Bob Dylan Nobel Lecture speech is one for the ages

Bob Dylan delivered a historic Nobel lecture Sunday evening while disclosing the secret behind his songwriting career can be found in classic novels like Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

He also reminded critics don’t get hung up on the meaning of his songs. It doesn’t matter.

“If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important, he said. “I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs, and I’m not gonna worry about it–what it all means. When Melville puts all his Old Testament doctrines and [many references]…in that story, I don’t think he would have worried about it either–what it all means.”

The 27-minute speech was published online Monday by the Swedish Academy that awards the prize and has been receiving rave reviews.

“The speech is extraordinary and, as one might expect, eloquent. Now that the lecture has been delivered, the Dylan adventure is coming to a close,” Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy wrote in a blog post.

It took him nearly eight months to deliver the speech after he was announced as the winner for the 2016 laureate for literature. Dylan is the first songwriter to ever win the award.

He had to give the speech within six months of the Nobel Prize ceremony on December 10 to collect the $923,000 award and the gold medal. The speech was recorded in Los Angeles and delivered to the Swedish Academy that manages the ceremony and award.

“When I first received this Nobel prize for literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature,” Dylan said.

He was inspired by Buddy Holly, whose music he said,  “changed my life,”  with the “imaginative verses.”

Dylan recalled seeing Holly in concert not long before the rock star died in a 1959 plane crash.”Something about him seemed permanent and he filled me with conviction,” Dylan said. “Then out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened, he looked at me right straight there in the eye and he transmitted something, something I didn’t know what. It gave me the chills.”

Folk songs were his earliest musical vocabulary, but books such as “Ivanhoe” and “Don Quixote” and others painted his view of the world and gave him the inspiration to write a sound track for so many people’s lives.

Dylan, whose hits include “Like a Rolling Stone,  Lay, Lady Lay, All along the Watchtower, and Blowin’ in the Wind,” then provided an insightful interpretation of the novels Moby Dick and All Quiet on the Western Front and Homer’s The Odyssey. He retold the stories of all three books, painting the imagery, and using such descriptive language that it brought the characters in the books back to life. He said many of his lyrics came from these classics.

He closed his speech by drawing a comparison to Shakespeare.

“But songs are unlike literature,” he said.  “They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.’ ”

Feature photo: Bob Dylan (Wikimedia)