How did Bob come up with "reindeer armies"?
Dylanetics
the very odd "reindeer armies" in It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The
phrase is evocative, certainly. (Cf. the image in the final stanza of
Auden's The Fall of Rome: "Altogether elsewhere vast/Herds of reindeer
move across/Miles and miles of golden moss/Silently and very fast."
Nate take note.)
But how did the phrase get into the song in the first place? I want
to consider the interesting flub in the recorded version on Bringing
It All Back Home, where Bob gets tripped up and sings something about
"empty-handed...armies."
The previous stanza, of course, contains the image of the "empty-
handed painter from your streets," so Bob seems to be transposing his
own lyrics. What if this mistake was facilitated by something in the
"original" version of the lyrics?
Here's what I'm wondering about. There's this ironical slogan that
one regularly runs across when reading about U.S. (and presumably
U.K.) history. It's Lord Shaftsbury's phrase about the "horny-handed
sons of toil" -- where "horny-handed" means "toughened and calloused"
-- as by hard manual labor. This phase is found in American usage,
but it has also appears as "horny-handed sons of the soil" (honest,
hardworking farmers). Just last year (April 2009), the egregious
George Will even *combined* them in one of his columns: people today
wear denim to pretend to be "horny-handed sons of toil and the
soil."
Anyway, my thought is (1) that Bob, who was from early times a
voracious reader of U.S. history books, would surely have run into
this popular (populist) epithet, and (2) that Bob, with his agile
attention to language, would have noted the vaguely obscene *punning*
possibilities in "horny" and "handed."
My suggestion is that an earlier version of the lyric contained "HORNY-
HANDED armies."
"Seasick sailors" and "horny-handed armies" -- note that this would
extended the alliteration. (I think "armies" may originally have been
another word starting with "h", but enough about that for now.) So
earlier version would have referred to two maladies afflicting men at
arms.
But this is potentially confusing, or just plain repetitive, because
"EMPTY-handed" appears in the immediately preceding stanza about the
painter. So I hypothesize that Bob modified "horny-handed" to "horny-
HEADED." No, it doesn't make any literal sense, but it avoids having
"handed" appear twice so close together and it sounds about the same.
For some reason, Bob didn't leave it at that. (Maybe "horny" would
have been just too bold.) So I speculate that he pursued his personal
pun path a step further by changing "HORNY-headed armies" to "ANTLER-
headed armies" -- antlers are horns, get it? Which he then pushed a
small step further to "REINDEER armies." The syntactic parallel to
"empty-handed" is now totally eliminated, which helps to protect the
singer from flubs (but not always, obviously)
And it makes the song more mysterious, which Bob tells us in
Chronicles was important to him.
The final product ("reindeer armies") is surreal, and the meaning of
the line remains permanently open to creative interpretation. Bob
would have no more idea what it "really means" than anybody else. He
would, however, know how the mysterious phrase got into the song,
which is a different matter.
Go Bob!
Dr_dudley
Thnkas very much for your erudite post. Quoted in full for those who
might've missed it.
Clearly this phrase "reindeer armies" references Matthew Arnold in his
"Dover Beach" (i dug this elsewhere):
}
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where reindeer armies clash by night.
{
'K so that's not quite true. (insert appropriate smileyface here.)
All i can add to yr query is that bob has lately given us a postscript
to reindeer armys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVjC15jhtw&feature=PlayList&p=84088D06A25F2FA3&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=30
HTH,
dudley
Dylanetics
>
> HTH,
> dudley
Thanks, DD. Nice link to fave recent Bob video.
BTW - Wallace Stevens in "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," read by
many a high-school student: "If her horny feet protrude, they come/To
show how cold she is and dumb..."
nate
nate
> the very odd "reindeer armies" in It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The
> phrase is evocative, certainly. (Cf. the image in the final stanza of
> Auden's The Fall of Rome: "Altogether elsewhere vast/Herds of reindeer
> move across/Miles and miles of golden moss/Silently and very fast."
> Nate take note.)
Thanks for the heads up, 'netics.....
I dont have a problem with this line.
Just sang it again tonight in fact, to a crowd....
Certainly the notion of nomadic species wandering around wherever the
government seems it's appropriate might be the alternate sarcastic
view on the war machine of the united states at the time, but Bob was
only making it seen (sic) that way. No - it's much smaller up front -
it's an argumentative description about the friends of this person he
is talking to....
- nate
Just Walkin'
>
> HTH,
> dudley
Dear Dr._dudley,
Just a note acknowledging your most informative post. I ran out of
smileyfaces so I will have to render simple thanks.
But where might have Mr. Arnold derived the phrase?
And might there be other selective meanings and usages of this phrase
in lesser known circles?
Here's what some of those on the left have to say:
http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-all-over-now-baby-blue.html
And here's what their opposite numbers on the right have to say:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/785063/posts
You have to agree that it is a cake to refuse a slice, wouldn't you
say, Mr. Stein?
Janice
..
> > To one another! for the world, which seems
> > To lie before us like a land of dreams,
> > So various, so beautiful, so new,
> > Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
> > Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
> > And we are here as on a darkling plain
> > Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
> > Where reindeer armies clash by night.
> But where might have Mr. Arnold derived the phrase?
So, if we follow this path, the whole song is not so much about the
end as it is looking forward to the new beginning. The retreating
reindeer armies (struggle & strife) are following the lover who just
walked out the door. . . forget the dead, strike a match, start anew.
That old life is over, & this one, tho scary and uncertain -- the
carpet too is moving under you -- is the way to go. He's not saying
goodbye, he's saying hello.
~`~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
direct...@gmail.com
Willie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signorelli_parapraxis
khematite
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/reindeer-battalion-wwii-braver-soviets-tougher_tanks.html
The Reindeer Battalion:
"When the Soviet Union was established, their constitution and laws exempted the indigenous peoples of the far north from conscription into the Red Army. This was due in part to their not knowing the Russian language, but it was also done to preserve the integrity of their culture – to maintain their way of life.
"These considerations were put aside during the Winter War, however, when Soviet forces needed soldiers that understood the harsh terrain and severe weather they faced. Russian officers soon noticed that the reindeer herders were far superior to Soviet soldiers in these remote and harsh environments. Furthermore, the animals they worked with were far more suited to the terrain than horses and military vehicles like tanks.
"Reindeer can pull an incredible amount of weight – up to 110 pounds on a sledge – making them incredibly effective for transportation. When multiple reindeer pulled a sledge, they could haul 650 pounds, allowing the army to move artillery and a great deal of ammunition. They could sustain this weight for 20 miles over eight hours.
"The first three army reindeer transport groups (called ‘raida’) were assembled in 1941 when the Soviets established their Karelian front. The reindeer army originally numbered only 1,015 reindeer and 77 herders, but by 1942, their numbers had swelled to include 11,015 reindeer, 15 dogs, and 1,477 men divided into five battalions of the 14th Army. The original group was from the Saami tribes in the Kola Peninsula, but the reindeer units as a whole were formed from a patchwork of different indigenous populations."
There's also another possible oblique Dylan allusion to resupplying the Soviet military effort during World War II in "Caribbean Wind": "And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free." Liberty ships were cargo transport ships that brought US supplies and munitions to the USSR (among other wartime allies) during World War II. Woody Guthrie, who helped man one of these Liberty ships put these lines into "Talking Merchant Marine":
Doorbell rung and in come a man,
I signed my name, I got a telegram.
Said, "If you wanna take a vacation trip,
Got a dish-washin' job on a Liberty ship."
Woman a-cryin', me a-flyin', out the door and down the line!
'Bout two minutes I run ten blocks,
I come to my ship, down at the dock;
Walked up the plank, and I signed my name,
Blowed that whistle, was gone again!
Right on out and down the stream, ships as fur as my eye could see, woman a-waitin'.
Ship loaded down with TNT
All out across the rollin' sea;
Stood on the deck, watched the fishes swim,
I'se a-prayin' them fish wasn't made out of tin.
Sharks, porpoises, jellybeans, rainbow trouts, mudcats, jugars, all over that water.
And we can be certain that Dylan knew this song pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFUX1tZAbE