Even if you changed the terminology to empoyer empoyee, I get the feeling you would still object.
You would still require a confession of conscience above the skill and quality of the output of the craftsman.
I am glad that you think life has meaning. Too often the nihilists among us think that life is but a joke.
Which brings us to Bob Dylan("No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.") and the meaning of his song "All Along the Watchtower"
This essay on the meaning 'All Along the Watchtower' was first published in
German as 'Über Exil und Integrität: "All Along the Watchtower" und die
Dylan-Interpretation', in 'Parking Meter: Das deutschsprachige
Dylan-Magazin' (Vienna), No 13, Oct 2000 (pp. 20-24, translation by Rainer
Vesely and Burkhard Schleser). In 2001 it appeared in English on the Bob
Dylan Critical Corner site (URL in signature below).
***
OF EXILE AND INTEGRITY: 'ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER' AND DYLAN INTERPRETATION
'If ye will inquire, inquire ye' (Isaiah 21:12)
I
'There is no new thing under the sun', declares the biblical author of
Ecclesiastes (1:9), and in the Dylan community of today 'friends and other
strangers' are not lacking to declare that all further interpretation of the
master's texts is mere vanity.
'All Along the Watchtower' is a case in point. Not only is this one of
Dylan's most familiar songs, performed live well over a thousand times, but
it has long been orthodoxy in critical circles that it is essentially a
biblical paraphrase, its themes and imagery taken straight out of Isaiah. If
that is so, some may conclude that there is indeed 'no new thing' to say
about this song.
I submit that the debate is not closed. Dylan's quintessential texts, his
'thought-dreams', are, I believe, not fixed and static; rather, they
continue to generate a multiplicity of interpretations. One reason for this
is that no Dylan text stands alone. Texts speak to other texts - songs
connect with other songs and with other writings in the world outside:
notably, and crucially for 'Watchtower' and the John Wesley Harding album in
general, with the Bible, which is itself a book of books, an agglomeration
of texts by multiple authors. I shall, then, propose a reading of
'Watchtower' that places Dylan's text in relation to a wider textual
universe, inside and outside his own work (I shall quote the Bible in the
King James version throughout). In so doing I also hope to suggest that the
text of 'Watchtower' is still open today to fresh interpretations, and when
we seek to understand Dylan it is not true - and with luck never will be
true - that 'it's all been done before'.
o0o
II
'Watchtower' is usually sourced to Isaiah 21 and the prophet's vision of the
destruction of Babylon. The first critic to popularise this reading was
Anthony Scaduto (Bob Dylan; 1971; rev. edn.., London: Abacus, 1973, pp.
252-253). It has since been recycled, with minor variations, by Robert
Shelton (No Direction Home, 1986; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987, p. 393),
Aidan Day (Jokerman: Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan, Oxford: Blackwell,
1988, pp. 132-133), and Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades, New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1991, pp. 184-185). The consensus may be
summarised in Heylin's words: 'The song's setting seems to be largely based
on the section of Isaiah that deals with the fall of Babylon'. The 'Isaiah
reading' has been further taken up by Robin Witting, who, in his
booklet-length study Isaiah for Guitar: A Guide to 'John Wesley Harding'
(1991; rev. edn., Scunthorpe (England): Exploding Rooster Books, 1997),
declares that 'Watchtower' is 'a paraphrase of the Book of Isaiah in twelve
lines' (pp. 59-60), but, while invoking other biblical passages in Isaiah
and elsewhere, does not really go beyond an expansion of the basic Scaduto
line.
Scaduto identifies the keywords and themes of Dylan's song which point back
to Isaiah. The watchtower, the riders, the princes, the desert outside (with
its wildcat and howling wind): all are present in chapter 21. The salient
passages read: 'As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it cometh from
the desert, from a terrible land.' (21:1); 'Prepare the table, watch in the
watchtower, eat, drink: arise, ye princes' (5); 'Go, set a watchman, let him
declare what he seeth' (6); 'behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a
couple of horsemen.' (9). This evidence seems, indeed, incontrovertible; it
does strongly suggest that Dylan's song is a commentary on the dramatic
words (ascribed by Scaduto to the rider) that conclude verse 9: 'And he
answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images
of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.'. The song would then be a
warning to a corrupt society (be it ancient Babylon or Dylan's USA) to mend
its ways on pain of destruction; in the words of the biblical watchman, 'The
morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye' (21:12).
o0o
III
However, the listener may take these words in another sense, and . inquire
further. While there is no doubt that Isaiah 21 is indeed there behind the
song, other biblical echoes prove to be present too. This is notably the
case for line 3 of stanza 1 ('Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig
my earth'), on which I shall now concentrate in the belief that the origins
of these images may illuminate a broader interpretation of the whole song.
The wine/earth (vineyards/ploughed land) collocation occurs several times in
the Old Testament, typically in the context of the Great Exile of the
inhabitants of Judah in Babylon, from Nebuchadnezzar's capture of Jerusalem
(586 BCE) to the return decreed by Cyrus (539 BCE). Much later in Isaiah, we
read: 'strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien
shall be your plowers and vinedressers.' (61:5; Witting [p. 56] notes this
line, but does not relate it to the exile theme). Jeremiah, addressing the
'house of Israel', declares: 'And they shall eat up thine harvest . they
shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees' (5:17), and again, more
optimistically: ''Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again
in this land'. (32:15). Amos, too, prophesying to that same 'house of
Israel', offers the image of vineyards being expropriated ('ye have planted
pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.' - 5:11) and then
repossessed ('and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof' -
9:14).
If we take all these references and consider their combined import, the
parallels with 'Watchtower' appear striking. The Joker, who has lost the
possession of his hereditary fields ('earth') and vineyards, seems to be one
of the dispossessed Jews. Strangers (businessmen and plowmen, standing for
the Babylonian invaders) are drinking his wine and digging his earth. The
honest Thief in whom this serious Joker confides is no doubt a fellow Jew
('there are many here among us'), and their conversation takes place in
Babylon itself, the alien city of princes (Jeremiah speaks of 'Babylon's
princes' - 38:18 and 22) to which they have been deported.
And yet the same biblical context also offers the possibility of hope, of
eventual return from exile (as in 'Shelter From The Storm': 'I'm livin' in a
foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line'). Both Jeremiah and Amos
evoke the vineyards of Judah to suggest their repossession as well as their
loss. The message of 'Watchtower' may be that if the Jewish people (the
Joker and Thief) put the past behind them and regain their integrity ('you
and I, we've been through that . let us not talk falsely now'), they may
re-enter into their inheritance and return home. But first, Babylon itself
must fall - and this, if we go back to Isaiah 21, is the message borne by
the riders and the howling wind. It was, indeed, after the capture of
Babylon by the Persians that Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem
and rebuild the Temple (we may also note that years later, in 'Neighbourhood
Bully' [1983], Dylan explicitly recalls the Jews' oppression at the hands of
'the great Babylon').
'Watchtower' need not be read purely as biblical commentary: the Joker and
Thief (Jews) and princes and hangers-on (Babylonians) may also be
interpreted more generally as being, respectively, those who lost their
integrity in the past but may yet regain it, and those who have never had
any integrity to lose (to quote 'Positively 4th Street', 'You had no faith
to lose/And you know it'). Exile and loss of possessions would then
symbolise the loss of integrity or faith.
Such a connection may be confirmed from elsewhere in the Dylan canon. The
plowmen/businessmen alliance recalls 'Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands', where
'farmers' and 'businessmen', brandishing the spectre of 'dead angels',
threaten the Lady's integrity. Loss of possessions is memorably linked with
spiritual bankruptcy in both 'Tangled Up In Blue' ('She had to sell
everything she owned/And froze up inside') and 'Angelina' ('Now her
vengeance has been satisfied and her possessions have been sold'). The Joker
and Thief, we may speculate, still have the freedom to choose, even if 'the
hour is getting late'; a cataclysm is on the way, a great city will fall,
but those who regain their old vision may yet recover their inheritance. At
this point, the listeners of 2000 might even want to wonder if this song -
from 1968, of all years - might not have a message for those who, in today's
epoch of triumphant global capitalism, still dimly recall the old lost
ideals of the 1960s. But on that, of course, 'I can't think for you/You'll
have to decide' . |
