Last week it was announced that one of the two greatest popular songwriters of all time was to receive an award. For the last two billion years bookmakers have speculated on whether Bob Dylan would win the Nobel Prize for Literature and, hey, he finally did. When I heard the news part of me thought ‘about time’ and a bigger part of me thought ‘who cares?’
I’ve never been one enamoured by awards (best fish and chips in town according to some local newspaper!) and I am one of those miserabilist who does not celebrate their birthday feeling it to be not any kind of achievement (Sigmund Fraud says it is the cause of all anxiety) however the Nobel Prize is a ‘big deal’.
My relationship with it has always been undefined- whilst I am glad that the likes of Hermann Hesse had his opposition to the Nazi Party ‘validated’ and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won it for showing the reality of the Gulags, I am more thrilled by Sartre refusing the award because
‘The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances’
The whole notion of Laureates baffles me. The likes of Carol Ann Duffy becomes Poet Laureate and spins out some spiffing couplets about the royal family whereas a poet like Allan Ginsberg would never be made a Laureate simply because he would be too rebellious and would be unpredictable despite being the ‘voice of his generation’ whilst Blake was dismissed out of hand as a mad man
When Leonard Cohen (the second fellow) was offered a Canadian award for poetry in 1968, his response was ‘Much in me strives for this honour but the poems themselves forbid it absolutely’ and when Dylan himself was given the Tom Paine award for being a Civil Rights kinda fellow, a drunk and uncomfortable Dylan rather elegantly points out the absurdity of talking about ‘colours’ and then states ‘Old people when their hair grows out, they should go out. And I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules – and they haven’t got any hair on their head – I get very uptight about it.’
He later wrote an apology poem in which he stated
‘ it is a fierce heavy feeling
thinkin’ something is expected of you
but you dont know what exactly it is…’
Subsequently he has accepted many awards (his Oscar for the song Things Have Changed used to travel on tour with him, sitting on stage, Dylan being of the age where Hollywood still meant something) and, personally, I think he deserves them all and more but is it really recognition? Surely there are tangible (economic) and intangible (respect) things which are more of a recognition? (I am aware that regular readers will be thinking me an oxy-moron given my usual decrying of poets dying in gutters). Congratulations Mr Dylan, you deserve all the praise you get but I’ll leave the last word to Leonard Cohen, possibly the only living person able to judge Dylan’s work
‘…(it) is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.’
‘till next time!
thegreaterfool2016 