Suze Rotolo 'Rock Wives' interview
SMB
before, but I have never seen it. Interesting stuff. I'm not sure if this
is the complete interview. It seems to stop abruptly.
SUSAN ROTOLO
from Rock Wives
The cover photo of Bob Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,
the 1963 release that would finally establish him as a songwriter, shows a
very youthful Dylan strolling down West Fourth Street arm-in-arm with a
smiling woman. The woman is lovely-looking, but she is not, as some might
think, just a hired model. Her name is Susan Rotolo and, at the time that
picture was taken, she was Bob Dylan's nineteen-year-old real-life
girlfriend.
When Susan met Dylan in 1961 in New York, he was certainly no star: he was
just a scruffy new kid in town who was not even being paid for his
appearances at Gerde's Folk City Monday night hootenannies. Yet, as a
performer, he stood out even then, remembers Susan. 'He was charismatic.
Even though he was one of the imitators of Woody Guthrie, he had something
of his own.'
Susan witnessed the phenomenon of Dylan's growing fame first hand: she was
there when Dylan was singled out in a review in 1961 by New York Times folk
music critic Robert Shelton and was with Dylan when his car was mobbed by
hundreds of fans after his triumphant Carnegie Hall concert in 1963. Susan
Rotolo was the inspiration for many of Dylan's early songs, including
'Boots of Spanish leather', 'Don't think twice, it's all right' and
'Tomorrow is a long time'.
As Dylan grew more famous, Susan discovered that the fame was affecting
their relationship in negative ways and they parted in 1964. Susan spent
the first few years after the break-up trying to hide from fanatic Dylan
fans. Fortunately, enough years have gone by for Susan to feel comfortable
with talking about what life was like with Dylan in those days: 'It's
history now,' she says. Today, Susan lives in New York with her husband, a
film editor, and their five-year-old son. She works as a freelance
illustrator. It's amazing how little she's changed in appearance in the
twenty-one years since she appeared on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob
Dylan. When this observation is presented to her, she says shyly that she
and her son were walking through Tower Records the other day and that she
had seen the album out on display. 'Just for fun I said, "Do you know who
that is in that picture?" And he looks real carefully and he looks at me
and he said, "That's you, Mommy." It was cute.'
Luckily for Susan's son, Susan is teaching him all the folk songs that her
Italian-American music-loving parents taught her when she was a little
girl: 'Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly - they were all part of
the music in our home while we were growing up,' says Susan.
As well as getting a solid education in music (and not only folk, but
classical, opera, jazz and blues), Susan and her older sister, Carla, were
taught by their parents to be politically aware. 'This was the fifties, the
McCarthy era. Teachers, especially, were losing their jobs if they did
anything out of the ordinary, so it took courage to do any kind of speaking
out at all. I was involved with an organisation called SANE - for a Sane
Nuclear Policy. I got into trouble in high school because I tried to
collect signatures on a petition to ban the bomb. Those were the days of
the loyalty oaths. Even students had to sign in order to graduate. I
remember agreeing to sign, since I really had no choice, but I wrote "under
protest" under my signature. I was taught the value of our Bill of Rights
and the Constitution. To have to sign an oath of loyalty to God and country
was against one's civil rights.'
Because of her political activities and interest in folk music, Susan
always felt like a bit of an outsider in high school. 'I didn't have too
many friends. I was considered too weird. My idols were Edna St Vincent
Millay and Lord Byron, poets instead of movie stars.' So she began to hang
out with kids from other high schools 'who were like me, who were not part
of the mainstream, who were socially conscious the way I was. We picketed
Woolworth stores here in New York City in conjunction with those in the
South who were fighting to integrate the lunch counters at the Woolworth
stores there. We were a bunch of young idealistic kids. It was black and
white and everything. We were under no danger in New York, but the people
in the South were putting their lives on the line.'
On Sundays, Susan and her friends would congregate in Washington Square
Park to listen to the likes of Woody Guthrie, Jack Elliott, and Pete Seeger
play - 'a lovely atmosphere for a fourteen-year-old kid,' Susan says. Then,
when Susan and her friends got to be a little older, they started going to
the hootenannies at Gerde's Folk City. Her friends' activities were pretty
tame by today's standards. 'There were no drugs. Nobody really drank. So it
was easier for a mother then to let the kid go out than it is now, when
there are drugs and all kinds of things.' . . .
In the summer after she graduated from high school, Susan worked at odd
jobs, waitressing, working at the five-and-dime, and in the evenings going
as often as she could to hootenannies and folk concerts at Carnegie Hall
and other places to hear people like Pete Seeger, Ewan MacColl, Odetta, Tom
Lehrer and others. A friend took her to Gerde's Folk City where Judy
Collins, Dave Van Ronk, Carolyn Hester, Peter Yarrow (before he became part
of Peter, Paul and Mary) and many, many others sang. One of the most
popular events at Gerde's there in that summer of '61 was the Monday night
hootenanny - 'Anyone could get up and play,' remembers Susan. It was at one
of these hootenannies that Susan first laid eyes on Bob Dylan. 'He would
play with some guy called Mark Spoelstra. And Mark Spoelstra had lovely
shoulders. I thought, "God, who's that guy with the nice set of
shoulders?"' But it was Dylan's harmonica-playing that ultimately proved to
be more of a magnet than Spoelstra's shoulders. 'I'm a sucker for anyone
who plays a good harp,' she says - and has been ever since as a child she
heard and loved the recordings of a Black blues harmonica player named
Sonny Terry. 'So that was the jump. When I met Dylan, what I loved about
him was the way he played the harmonica, I loved the sound. He played with
an earthiness that was wonderful.'
In Dylan's performances in those early days, Susan also remembers that
there was 'a clowniness, a funniness about him. He used to clown around on
stage tuning his guitar. He didn't cut the strings, so he would say, "This
guitar needs a haircut." He was funny. He had an impish kind of
personality, like Harpo Marx.'
After his performances, Dylan would mingle with the audience ('He was just
folks then,' says Susan) and sometimes he and Susan would talk. Right from
the start, she noticed that there was 'an enormous ambition in him, 'cause
he had even said he was going to be very big. I took it seriously at the
moment, but I had no idea what it meant. He didn't know what it meant, he
couldn't know what fame of that magnitude could do to his life.'
From time to time, Susan and Dylan would run into each other at parties. At
a get-together after a day-long hootenanny at Riverside Church in July, at
which Dylan had performed, Susan remembers, 'I really got to know Dylan
more. We were kind of flirting with each other.' She blushes, as if it had
all happened yesterday. Then, it seems, all of a sudden they were a couple.
'We were working our way into what was to become a serious romance. We were
young and vulnerable. A lot of crazy things happened. It is strange to
think that so much is made of us together in those years. It could have run
its course naturally, but it was shaded and formed by all these outside
influences because of his growing fame.'
Susan and Dylan had been going together only a few months when New York
Times folk music critic Robert Shelton wrote his now-famous glowing review
of Dylan in September 1961. From that point on, Susan remembers, Dylan
looked at himself differently. 'He was touched by the Establishment. He got
a review.' His friends looked at him differently too. 'A lot of people were
glad for him. But there was a lot of envy, I'm sure. Everything began to
change.'
By the time Dylan had signed his first record deal with Columbia a few
months later, Susan could see that he was becoming more and more wrapped up
in his career. 'Then he began snubbing his old friends. But it was all so
understandable in an odd way. He could see these things happening to him
and he wanted to make sure they would happen, so at the same time he didn't
have time to just hang out any more. He was working on his image and his
career.'
And Dylan was working very hard at creating just the right image. This
involved manufacturing a mythical background for himself about being an
orphan from New Mexico who had lived on the road for a long time and going
to great lengths to hide the fact that he was really Robert Allen Zimmerman
from a middle-class Jewish family in Hibbing, Minnesota. In Susan's
opinion, all this hiding from his real background made Dylan 'paranoid'. 'I
guess he was paranoid of anybody saying, "I know who you really are."'
If some people, at least for a while, believed Dylan's invented stories
about himself, right from the beginning Susan's mother did not. 'She was
smart. I think she knew right away that his name wasn't really Dylan or she
could sense, "Oh, this is some kid from somewhere putting on a whole
story." And by the time I was going out with Dylan, neither she nor Carla
really approved of him at all.' In fact, Susan's mother's nickname for
Dylan was 'Twerp'.
Eventually, Susan and Dylan took an apartment together on West Fourth
Street. As a couple, Susan remembers that they could be very exclusive.
'We'd always be huddled together or holding hands or arm-in-arm. In many
ways, we kept to ourselves. He would never want anybody to come over, he
would never want anybody to be around. I don't think I really liked it that
much, 'cause I'm the kind who is very trustful of people usually, but I
would acquiesce to all of that.' As a result of his paranoia, she says, 'He
made me more paranoid and distrustful. You take on somebody you're with,
their traits, you live the man's life. What a shame,' she says, shaking her
head.
While Dylan was working on his career and becoming more famous by the hour,
Susan, in addition to her odd jobs, was doing the scenery for a series of
off-Broadway plays. One production was Brecht on Brecht at the Circle in
the Square, then located on Sheridan Square in the Village. She loved the
work. 'Bertolt Brecht was someone who influenced me enormously at that
time, so naturally I shared that with Bob,' she says. 'Brecht was a
Communist and he chose to live in East Germany, knowing full well how
difficult it would be to survive as an artist in such a rigid society. This
man was in terrible conflict. He couldn't live in the East or the West. In
those years I was fascinated by that and through Brecht's works I tried to
understand how he resolved that dilemma.'
As she got older, Susan still maintained her sense of idealism. 'I had a
strong sense of the injustice of the world and a need to rectify that
injustice.' These beliefs prompted her to take a job with CORE (Congress of
Racial Equality). 'It was essentially a minimally paid, envelope-stuffing
clerical job, but the atmosphere was dramatic, to say the least. There was
a man named Jim Peck, a White man who believed in integration. He was on
the first freedom rides in Birmingham. He was at many demonstrations and
continually getting beaten up very badly. The phone calls would come in
from Alabama and elsewhere saying Jim was in the hospital or in jail. All
the real danger getting transmitted to the CORE. office in New York City.
And there were a lot of marches and I probably went on every one.
'The March on Washington in 1963 when Martin Luther King made his "I have a
dream" speech was significant in a personal way. I remember listening to
King and looking around me. It was wall-to-wall people, no longer were we a
small group of protesters. A lot had happened to the Civil Rights movement
and to me since the days of picketing Woolworth's. It felt like an eternity
but it hadn't been that long ago. And those words coming over the
loudspeakers, "I have a dream . . . " I remember thinking about idealism
and reality. This was definitely a turning point, a special time.'
By that time Dylan had written his first political songs, 'Masters of war',
'Blowin' in the wind', 'A hard rain's a-gonna fall', and 'The lonesome
death of Hattie Carroll'. But in spite of her political activism in that
period, Susan tends to play down her own part in influencing Dylan. 'It was
the climate of the times,' she says. 'People were interested in what was
going on, because it was a carry-through from Woody Guthrie and Pete
Seeger.'
As time went by, Dylan got more and more possessive of Susan. 'There was a
period when I was part of his possessions,' says Susan. 'I don't think he
wanted me to do anything separate from him. He wanted me to be completely
one hundred per cent a part of what he was. He was tied up with his own
development, and it was just his world, his music. The assumption is that
the female doesn't really do anything, and he didn't enjoy the idea of me
being separate from him.'
As a result, Susan was 'letting go of my other interests. And I was very
much insecure and not self-confident. But', she adds, 'somewhere deep down
I must have had an instinct to survive, to have an identity of my own, not
just as "Dylan's girl". I took classes at the School of Visual Arts, worked
in the theatre and also had a waitressing job during the day. I made new
friends who knew nothing about my life with Dylan. I tried to keep both
lives separate but it was difficult and I was under a lot of pressure.
'It's funny,' she continues. 'Dylan did say to me once, "Never let anybody
take up your space." Which I always thought was the most profound thing he
ever gave me, one of the best things he ever gave me. Because in spite of
what I appear to be, then or now, every woman has the tendency to be sucked
in by the life of the man she is with and, in spite of everything that was
going on, I believe he was aware of that. With that statement I felt he was
acknowledging the conflict I was in; he saw my vulnerability and my
strength. It meant a lot to me then and after all these years I still think
it's a goodie.'
In 1962, Susan had the opportunity to sail to Italy with her mother and new
stepfather, a college professor who 'couldn't believe that this woman he
was marrying had two vagabond daughters'. She agonised over whether to go.
'I remember asking everybody, "What do you think? Should I go or shouldn't
I go?"' In the end she went. Once she was in sunny Italy, Susan knew she'd
made the right decision. She began to think of New York as 'this dark
tunnel - dark clubs and bars, and sombre'. Here, she was also able to get a
fresh perspective on her relationship with Dylan. She began to see that it
had become 'too heavy-duty 'cause we were too serious - too much too soon.
He was too young for that kind of thing and he was pursuing his career,
which he was so single-minded about.' At that point in her life, Susan knew
that she could not be exclusive. 'Something was wrong with the whole
environment. It was fun, we had good times, but it became too exclusive.
That's when I felt that I didn't want to be a string on his guitar, because
I wasn't ready to retire. I hadn't even started out yet. And I saw that
period in Italy as . . . let loose to be young again. It was in a town
called Perugia. It was relaxing and the sun was shining and I was
discovering life again. It was wonderful to be thrown into this, once I got
over the terrible sadness of leaving my love at home.'
Dylan, on the other hand, couldn't seem to stop missing her. 'He would call
me every day. He called and wrote, and I remember there was a turning point
when he called and I didn't want to go to the phone. 'Cause I was enjoying
life, which I should have been doing at eighteen.'
In Italy, Susan met lots of new people, including the man who would become
her husband some years later. But at the time, Susan stopped herself from
getting totally involved with him because 'I did want to resolve that
relationship with Dylan.' So she returned to New York nearly a year later,
feeling that she had grown up and matured in Italy and was ready to handle
anything that came her way. Dylan was still on tour in England when she got
back, but his friends gave Susan quite a reception although not the one she
would have expected. 'I was hit by all this gossipy stuff, with people
saying, "How could you leave him? How could you do that?" Apparently he had
gotten even more famous. Certainly he didn't write to me about his fame and
fortune and all ~e bullshit that was going on. He was public property by
then. When I came back from Italy, I was surrounded by these people I
didn't even know intruding into my personal life. There were people who
were actually angry that I had abandoned him at the "most important time of
his life". I was "the woman who deserted him".'
One of the people, it seems, who was angry about Susan 'deserting' Dylan
was Johnny Cash. Susan, who had always been a fan of his, spotted him one
night at the Gaslight and told the owner of the club that she would like to
meet him. 'And I remember the guy said, "He'll probably want to meet you
but not the way you want to meet him." And I said, "What do you mean?" He
explained that Johnny Cash had been with some woman who destroyed his life
and he had a growing friendship with Dylan and would probably feel, "Who's
this bitch?" I thought, "I'm someone Johnny Cash doesn't like. Oh, shit."'
When Susan was introduced to him, he 'just kind of stonily looked at me.
And I just said, "You know, I really like your music", and I said who I
was, and he just nodded. But he didn't say, "Sit down."'
At another time, at another club, Susan remembers, 'Somebody got up and
sang "Don't think twice, it's all right" with such vehemence, turning the
song inside out, trying to tell me something and then somebody else, to
make me feel real weepy, sang "Tomorrow is a long time". Everybody was
trying to be his spokesperson.'
But someone must have spread the stories about Susan in the first place -
and obviously, it was Dylan. 'It's all his fault!' laughs Susan. 'He mooned
in public. He created the image of himself as the abandoned, wounded lover.
I'm sure he was having a fine time also. Classic.'
Even though Susan felt the attacks on her were unjustified ('I was not his
wife or his property'), nevertheless she was shaken by people's responses
to her. And by the time Dylan got back from London, Susan 'was totally
confused again. All my confidence had blown out the window.'
Reunited with Dylan, Susan began to notice that there were some definite
changes - and not for the better - in her boyfriend and his life-style.
'There were a lot of people around him that I didn't like at all. It wasn't
the old folksy crowd. He had bodyguards and managers. Just as Dylan got
more and more famous, things got more and more oppressive and there were
more and more people around him - bloodsuckers. I was more aware of
ambition and infighting than I had been before.'
All this depressed Susan. 'It was all looking very bleak,' she says. 'It
was a whole bad time, and I really crumbled. I had a kind of nervous
breakdown. I began to see everyone as wanting my friendship and
companionship just to get close to Bob. And that means everybody.... I was
losing Bob to his fame and realising that this was something beyond
anything that I could conceive of being part of any more. I didn't see
myself as Bob Dylan's wife. Suddenly I saw it was something far away,
knowing that I didn't belong there for some reason, the way his life was.'
So Susan began to wean herself away from Dylan, although they still kept in
touch over the phone and occasionally saw each other. 'I went to his
concert in Forest Hills [in 1965] when the first part of the concert was
acoustic and the second part was electric.' Although Dylan was booed by
some diehard folk fans during the second half, Susan, for her part, loved
it. 'I guess they felt he was the spokesman for these things and he
betrayed them. But the music goes on. You can't stay in one spot. I don't
know whether I told him that,' Susan says softly, 'because at that time I
was trying to be separate. But I liked what he did. I remember talking to
him afterward and I wonder if I was as complimentary as I felt. But I hope
so in retrospect, 'cause I really did feel that I did know him then, that I
did know what his music was.'
How does Susan feel now about being the inspiration for so many of Dylan's
songs? She replies, 'I got a really touching phone call from Pete Seeger
once, asking the same question. It's just me and it was part of my life and
I had no idea it was this big, important influence. So to think that I had
an influence on him for songs, well, he had an influence on me in my life.
It's very nice to know if I'm in the songs that are lovely that I was an
inspiration for them. People have asked how I felt about those songs that
were bitter, like "Ballad in Plain D", since I inspired some of those too;
yet I never felt hurt by them. I understood what he was doing. It was the
end of something and we both were hurt and bitter. (If I could have written
a song . . . ) His art was his outlet, his exorcism. It was healthy. That
was the way he wrote out his life . . . the loving songs, the cynical
songs, the political songs . . . they are all part of the way he saw his
world and lived his life, period. It was a synthesis of feeling and vision
and he made poetry from it. He was like a sponge, he drove in very deep,
absorbed all he could, and then let it all out in his own unique way.'
How did Susan feel when Dylan married Sara Lowndes in 1965? 'Well, I knew
Sara,' she answers. 'She was a friend of Albert Grossman's wife, Sally, so
we were friendly, all of us. I just knew she was a Scorpio and she was in
for it. I'm a Scorpio and he's a Gemini, and they don't mix.'
A few years after the break-up with Dylan, Susan married the man she had
met when she was in Italy. They lived in Italy for a while where, as is the
custom there, Susan kept her own maiden name. 'But as soon as we moved to
New York in 1970, I was right away going to cancel Rotolo off everything,
because if my name was listed in the phone book, people were going to call,
because they used to call all the time. They'd call to find out where he
was. There were a lot of weirdos. He attracts weird fans. Poor guy. I don't
know how he survived. I just didn't want any more. I wanted to live my own
life. I didn't want to be this thing that was looked upon as something that
was one step closer to God. "Can you tell me what God is like?" and "How
did you like living with God?" It was Woodstock and people were still
praying to the great Allah, Dylan. I hated it. I felt pushed into a Bob
Dylan identity that I didn't want. My identity for those years was no
longer mine.'
Susan and Dylan did not keep in touch. Then sometime in the mid-Seventies,
out of the blue he called. 'He was with Lillian and Mel Bailey, old friends
of both Bob and me. As I remember it, Mel was annoyed with Bob for calling
me up again. "Leave her alone, she's married." I felt nervous, he wanted to
see me and I would have liked to see him, but I was uncomfortable for my
husband's sake. And I am sorry in a way. Screw it! Why didn't I see the
guy? After all those years it would have been interesting. I shouldn't have
gotten myself in the bind of protecting my husband's feelings over my own.
That is why I value the statement, "Never let anyone take up your space."'
philpottgw
thought i'd give you a quick mail in the hope that the flu has lifted for you
and also to ask if you have ever traded with an alex lehman
(http://homepages.together.net/~alehmann/)
i took a lookt his list and then read the recording criteria. basically i
reckon if its not exactly perfect the silly bugger aint interested. he wants to
do a trade of lowell for one i dont have, but really pat, take a look at his
"requirements"
i reckon some people just ain't happy with anything short of an immaculate
recording. i think i'll give him a miss as i can see him compaining about
hearing the audience!!!!occaisionally. what say you?
geoffers
J Buck
coldironsbound
> because they used to call all the time. They'd call to find out where he
> was. There were a lot of weirdos. He attracts weird fans. Poor guy.
Oviously Suze is demented; I've been monitoring this news group for months
and even been to several concerts and haven't heard of or seen any weird
people.
A1pump
robertandrews
Suze said: 'He was touched by the Establishment. He got a review.' His
friends looked at him differently too.
Like many celebrities & famous musicians, Dylan was way too young to deal
with his overwhelming success. Some of these "stars" become imprisoned by
their own chains in the skyway.
Howard Mirowitz
"SMB" <S...@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:Xns902889E665...@24.14.77.6...
> Found this by doing a search with Google. This probably has been posted
> before, but I have never seen it. Interesting stuff. I'm not sure if this
> is the complete interview. It seems to stop abruptly.
>
>
> SUSAN ROTOLO
>
> from Rock Wives
(snip)
."'
mister jones
Palimpsest? Now where have I heard that word before? It was only
yesterday, in fact the first time I remember seeing it - one of the
things I like about the newsgroup is that it is one of the few places
I've ever been where someone is likely to run something by me that I
haven't seen before, a scarce commodity for some of us (I can't help it
if I'm lucky...) - seeing it here sent me thrashing thru WRITING ON DRUGS
by Sadie Plant
0-374-29334-1, orig Faber&Faber, Great Britain 1999. This is a very
interesting book for anyone into drugs, literature and history. In fact,
I solicit e-mail comments.
Later, I started surfing, and hit a couple places:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A palimpsest is a manuscript on which an earlier ...
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0243.html [More
results from jefferson.village.virginia.edu]
A palimpsest is a manuscript on which an earlier text has been effaced
and the vellum or parchment reused for another. It was a common
practice, particularly in medieval ecclesiastical circles, to rub out
an earlier piece of writing by means of washing or scraping the
manuscript, in order to prepare it for a new text. The motive for
making palimpsests seems to have been largely economic--reusing
parchment was cheaper than preparing new skin. Another motive may have
been directed by the desire of Church officials to "convert" pagan
Greek script by overlaying it with the word of God. Modern historians,
usually more interested in older writings, have employed infra-red and
digital enhancement techniques to recover the erased text, often with
remarkable result.
Among the many important palimpsests, the most notable is the Codex
Ephraemi Rescriptus of which only 209 leaves have survived. Over the
original fifth century text of the Bible, is written the twelfth
century sermons of St. Ephrem.
For poststructuralist literary critics, the palimpsest provides a
model for the function of writing. Like Freud's discussion of The
Mystic Writing Pad, the palimpsest foregrounds the fact that all
writing takes place in the presence of other writings--that it is not
people who "speak" language, but language which "speaks" people.
Palimpsests subvert the concept of the author as the sole originary
source of her work, and thus defer the "meaning" of a work down an
endless chain of signification.
___________________________________________________
Institute of Paper Conservation - devoted solely to the conservation
of paper and related materials. Its objective is the
advancement of the craft and science of paper conservation both
within the profession and in terms of public awareness.
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/ipc/
----------------------------
WRITING ON DRUGS:
p200: .......at a time when most writers were still discussing the
processes of thought in far more idealistic terms of the mind, the soul,
or even, with Immanuel Kant, the faculty of knowledge, De Quincey
(Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings, Oxford 1990)
was making bold materialistic claims about the brain and the machinery of
dreaming.
De Quincey's interest in this "machinery" led him to a pertinent analogy.
In "Suspiria de Profundis," he likened the brain to an extraordinarily
sensitive recording device, a palimpsest, "a membrane or roll cleansed of
its manuscript by reitereated successions." The old texts had been
erased, but, when treated with the right chemicals, all the hidden layers
could be made to reappear. "What else than a natural and mighty
palimpsest is the human brain?" he asked. "....Everlasting layers of
ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain as softly as light."
------------------
{{{minds are filled withbig
ideas, images
and distorted facts}}
blowinthruthe buttons onyour screen jones
wgray
Douglas Clark
Thanks for posting.
--
Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: d.g.d...@bath.ac.uk
Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
Patricia Jungwirth
>>>>
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/gbw/gallery/abecedarium/rotolo.htm
Palimpsest? Now where have I heard that word before?
<<<<
Wasn't it (Palimpsest) the title of Gore Vidal's autobiography?
Tricia
"I wish I was on some Australian mountain range
I got no reason to be there but
I imagine it would be some kinda change... "
-Bob Dylan, 'Outlaw Blues'
-January 1965
***tric...@aardvark.net.au
Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan in Melbourne, 1966:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/5581/
http://www.allexperts.com/displayExpert.asp?Expert=1806
Jim Linwood
>Palimpsest? Now where have I heard that word before?
>
From Stanford's On-Line Dictionary:
Palimpsest
A manuscript consisting of a later writing superimposed upon the original
writing, which was first removed to the extent possible. A double palimpsest is
one that has two subsequent writings, and therefore two removals. The extent to
which the earlier writing could be removed depended to a great degree on the
ink used. Early carbon inks, which merely lay on the surface of the parchment,
could be removed more or less completely simply by sponging, but the later iron
gall inks were much more difficult to remove because of the interaction with
the fibers of the tannin present in the ink. They had to be scraped and then
treated with a weak acid, such as the citric acid of an orange. Even then
traces of the original writing remained. Wetting the parchment in this manner
softened it to such an extent that it was necessary to treat the skin with dry
lime to make it dry and white once again. The word "palimpsest" derives from
the Greek roots meaning "rub away again." Also called "rescript. "
JL
Cynthia Tappan-O'Boyle
---and much appreciated. have never seen it before -- thanks again
--as zimmy said "never let anyone take up your space"
friends and fans of zimmy, cindy and
dennis
may god bless and keep you always and may you stay forever young.
Maureen & Stephen Scobie
<mrjo...@juno.com> wrote:
> For poststructuralist literary critics, the palimpsest provides a
> model for the function of writing.... the palimpsest foregrounds the fact that all
> writing takes place in the presence of other writings...
> Palimpsests subvert the concept of the author as the sole originary
> source of her work, and thus defer the "meaning" of a work down an
> endless chain of signification.
Kinda like "Time Out Of Mind" in relation to the Blues tradition.
I also remember that Jean-Jacques Annaud described his film "The Name
of the Rose" not as an adaptation but as "a palimpsest of the novel by
Umberto Eco."
Stephen
Mike Cronin
"coldironsbound" <coldiro...@prodigy.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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Mike Cronin
"Patricia Jungwirth" <tric...@aardvark.net.au> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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