Bob Dylan - Banquet Speech

Banquet speech by Bob Dylan given by the United States Ambassador to Sweden Azita Raji, at the Nobel Banquet, 10 December 2016.

Good evening, everyone. I extend my warmest greetings to the members of the Swedish Academy and to all of the other distinguished guests in attendance tonight.

I'm sorry I can't be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I've been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.

I don't know if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honor for themselves, but I suppose that anyone writing a book, or a poem, or a play anywhere in the world might harbor that secret dream deep down inside. It's probably buried so deep that they don't even know it's there.

If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I'd have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn't anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize. So, I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.

I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?" I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"

When I started writing songs as a teenager, and even as I started to achieve some renown for my abilities, my aspirations for these songs only went so far. I thought they could be heard in coffee houses or bars, maybe later in places like Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium. If I was really dreaming big, maybe I could imagine getting to make a record and then hearing my songs on the radio. That was really the big prize in my mind. Making records and hearing your songs on the radio meant that you were reaching a big audience and that you might get to keep doing what you had set out to do.

Well, I've been doing what I set out to do for a long time, now. I've made dozens of records and played thousands of concerts all around the world. But it's my songs that are at the vital center of almost everything I do. They seemed to have found a place in the lives of many people throughout many different cultures and I'm grateful for that.

But there's one thing I must say. As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me.

But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years.

Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?"

So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer.

My best wishes to you all,

Bob Dylan

Bron en copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2016

Bob Dylan's Award Ceremony Speech

Presentation Speech by Professor Horace Engdahl, Member of the Swedish Academy, Member of the Nobel Committee for Literature, 10 December 2016.

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

What brings about the great shifts in the world of literature? Often it is when someone seizes upon a simple, overlooked form, discounted as art in the higher sense, and makes it mutate. Thus, at one point, emerged the modern novel from anecdote and letter, thus arose drama in a new age from high jinx on planks placed on barrels in a marketplace, thus songs in the vernacular dethroned learned Latin poetry, thus too did La Fontaine take animal fables and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales from the nursery to Parnassian heights. Each time this occurs, our idea of literature changes.

In itself, it ought not to be a sensation that a singer/songwriter now stands recipient of the literary Nobel Prize. In a distant past, all poetry was sung or tunefully recited, poets were rhapsodes, bards, troubadours; 'lyrics' comes from 'lyre'. But what Bob Dylan did was not to return to the Greeks or the Provençals. Instead, he dedicated himself body and soul to 20th century American popular music, the kind played on radio stations and gramophone records for ordinary people, white and black: protest songs, country, blues, early rock, gospel, mainstream music. He listened day and night, testing the stuff on his instruments, trying to learn. But when he started to write similar songs, they came out differently. In his hands, the material changed. From what he discovered in heirloom and scrap, in banal rhyme and quick wit, in curses and pious prayers, sweet nothings and crude jokes, he panned poetry gold, whether on purpose or by accident is irrelevant; all creativity begins in imitation.

Even after fifty years of uninterrupted exposure, we are yet to absorb music's equivalent of the fable's Flying Dutchman. He makes good rhymes, said a critic, explaining greatness. And it is true. His rhyming is an alchemical substance that dissolves contexts to create new ones, scarcely containable by the human brain. It was a shock. With the public expecting poppy folk songs, there stood a young man with a guitar, fusing the languages of the street and the bible into a compound that would have made the end of the world seem a superfluous replay. At the same time, he sang of love with a power of conviction everyone wants to own. All of a sudden, much of the bookish poetry in our world felt anaemic, and the routine song lyrics his colleagues continued to write were like old-fashioned gunpowder following the invention of dynamite. Soon, people stopped comparing him to Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams and turned instead to Blake, Rimbaud, Whitman, Shakespeare.

In the most unlikely setting of all - the commercial gramophone record - he gave back to the language of poetry its elevated style, lost since the Romantics. Not to sing of eternities, but to speak of what was happening around us. As if the oracle of Delphi were reading the evening news.

Recognising that revolution by awarding Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize was a decision that seemed daring only beforehand and already seems obvious. But does he get the prize for upsetting the system of literature? Not really. There is a simpler explanation, one that we share with all those who stand with beating hearts in front of the stage at one of the venues on his never-ending tour, waiting for that magical voice. Chamfort made the observation that when a master such as La Fontaine appears, the hierarchy of genres - the estimation of what is great and small, high and low in literature - is nullified. “What matter the rank of a work when its beauty is of the highest rank?" he wrote. That is the straight answer to the question of how Bob Dylan belongs in literature: as the beauty of his songs is of the highest rank.

By means of his oeuvre, Bob Dylan has changed our idea of what poetry can be and how it can work. He is a singer worthy of a place beside the Greeks' ἀοιδόι, beside Ovid, beside the Romantic visionaries, beside the kings and queens of the Blues, beside the forgotten masters of brilliant standards. If people in the literary world groan, one must remind them that the gods don't write, they dance and they sing. The good wishes of the Swedish Academy follow Mr. Dylan on his way to coming bandstands.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2016 

Europese (Engelse) voorjaarstournee 2017

De eerste zes data van een nieuwe tournee zijn inmiddels bekend gemaakt. Volgens de agenda zal Dylan in mei 2017 optreden in de volgende steden:

Woensdag 3 mei Cardiff

Donderdag 4 mei Bournemouth

Vrijdag 5 mei Nottingham

Zondag 7 mei Glasgow

Maandag 8 mei Liverpool

Dinsdag 9 mei London

Zal Dylan tijdens deze tournee ook Nederland nog aan doen? Treedt hij nog op in Stockholm? Blijft het bij deze korte Britse concertreeks? De komende maanden zullen we druppelsgewijs antwoorden krijgen op de vragen. De spanning stijgt!

Quiz

Voor de administratie, de quiz op ExpectingRain is ten einde. De antwoorden die ik eerder deze week gaf op de betreffende vragen, zijn correct. Bernd Seuser en Andreas Volkert zijn de trotse winnaars van de beloofde boeken. Voor even zijn Seuser en Volkert bekende Dylan-fans. Voor zolang het duurt.

Nog een halve week en dan worden de Nobeprijzen uitgereikt. Dan zullen we Patti Smith horen, als vertegenwoordiger van Dylan. Nobelcomité-lid Horace Engdahl zal de Nobel Lecture, uitspreken die Dylan reeds heeft toegestuurd. Zou Dylan zijn speech hebben gemaild of per post hebben verstuurd?

Het hele gebeuren rondom de uitreiking van de Nobelprijs aan Dylan, heeft de schijnwerpers weer op hem gericht. Dylan zal er niet heel blij mee zijn, maar het doet er ook niet toe. Zijn teksten worden opnieuw gewaardeerd. Op waarde geschat. Daar gaat het om bij taal- en literatuurliefhebbers.

Is het nieuws rondom Dylan's Nobelprijs nieuws, omdat het echt nieuws is? Of is het nieuws, omdat Dylan opnieuw in de belangstelling staat? – nadat hij eerder voor de zoveelste keer was vergeten, was doodverklaard, uit het zicht geraakt; dan is alles nieuws wat hij doet. Een hernieuwde bron van nieuws.

Ach, wat doet het er toe. Immers, taal- en literatuurliefhebbers waardeerden deze nukkige dichter uit Minnesota al.

Nobel Lecture

Sint Nicolaas is ons Dylan-fans dan wél gunstig gezind. Bob Dylan zal weliswaar niet zelf afreizen naar Stockholm, om zijn Nobelprijs voor de Literatuur op te halen. Wel stuur hij Patti Smith naar de Zweedse stad. Zij zal dan “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” ten gehore brengen. Nobelcomité-lid Horace Engdahl zal de Nobel Lecture van Dylan uitspreken. De tekst heeft Dylan naar het betreffende comité toegestuurd.

Ondertussen is voor de Duitstalige fans en lezers van ExpectingRain een wedstrijdje uitgeschreven. Twee winnaars maken kans op drie uitgaven van de uitgeverij Hoffman & Campe: "Lyrics 1962 – 2012" (nieuw),"Tarantel” (nieuw, met voorwoord van Heinrich Detering) en "Chronicles Vol. 1". Het is dat ik niet woon in Duitsland, Oostenrijk of Zwitserland, maar ik had graag meegedaan aan deze prijsvraag. Het gaat om drie vragen.

1. Wie speelt de rol van Bob Dylan in Renaldo & Clara? Dat is Ronnie 'The Hawk' Hawkins, bandleider van The Hawks, die later de begeleidingsband van Dylan werden.

2. In welk restaurant werd Joey vermoord? Het lied is te vinden op Desire (1976), met de tekst van Jacques Levy. Het lied verhaalt van Joey Gallo, die werd vermoord op zijn verjaardag in de eetgelegenheid Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy.

3. De liner notes van welk album begint met “Back to the starting point …”? Dat is Planet Waves uit 1974, het enige studio-album dat Dylan met The Band heeft gemaakt. Ook één van die weinige platen zonder de naam van de artiest op de hoes.

Enfin. Sint Nicolaas is ons weer gunstig gezind. Dat we dit nog mogen meemaken. Wat een geluk.

Kronieken #13: Advent 2016

Nog twee Advents-zondagen te gaan, en het is weer Kerst! Maar voor het zover is, hebben we nog genoeg te doen. Maandagavond natuurlijk Sinterklaas. Sint Nicolaas is voor de Dylan-fans dit jaar ongunstig. In tegenstelling tot de andere heilige, Sint Maarten. Die was dit jaar zo gul, om ons de cd-box The 1966 Live Recordings weg te geven.

Aan het einde van de week, worden de Nobelprijzen uitgereikt. De prijzen zijn al eerder toegekend, zaterdag is de ceremonie waarbij de laureaten in het zonnetje worden gezet. Dylan schittert in afwezigheid. Mogelijk haalt de bard in het voorjaar zijn Nobelprijs voor de Literatuur op. En combineert hij zijn Stockholm-bezoek met een Europese voorjaarstournee 2017. Je weet het niet, het blijft koffiedik kijken.

Welke muziek draait Dylan in deze Advents-periode? Speelt hij zelf muziek? Speelt hij dan zijn eigen muziek? When He Returns, misschien? Of grijpt hij terug op de American Songbook? Frank Sinatra? Woody Guthrie? Het doet er ook niet toe, natuurlijk niet.

Vanmorgen werd mijn neefje Thijs-Bort gedoopt. Zijn vader, mijn broer, zei na de geboorte van dit mannetje: Lord, protect my child. The whole world is asleep / You can look at it and weep / Few things you find are worthwhile / And though I don’t ask for much / No material things to touch / Lord, protect my child. Zo is dat.

Kerst 2016, het duurt nog drie weken. En dan nog een week, voordat het jaar wisselt. Wat ben ik blij dat we dichters en muzikanten hebben. Mannen (en vrouwen) op wie we kunnen terugvallen. Mensen, die gevoelens onder woorden hebben gebracht. Als wij geen woorden meer kunnen vinden, kunnen we teruggrijpen op de teksten en muziek.

Agenda

Wat staat deze maand op de agenda van Bob Dylan? In ieder geval belangrijke zaken. Want de bard is niet aanwezig bij de uitreiking van de Nobelprijzen, over anderhalve week in Stockholm. Maar Dylan was ook niet aanwezig op een ceremonie in het Witte Huis, met alle Nobelprijs-winnaars. Zonder opgave van reden. Je vraagt je toch af wat van meer importantie kan zijn, dan zulke evenementen. Het zijn de ondoorgrondelijkheden van de dichter uit Minnesota.

De man is een maand vrij. Bereidt hij zich voor op een nieuwe tournee? Is hij in de studio? Schrijft hij aan het vervolg van de Chronicles? We weten het niet. We moeten geduld betrachten. Te zijner tijd horen we waar we aan toe zijn. Tot die tijd draaien we maar een album. Over een paar weken kan Christmas In The Heart weer uit de kast worden getrokken.