Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel

[Chambi Chachage]

"Yes, Mr. Dylan is a brilliant lyricist. Yes, he has written a book of prose poetry and an autobiography. Yes, it is possible to analyze his lyrics as poetry. But Mr. Dylan’s writing is inseparable from his music. He is great because he is a great musician, and when the Nobel committee gives the literature prize to a musician, it misses the opportunity to honor a writer.As reading declines around the world, literary prizes are more important than ever. A big prize means a jump in sales and readership even for a well-known writer...They could have chosen a writer who has made significant innovations in the form, like Jennifer Egan, Teju Cole or Anne Carson. They could have selected a writer from the developing world, which remains woefully underrepresented among Nobel laureates. They could have picked a writer who has built an audience primarily online, like Warsan Shire, who became the first Young Poet Laureate of London in 2014" - Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel

Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel By Anna North He’s great. But he’s not a writer.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

All the arguments advanced in this piece are anticipated, understandable and mostly well received.

The weakest point of the argument is the but : “But Mr. Dylan’s writing is inseparable from his music.” - indeed the dancer cannot be separated from the dance. ( Will return to counter-arguments - and justification of the prize later , for once and for all – still waiting for an avalanche of objections.)

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the highest literary honour that the world has to offer and I thank God for the Swedish Academy adhering to the spirit of Alfred Nobel's wishes and this time even broadening their horizons a little further.

In the interview that followed immediately after Sara Danius' announcement had been greeted with some jubilation (by the assembled media crowd) she said very emphatically that the Swedish Academy had been unanimous and very happy with their decision to award the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman). Implied , not without due consideration about the consequential fallout from such a radical decision…

“Poetry of the ear”: “It’s an extraordinary example of his brilliant way of rhyming and his pictorial thinking... If you look back, far back, you discover Homer and Sappho, and they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to. They were meant to be performed. It’s the same way with Bob Dylan. But we still read Homer and Sappho. He can be read and should be read. He is a great poet in the grand English tradition. I know the music, and I’ve started to appreciate him much more now. Today, I’m a lover of Bob Dylan.” (Sara Danius)

Stockholm: In 1979, on Vasagatan, just a few minutes before Mr. Soyinka boarded the bus to the airport, he smiled back at me and said “I also have my favourite/s”. My musical ear cannot remember if he said “favourite” or favourites”. The last thing he said was, “I need a watch” - and seven years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

That's one of the problems; everyone has their own favourite/ favourites and fortunately or unfortunately, the Swedish Academy cannot please everyone at the same time - the French Language empire want a Frenchie writer to be made king of kings, the Portuguese may be lesser or weaker language chauvinists/ combatants and less stridently nationalistic - don't yet know the attitude of the Chinese except that they would very much prefer that the Prize be not “politically motivated” as they believe is the case when the prize is awarded to a dissident / regime critic. As for Ladbrokes and other betting / gambling institutions, Bob Dylan was rated at 50:1 and that's what keeps these gambling enterprises alive; sadly, somebody always backs the wrong horse...

Since Moby Dick - the start of one's induction into American Literature followed by Salinger's “The t Catcher in the Rye” a hundred years later, most if not all of Philip Roth, John Updike and their literary clans. To use that sometimes ambiguous Nigerian-English word sentimental, to which pleads guilty mi lord, since this syncopating Negro along with many other Negro and non-Negroes of my generation, grew up with our bard, Bob Dylan lyrical songs – sung poetry - in reality, in Bob Dylan's songs, the totality of his prodigious output, the chronicles the history of his times, the history of America - as Richie Havens sings Songwriter ,“greatest storyteller “and Marvin Gaye in “Life is for Learning”, “Some songs were done by chosen men, some from men insane”

Cornelius

We Sweden

[Ofure Aito]

The future of literature is now in songs and films. The selection of 2016 Nobel Prize winner points in that direction. This is more glaring with gradual extinction of reading culture and the hype of pop culture/entertainment.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Alas, the non-reading generation (they watch the movie instead) but the non-redaing generation also goes to the theatre  - or is that also elite activity?

"To me", (the award to Bob Dylan) is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.” (Leonard Cohen)

[Kenneth Harrow]

It’s too much of a stretch for me to call them literature.
They are as valuable as literature, but don’t fit any reasonable definition of it. And I think the real reason is the lyrics exist only with the music, and have to be evaluated as such; the same is true of screenwriting.
It isn’t true of plays or poetry, much less fiction, which exist as a form of literature that can be performed, but also can be read independent of the performance. If it is simply words, then orature, not to mention advertising, qualifies. But in fact both of those have to be evaluated by their performance to be appreciated properly
Just my view
ken

Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
Michigan State University
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-803-8839
har...@msu.edu
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

On 15/10/16 16:40, "Ofure Aito" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of ofur...@gmail.com> wrote:

The future of literature is now in songs and films. The selection of 2016 Nobel Prize winner points in that direction. This is more glaring with gradual extinction of reading culture and the hype of pop culture/entertainment.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Future of literature in songs and films? There is a world of difference between the resources of songs and those of poetry,the only literary genre where such comparisons have significant validity.. They are related but significantly different.

Is reading culture actually being extinguished or being reconstituted?

The Nobel Prize for Literature is not a guide to developments in the field. Its decision making approach is not globally representative.

toyin

On 15 October 2016 at 22:40, Ofure Aito <ofur...@gmail.com> wrote:

The future of literature is now in songs and films. The selection of 2016 Nobel Prize winner points in that direction. This is more glaring with gradual extinction of reading culture and the hype of pop culture/entertainment.

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[Kenneth Harrow]

I agree with toyin.

Consider: if a poem were set to music, it would be still poetry. But if it were written as a lyric to a song, and if, say, the lyrics were excellent but the song was lousy, would it make any sense to divide the two and give an award simply to the lyrics?? And if not, wouldn’t we be considering the song in terms of how the lyrics work with the music? We do this all the time when thinking about any vocal music.

Ditto for a screenplay where the action and camera function alongwith the words, not separately. Can we talk about a great scene of a film, independently from the camerawork? And if it is a play that is filmed, we can see the difference and judge the play as play, not as film.

If this is wrong, and literature is being redefined, the nobel committee is not at all the place I would go, as a teacher, to make that argument. I’d go to someone who has worked on, thought about, written about, theorized on that issue.

Maybe I should add the academy awards are not where I go to ask what was a good film, and although there is great interest in the novel prize, I was say any committee that over the years has failed to recognize the signal greatness of borges, djebar, achebe, --literary giants of their generation—and instead has given the award to pygmies, can’t be taken all that seriously.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 15 October 2016 at 22:20
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel

 

Future of literature in songs and films? There is a world of difference between the resources of songs and those of poetry,the only literary genre where such comparisons have significant validity.. They are related but significantly different.

Is reading culture actually being extinguished or being reconstituted?

The Nobel Prize for Literature is not a guide to developments in the field. Its decision making approach is not globally representative.

toyin

On 15 October 2016 at 22:40, Ofure Aito <ofur...@gmail.com> wrote:

The future of literature is now in songs and films. The selection of 2016 Nobel Prize winner points in that direction. This is more glaring with gradual extinction of reading culture and the hype of pop culture/entertainment.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

I find the failure to award Borges the price rather sad.

I understand Tolstoy did not get it too, with the committee giving the explanation that he was not nominated, and that, at that time, if i recall correctly, they were not allowed to nominate themselves.

three writers who i think deserve all literary prizes possible but whom i dont expect to have been awarded or will be  awarded the Nobel prize for lit, even though they are from the West, which may be described as the favoured home of the Nobel- i stand corrected if i am wrong-are

J.R.R. Toliken for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Silmarilion and the Hobbit. Tolkien is one of the greatest myth makers ever, comparable, though i dont know if he is  equatable, with Dante. But Tolkien is what is known as a fantasy writer-which i prefer to call alternative reality writing,-and i get the impression that the entry of fantasy, via Tolkien and possibly J.K. Rowling, into the high brow ranks of literature, occurred well after he had passed away and  is still too recent even for a writer like Ursula le Guin, a master in both magical fantasy and science fiction, to get the prize.

Another is the magnificent Howard Philips Lovecraft, whose fantasy credentials are well recognized and whom i see as both a great prose fiction writer and a great religious writer, supreme in a field that needs to be better known-demonic mysticism, in which direct encounter with the ground of being understood as mysticism is not consummated in relation to divine but to demonic realities. he has long passed away though.

Ben Okri's writing is alternative reality writing or fantasy and from my little knowledge of the Booker, i wonder if that prize would not do well by recognizing fantasy writing more, like Ben Okri's Famished Road was ... i recall the magnificent opening of that book and the wonderful journey to the world of the dead, passing through numerous phantasmagoric realms, concluding in a passage through a field of fine pieces of broken glass which cut the traveller's feet so he would be drained of all blood before reaching the river to cross to the other side, only to get there and encounter a hooded figure whose presence alarms the seven headed spirit who his spirit comrades had sent to bring him back to their world and who had waited patiently for him to become fed up with the pains of the world and resolve to die, which occurred after his father had flogged him mercilessly for breaking the neighbours' window, causing the poor family expenses they could not afford, not knowing the offense was caused by his son's spirit comrades who wanted to get him into trouble, upon which the boy fasted himself to near death, with the events in the otherworld as the seven headed spirit battled the ferry person mirrored in a magical ritual taking place in the boy's home as his parent's battled to save his life.

thanks for the chance to entertain myself talking abt literature.

toyin

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[Kenneth Harrow]

I think these (below, toyin’s choices) are imaginative and very interesting. I think the nobel committee has been more conservative in its view (maybe no longer!)

As for tolstoy, well…there really is no more significant author that one could imagine, but I have the advantage of a century or more of hindsight.

I did meet borges in the1970s at msu, and his influence over modernist literature was certainly as great as any other author alive at the time.

Maybe it was because he wrote short stories that accounted for overlooking him, at that time. But I must say I think djebar really really did deserve it, and it is bizarre, to me, why she was overlooked. Not all ben okri’s novels are amazing, but his first 3-4 were monumental, including the fantastic short stories. I would same the same for ngugi, whose first 5-6 novels had a tremendous impact on African literature, postcolonial literature; and his essays included classics, now.

 

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday 16 October 2016 at 12:33
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel

 

I find the failure to award Borges the price rather sad.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Gentlemen Sirs,

Ladies of the kitchen (just kidding) – husband tells senior wife, “darling I'm marrying one more girl, don't worry honey, a mere kitchen maid to be helping you in the kitchen and, wink wink, helping you out a little in the other room, you know what I mean?”

Whereby husband has probably signed his own death warrant. Death by lethal poison in one of those whodunnit...

More seriously,

Here's Alfred Nobel's will - (if only we were members of the Swedish Academy, we are Roland Barthes would probably interpret that document differently...

Don't forget James Joyce was not awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but

Bertrand Russell & Winston Churchill got it.

Why are the the Nobel awards in other areas, peace, medicine, economics, chemistry etc. less controversial ? I'll be strolling over to the Academy to ask them.

Many are called, few chosen…

Rabbis congratulate Dylan

Soon, people in this forum will be praising the winner of the US presidential elections, no doubt their best choice to steer the US for the next four years...

In the latest dateline london the Russian journalist says that the red line has been crossed with NATO expansion eastwards, that the Ukraine is more of a flashpoint than Syria, and this the next president of the US will have to deal with from 21^st January 2017…

May the best man/ woman win

Cornelius

We Swe

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

wow.

ill check out okri's short stories.

perhaps djebar did not get it bcs the quota for africa/african descent writers, moving from soyinka to naguib mahfouz to toni morrison etc had been used up, before the price now traveled to other neglected  regions to provide quotas for  those places before returning to its Western home.

i would appreciate being corrected if im reading the history inaccurately.

toyin

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[Kenneth Harrow]

I don’t know the politics of the nobel. Perhaps Cornelius, who is in the neighborhood, has an assessment on whether there are quotas or not.

k

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday 17 October 2016 at 05:04
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel

 

wow.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

It's unfortunate that any potential Nobel Laureate could feel cheated by not being awarded the prize any given year. The prize is not supposed to be awarded to "the best" poet/novelist/dramatist/essayist. (I have more than two dozen favourite poets among the living...

Nobel's last will and testament specifies that the laureates do not necessarily have to be Scandinavian.

Has Chomsky ever been on the list for anything at Ladbrokes?

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Tonight's the night - Dylan won't be there, Horace Engdahl the former Secretary of the Swedish Academy will read a message from Mr. Dylan and Patti Smith will perform his

“ A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall”

Swedish TV is agog with Dylan and just now there's a film about his life. You can imagine that if the bard would have been turning up in person at this evening's prize-giving ceremony and banquet , if would have been something like Dylan-fever with thousands of fans turning up to get even just a glimpse of the rock star and no other) which could have made the other Nobel Prize laureates (in medicine, chemistry, psychics, economics etc.) feel a little left out of the general air of adulation...

Almost a direct reply to the preposterous “Why Bob Dylan shouldn't have gotten a Nobel” is this beautiful piece by Bernard-Henri Levy celebrating THE PRIZE being awarded Mr. Dylan :

Bob Dylan and the Literary Idiot Wind

Culture & Society

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is one of the founders of the “Nouveaux Philosophes” (New Philosophers) movement. His books include Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, and the forthcoming Spirit of Judaism.

Bob Dylan and the Literary Idiot Wind

PARIS – Oh, the anger of the fusty at the announcement of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize! What an outcry from the academy – not the Swedish one, mind you, but that of the world church of literaturology.

The panic of the literary bureaucracy, ensnared in its certainties and steeped in its petty calculations, its half-baked prognostications, its crafty shifts of position, has been palpable. Was the choice of Dylan political or non-political? Why an American? Why not a woman? Or a voice, any voice, of a visible minority? Or this one, who’s been waiting 20 years? Or that one, who’s given up hope?

The truth, however unpleasant it may be for the fuddy-duddies, is that awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to an author who has written just one book is no more surprising than giving it to Dario Fo or Winston Churchill.

And here’s the even greater truth: to bestow it on one of our last popular poets, the distant relative of Rutebeuf, Villon, and all the minstrels and songsters of solitude and dereliction; to consecrate a troubadour, a bard of the brotherhood of lonely and lost souls; to crown the author of ballads that have been, to borrow André Suarès’s phrase about Rimbaud, “a moment in the life” of so many people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries makes a lot more sense than pulling out of a hat the obscure Rudolf Christoph Eucken or picking poor old Sully Prudhomme instead of Tolstoy.

Of course, it’s wrong to respond priggishly to priggishness. But, confronted with those who have been shouting, “That’s not literature! It’s just not!” one is tempted to side with Francis Ponge who, citing Lautréamont, defined the poet (he would say “proet”) as a bard or troubadour who, by expressing the “voice of things,” becomes “the most useful citizen of his tribe.” And to whom does that definition apply better than to the author of “Chimes of Freedom” or “Long and Wasted Years,” which bring to life and to music what the critic Greil Marcus has called the “invisible republic” of American culture?

One is tempted to side also with Mallarmé, who urged us, in more or less the same terms, to “give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe.” Again, who better than this collage artist, this chameleon of citation and intertextuality, this laconic lyricist, this verbal alchemist who spent his life reinventing others’ words and his own, uncovering the embers of the era beneath the ashes of the day’s defeats, and transmuting into gold the lead he heard on the radio?

Or consider the familiar distinction between scribes, who make instrumental use of language, and writers, who spin it into silk. Wasn’t Dylan alluding to something similar when, after years of struggle for civil rights, resistance to the war in Vietnam, and support for the feminist revolution, he titled one of his most beautiful songs “I’m Not There,” as in, I’m not here anymore, no longer your servant, goodbye to all that, so long?

But the true question lies elsewhere. The most conclusive exercise would be to compare apples with apples and the author of “Blonde on Blonde” with those who were and remain his key contemporaries.

Dylan is a Kerouac who can sing. He’s a Burroughs who put to music the great parade of the Beat generation, with its wild parties and naked lunches. He is what Allen Ginsberg said in describing his shock upon first hearing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” in 1963, a song in which the accents and pacing, the abrupt changes in emphasis, the voyage to the very heart of words and the imagination all echo the best literature of the time – but with music as well!

Are we going to hold that against Dylan, charge him with the sin of having grafted the rhythms of the blues, soul, and country music onto those of the Bible, William Blake, and Walt Whitman? Why should we withhold from the trouper of the Never Ending Tour (more than two thousand performances!) the dignity accorded without hesitation to the author of On the Road?

It was Louis Aragon, I think, who said that setting a poem to music was like moving from black and white to color. Aragon, the poet sung by Léo Ferré and others, believed that a poem unsung was half dead.

Well, then, it seems that Dylan was the only one of his era to have been able to embody fully the musicality that is essential to great poetry, the second voice that haunts every poet, but which he generally delegates to those who recite or read him, the power of song that is his ultimate and secret truth and that some have gone mad – literally and tragically mad – trying to pull from cage into canto.

Bard and rhapsodist both. A poetico-musical revolution in one man and one body of work. I like to think that it is this tour de force – this prolonged stroke of genius that is forever young – that the Nobel committee has recognized in its selection.

http://prosyn.org/HbbMnde

© 1995-2016 Project Syndicate

On Friday, 14 October 2016 10:15:12 UTC+2, Chambi Chachage wrote:

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Toyin,
Must literature be expressed in the traditionally known formats?

CAO.

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Chambi,
The paradigm has just shifted, welcome to the future poetry and poets.

CAO.

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Since this is an area in which Im currently engaged I think the Nobel committee in its award to Dylan did the right thing in recognizing the roots of modern poetry in music.

Much of classical poetry was composed to be sung and not to be read.  The techbology of writing soon caught up and normalised itself as standard.

Witness the song of Solomon.

Witness the Yoruba Ijala

Witness the songs of King Sunny Ade in particular his encomiums on Alayeluwa Alaafin of Oyo. Iku Baba Yeye!

' Tampapa tampapa tampapa

   Sanbe sun fapo rori

    Popoola hunrun lojugun

    Tampapa hun run lese'

Note the alliterative flow and paralellisms.

In the choice of Dylan the Committee signalled a return to origins of modern poetry in the verbal arts.

Every great musician is by the same token a great poet.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

[Chambi Chachage]

Cf. “Since I’ve written quite a number of songs for my plays, I would like to be nominated for a Grammy”  - Soyinka: http://qz.com/826930/wole-soyinka-africas-first-nobel-laureate-in-literature-isnt-sure-bob-dylan-deserved-to-win/

---

From: Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>
To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2016 12:37 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Bob Dylan Shouldn’t Have Gotten a Nobel

[Ofure Aito]

Even the Greek Philosophers define poetry as lyrics to the sung and accompanied by flute and choral movement. Agbetuyi said it all that the modernists redefined the tradition as standard. I recalled I said what CAO phrased as paradigm shift when Dylan was just declared Nobel winners that the reality of literature in the postmodern is now interpreted in popular culture and in the media. However that does not take the 'standard or traditional' nature of producing and reading literature out of it. We must bear in mind that the beauty of poetry is in chanting it like the psalms.

My humble view.

Ofure Aito 

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[Kenneth Harrow]

I don’t quite agree, as I’ve said before. Why not in fact put the priority on the music, since it is in fact music first, and thus called lyrics. A lyrical poem is not the same as lyrics that are sung, and as sung they have attributes which you don’t mention, such as musical qualities to which they must attend, like pitch etc.

Nope, if the nobel wanted to give an award to music, I wouldn’t object, but it isn’t the same thing when sung.

To me.

And in fact, ironically, they avoid competition with the other major awards for music, that include song,  by misnaming it poetry.

 

The song of Solomon, which you cite, is incomplete as musical lyrics since the music is lost. In fact the entire Hebrew bible is chanted to a specific trope. And as such the music is the same for the entire torah, and it in fact changes during the high holidays. The tropes were invented probably to help the memory, as was no doubt the same case with greek tropes.

Anyway, old story.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>

Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 10 December 2016 at 16:37
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

It was the same Wole Soyinka who told us at the University of Port Harcourt in 2008 during the maiden edition of the Garden City Literary Festival that "the psalms are pure poetry".

CAO.

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Ken:

You may well disagree but isnt this a question of emphasis?

I thank CAO for bringing in Spyinka's comment on music. Soyinka's music is merely a 'footnote' to his plays. I stated that a great musician is also a great poet; but the converse is not necessarily true.  Soyinka's experiment with the Unlimited Liability Company shows clearly that he may be one of the greatest dramatists and poets ever that doesnt necessarily mean he would be (or is) a great musician. Thats the reason he will never win a grammy.  His poetry book  The Shuttle in the Crypt may be one of the greatest poetry books ever (in my opinion) but there is not much in it that is musical. Soyinka's poetry thrives on some of the most original and accurate use of metaphor ever seen as well as syntactic arrangements that foreground subjunctives as a powerful tool in poetry writing. The latter is the source of the often quoted remark that Soyinka's style is opaque. Many readers expect sentences structured on the SVC .grammatical model but encounter  instead lots of initial gerunds and intransitives and get lost in the complex and compound sentences when they anticipate simple sentence structures (I have drawn parallels in my study of music composition between simple chords and complex chords).

On the other hand the elusive factor that endears readers to Okigbo's poetry is the musicality in it which he adroitly deploys again and again through such tools as parallisms. It is no wonder that he was a practicing (amateur)  musician trained on the clarinet. And he gives us hints of these in words such 'strophes" 'monody' "lament" 'elegy' 'swan song'
'alto' as well as titles like 'lament of the drums'

Red herrings: lyric.
I once did a graduate course on the lyric an d was utterly disappointed expecting that at some point well break into dancing and singing. Then as I mused over my disappointment I realized that for a long time when people spoke of the lyrics of a piece of music I thought they meant the chords: why not call a spade a spade and refer to words as words! So the word lyric may have unfergone transmutations over the ages from that which means words.transformed into music through appropriate chords to just words devoid of the musical chords. Transforming words into musical chords means starting from building blocks such as  alliteration' assonance and yoking them to repetitions and parallelisms coupled with elongations and contractions for artistic effects. It is the sum total of these adroitly deployed that separates the great musicians from the others.  Poetry is therefore the link between literature and orature; between literature and music.  The midwife is the aristic use of words. Yes Soyinka was right about the psalms ; he isnt about his judgement on the Committee and Dylan's work. If Dylan is a sculptor I would disagree totally with their decision. The Nobel Committees decision on Dylan is sound.

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Now Im also aware that what is at stake here is not wether Dylan by the nature of his work is qualified for the award. The very structure of Soyinka's disapproval reveals a policing  of boundaries at work: If the musicians dont consider us (writers) for their awards why should they have ours?

The simple answer is: it depends on the music and the musician. This cannot be a routine practice. Not all musicians are Dylan: song WRITERS as well as great singers. I wouldnt be surprised if the BGs are chosen in not the too distant future (before the last survivor departs)

[Kenneth Harrow]

Hi ola, a nice argument.

Words change in meaning over time. A lyric has become a category of poetry, whatever its original meaning. Your judgments on the role of music, the difficulty of soyinka’s language, the interface of musicality in his drama or poetry, are all quite strong arguments.

I don’t think my views on how the nobel delimits their definitions of literature are terribly important, and we can simply disagree on their choice without much harm being done to the intellectual spheres. Thanks for your thoughtful reply,

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

in passing

In 1798 we got The Lyrical Ballads the preface to which was something of a radical departure (anyway, in my view much of them too pompous to be sung…

In the vernacular, some storytelling : Bob Dylan - The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

Bob Dylan : The Ballad of a thin man

Last night, more accurately early this morning at about 3 a.m., Nobel Prize in Literature hangover, I read pages 232-239 (Music in Judaism) from The Encyclopedia of Jewish Values by Nachum Amsel with the subheadings “All of Judaism is affected by music”/ “The importance of music in Judaism”/” Music in the Bible”/ “Musical instruments in Judaism”/ “ Which is the essence of Jewish Music – instruments or singing?”/ “Music in Jewish Prayer”/” Non-Jewish melodies in the synagogue”/ “The banning of music by the rabbis”

Of relevance: THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC IN JUDAISM

“ Music is not only vital to Judaism and Jewish life today, but it is central to the creation and the continuation of the world. The verse says that “ the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork” (Psalm19:2) In explaining this verse, the Rabbis clarify that the form of the declaration is through daily music of the heavens and the earth, which sing to God, and without this daily song, God would not have created the world at all.( Midrash, Otzar HaMidrashim, Rabbi Akiva 4) And this Midrash goes on to say that all the rivers, mountains, and all parts of nature sing to God daily. Rabbi Nachman takes this idea one step further and says that each blade of grass and each animal has its own particular melody and sings. Another Midrash explains that God prefers the song of man to the song of angels, because the angels sing to God on a regular basis, the same time each day, while man sings out to God spontaneously. In fact the very first song sung by the Jewish people to God was the Song of The Sea following their miraculous salvation by God from the Egyptian armies. Rashi explains that this song was completely spontaneous. According to one source, this song was the first time that man ever sang to God, despite all the previous interactions of God with man in the Torah. In fact , one opinion writes that if not for the daily song of human beings to God, He would not have created the world to begin with. Another opinion is that the entire purpose of creation itself was for music and song.

Song in the Temple was so crucial that atonement could not be achieved for a sacrifice in the Temple unless song accompanied it. Similarly, any sacrifice brought to the Temple that lacked the song to accompany it, was invalidated because of that. In fact the highest form of service to God , according to the Talmud, is music and song ( Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 6:10). The Zohar explains that the Levites , who sang in the Temple, were called Levites because they joined together ( “Nelavim”) in unison to sing to God. One who sings to God in this world is assured that he or she will sing to God in the Next World as well.

The central book of Judaism, the Torah itself, is called a song, Shira. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuuda Berlin explains why the Torah is referred to by that term. He states that every song has lyrics and feelings that are implied beneath the surface and not plainly stated. So too the Torah's main ideas and deeper concepts are not found in the plain text, but must be understood on a hidden, more subtle level, like a song. Ideas in the Torah, like in a song, are often intentionally elusive and implied , and not openly written, Perhaps, in addition, just as a song has many levels of understanding, the Torah is intended to be understood on many levels. And just as a song contains many feelings and moods within it and varies from person to person, so too, the Torah generates different feelings and moods for different people. Finally, just as a song inspires people, deeply moving them to action and change,so too the Torah is meant to inspire individuals to act and change.”

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Thanks Cornelious for bringing in the views of the Talmund and Torah on the origins of human propensities for music making which agree in broad outlines with my own animistic theory of the origins of music among humanity.

Yes right about the same time as I did the period course on the Lyric I took another period course which involved the Lyrical Ballads which convinced me the word may be used differently in separate periods as well as contexts.

But long before.then I.have engaged with the text in undergraduate studies.

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Also Ballads is one of those red.herrings in meaning...

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Indeed Sir !

Ballads

I particularly like this one ( to be read , preferably with my step-father's deep Scottish accent) :

The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens

Would Duncan qualify?

Here's a real red-herring for you