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By Larry Fyffe
The Gnostic-like themes and dark images (images be words that evoke the sensations of smell, sight, touch, taste, and hearing in the listener or reader’s mind) found in the poems of Charles Baudelaire impact the songs of Bob Dylan:
(Baudelaire: A Voyage To Cythera)
The Greek island, to the Symbolist poet, is not the paradise it’s imagined to be – there’s a gallows mistaken for a cypress tree. According to Dylan, nor is the cowboy vision of America as the Promised Land.
In the song lyrics below, the singer/ songwriter opts to lighten up the dark image above by throwing some bread crumbs in with the ‘arms’ and ‘sails’ – perhaps burlesque on the ‘sin’ of feeding pigeons:
In any event, according to both Baudelaire and Dylan, the inhabitants of neither earthly site pass the tough test set down by Jesus, the Christian prophet:
(Luke 11:13)
The cypress tree, for both Dylan and Baudelaire, though somewhat less so than a stone church building, is a symbol, an objective co-relative, of the emotional search for an enduring world, a place where life and love lasts:
(Baudelaire: The Voyage)
Likewise Dylan – only an idiot imagines that there’s an eternal love a-waiting; why you might as well believe that a poster of Brigette Bardot up on the wall will come alive ….you’re gonna wait a long time:
In short, by death or other circumstance, relationships don’t last forever in the real world:
(Bob Dylan: The Man In The Long Black Coat)
A poet influenced by Baudelaire notes that not even concrete man-made objects of Art last:
(Paul Verlaine: After Three Years)
The singer/ songwriter goes hyperbolic over the matter:
(Bob Dylan: Everything Is Broken)
Bob Dylan knows an objective co-relative when he sees one:
Was that some kind of joke?
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Is it possible that Desolation Row’s incipit “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” was also inspired by Baudelaire and his poem “The Rope” ? In this prose poem, a mother takes back the rope with which her son hanged himself to sell it to neighbors. Dylan’s image looks pretty similar to Baudelaire’s one !