Ezra pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower : Bob Dylan and the symbolist movement.

Abstract

Bob Dylan’s songs have become one of the most interpreted bodies of work in the 20th century, with many scholarly books focusing on interpreting the songs through a variety of approaches, as well as a slew of layman interpretations by the media, resulting in the creation of the term ‘Dylanology’ to describe the field of studies of Dylan’s work. Dylan himself, on the other hand, has refuted any interpretation of his songs. In this essay, through close readings of his songs, autobiography and documentaries about him, as well as comparisons with the French symbolist poets of the late 19th century, modernist poets of the early twentieth century and his contemporaries in other art forms, I will resolve the views of Dylan and his interpreters by showing how the divergence of Dylan’s engagement with the symbolist tradition creates a tension between interpretation and non-interpretation of his songs which is resolved through the integration of performance.