Just as art historians explain Picasso's blue period and musicologists discuss Beethoven's late string quartets, Professor of English Lou Renza analyzes Bob Dylan's poetry. Renza has been teaching a version of a class on Dylan since the mid-1970s. In this summer's seminar, he addressed such questions as why Einstein was disguised as Robin Hood ("Desolation Row"), why Mr. Jones meets a sword swallower ("Ballad of a Thin Man"), and why "you" rode on a chrome horse with a diplomat ("Like a Rolling Stone"). "The immediate impulse is to find truth in the songs and make it endure," Renza says. "But truth is to be lived on the run. Dylan rejects being the 'maharishi,' he's skittish."
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Renza has admired Dylan since he first heard his songs in graduate school. "They were always a source of poetic and intellectual energy for me," he says. "Knowledge ought to affect one's own personal existence. I admire Dylan because he thinks to the 'nth' degree - he's concerned less with the probable truth than with how far you can take an idea. The test of an idea is not how many people agree with it, but the extent to which it leads one to confront the impossible fact of life alone."
In academia, Dylan is becoming increasingly recognized for his significant cultural impact. Christopher Ricks, a professor of poetry at the University of Oxford, studies Dylan alongside T.S. Eliot and John Keats. Lyrics to his song "Tambourine Man" appear in the Norton Introduction to Literature, and the songwriter is consistently nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. This August, Renza brought eight academics to Dartmouth for Just a Series of Interpretations of Bob Dylan's Lyrical Works, a conference he organized with the help of presidential scholar Thomas Atwood '08. Eric Lott, professor of American Studies at the University of Virginia, and Michael Denning '76, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American Studies at Yale University, were among the guests at the conference, contributing to the scholarly dialogue on Dylan's poetic oeuvre.
Atwood participated in Renza's popular class on Dylan this summer and says he particularly enjoys thinking about the ideas that swirl around in that class. "When someone writes something, there's an idea at the core. Sometimes that's an emotion, an ideology, or an idea about life. Professor Renza's classes are about those ideas, and you end up feeling more connected to the literature you read."
It's been about 40 years since Dylan plugged in his electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival and released a storm of criticism from folk music purists. Not one to be reined in, the songwriter continues to produce music that is popular among a wide range of audiences. His first album in five years, Modern Times, released in August, reached the status of number one album on The Billboard 200. Regarding the controversy surrounding Dylan's use of poetry by the Confederate poet Henry Timrod in the album, Renza says Dylan is a collage artist of musical phrases and expressions, adding that Benjamin Franklin put it best in his autobiography, writing in reference to a preacher: "I rather approved his giving us good sermons composed by others rather than bad ones of his own manufacture."
Reflecting on the conference held this summer, Renza says that the discussion was rigorous and lively. "In my opinion, without fail, the eight papers that were presented held to high-caliber academic thought, yet remained accessible to the many people, academic and non-academic, who listened to them." He adds that he is grateful for the opportunity to discuss the subject he enjoys so much. "I thank Dartmouth, and especially the many students who have taken my course, for that experience."
By STEVEN J. SMITH
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