wasteland" is an almost exact match, in form at least, for "desolation row". that's my fun little sidebar, though; the real thing is that pound and eliot had a falling out; after that, pound went to italy, where he kinda went a little nuts and started distributing fascist literature. he was arrested in the states for the same, and was determined "not competent" to stand trial. i'm not sure about eliot, but from some scattered comments, it would appear he went along similar lines. thus, i would interpret the line as two people with similar beliefs struggling to continue working together. my two cents!
Subject of the Post: More Eliot
Date Added: 03/09/1999
AxlRoth wrote:
There are many T. S. Eliot references in Dylan, for example "I can hear the turning of the key" in "Abandoned Love." No Pound references I know of. Still, it's plain he prefers nineteenth-century romantics like Keats, Byron, and Shelley.
Subject of the Post: About the time the doorknob broke
Date Added: 02/18/1998
John Howells wrote:
Well I have to say that from the very first time I heard the line I knew he was saying that he received the letter at around the same time that the doorknob broke, thus preventing his exit. I thought that was such a cool line, that he is now unable to leave Desolation Row because he can't open the door! The letter he received isn't about a doorknob breaking, but rather about "all these people that you mention".
Subject of the Post: Is Desolation Row is a "good" or "bad" place to be?
Date Added: 11/06/2000
Delia wrote:
One thing that puzzled me for quite a while were Dylan's prepositions in this song. Why are people being kept from escaping TO Desolation Row? Why at the end is the singer only interested in letters that come FROM Desolation Row? I would think that we would all want to be as far away from this place as possible. But we can't get away from it, so the only recourse is to accept the reality that this is where we find ourselves and any attempt to deny that is delusion.
To my mind this is really a pivotal song. After he builds through his earlier work to this climax on H61R the question is, how do you build a meaningful life when you know you must live on Desolation Row. And it's still the quesion.
Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
Interesting thoughts, and I know this has been discussed before, but I don't see Desolation Row as the end of society -- it is in fact where society is being reborn. When the mainstream collapses, the losers out on the edge of town are where it's at . . . Desolation Row is the place they can escape the falsity of of official culture and reinvent it. This made a lot of sense in the Sixties, when middle-class kids were hitting the road pretending to be hobos . . . but the image transcends its era. When the icons of the establishment lose meaning, we can always, with Dylan, rearrange their faces and give them all another name. Desolation Row is the low-rent disctrict where we can do this in peace -- though pretty soon everybody wants to go there, society wants to co-opt it . . . and then it's time to move on again.
to which, jack61@my-deja.com added:
Very interesting, but I wonder if the verses don't actually intersperse scenes viewed *from* Desolation Row with scenes *of* Desolation Row, so that you're seeing both the collapse of society ("They're selling postcards of the hanging/They're painting the passports brown") and the new society being born on Desolation Row ("While calypso singers laugh at them/And fishermen hold flowers").
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