Free Dylan's Visions of Sin by Christopher Ricks Page B
Authors: Christopher Ricks
contact , and in with / begin with :
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
Then, embrace / place , and rob them / problem :
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem
“Understand” is irresistible (“Don’t you understand”), an unobtrusive triumph, mindful both of “You just stood there” at the beginning
and of the undeviating repetition of “You could stand inside my shoes” at the end.
But the problem / rob them rhyme is something of a problem. The rhyme is a touch far-fetched, and is it worth the carriage? Perhaps, but that would have to be the point, for the other
rhymes are living near at hand, and are simply telling: friend / lend , grinning / winning . . . The rhyme problem / rob them precipitates a different
world or mood, suggesting the uneasy bravura of half sick / traffic in Absolutely Sweet Marie (absolutely sweet there). Nothing wrong with one pair of rhymes asking a different kind
of attention (not more attention, really) than do the other rhyme-pairs in a song, and this would be congruent with the perplexity of the syntax in this verse. For whereas elsewhere in Positively 4th Street the syntax is positively forthright, advancing straight forward, here it is circuitous, and it pauses for a moment upon “Perhaps”:
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
What is it (the phrase is cryptic) to embrace heartbreaks? To enjoy one’s own sufferings? To be sicklily solicitous of other people’s suffering, creepily
commiserating away? And do these tangents amount to one of those mysterious triumphs of phrasing that exquisitely elude paraphrase (like “One too many mornings / And a thousand miles
behind”), or is this one of those occasions when something eludes not us but the artist? Dylan is a master of living derangements of syntax 81 but
even he must sometimes let things slip. Dr Johnson ventured to characterize as an imperfectionist that Dylanesque writer William Shakespeare: 82
It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it
a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it. 83
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
It must be granted that if these lines induce queasiness, they do make a point of saying “No, I do not feel that good”. So an unsettling rhyme such as problem /
rob them might rightly be hard to stomach, especially given the tilting “Perhaps”. And given what a problem is: not just “adifficult or puzzling question proposed for
solution; a riddle; an enigmatic statement” (the song takes care to couch these “problem”-lines enigmatically, riddlingly), but a forcible projectile, “lit. a thing thrown
or put forward”. The song throws out and puts forward its weaponry.
But again, “Perhaps I’d rob them”: what does this enigmatic phrase mean? “I’d steal them” (these heartbreaks)? Then what would you do with them? And
wouldn’t that have to be “I’d rob you of them”? Rid you of them? Not rob them, the heartbreaks, presumably – except that rob is sometimes used to mean
“to carry off as plunder; to steal” ( The Oxford English Dictionary , 5, “Now rare”), as in “rob his treasure from him”, or “Passion robs my peace no
more”, 84 so Dylan wouldn’t have to be taking or stealing
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
Then, embrace / place , and rob them / problem :
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem
“Understand” is irresistible (“Don’t you understand”), an unobtrusive triumph, mindful both of “You just stood there” at the beginning
and of the undeviating repetition of “You could stand inside my shoes” at the end.
But the problem / rob them rhyme is something of a problem. The rhyme is a touch far-fetched, and is it worth the carriage? Perhaps, but that would have to be the point, for the other
rhymes are living near at hand, and are simply telling: friend / lend , grinning / winning . . . The rhyme problem / rob them precipitates a different
world or mood, suggesting the uneasy bravura of half sick / traffic in Absolutely Sweet Marie (absolutely sweet there). Nothing wrong with one pair of rhymes asking a different kind
of attention (not more attention, really) than do the other rhyme-pairs in a song, and this would be congruent with the perplexity of the syntax in this verse. For whereas elsewhere in Positively 4th Street the syntax is positively forthright, advancing straight forward, here it is circuitous, and it pauses for a moment upon “Perhaps”:
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
What is it (the phrase is cryptic) to embrace heartbreaks? To enjoy one’s own sufferings? To be sicklily solicitous of other people’s suffering, creepily
commiserating away? And do these tangents amount to one of those mysterious triumphs of phrasing that exquisitely elude paraphrase (like “One too many mornings / And a thousand miles
behind”), or is this one of those occasions when something eludes not us but the artist? Dylan is a master of living derangements of syntax 81 but
even he must sometimes let things slip. Dr Johnson ventured to characterize as an imperfectionist that Dylanesque writer William Shakespeare: 82
It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it
a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it. 83
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
It must be granted that if these lines induce queasiness, they do make a point of saying “No, I do not feel that good”. So an unsettling rhyme such as problem /
rob them might rightly be hard to stomach, especially given the tilting “Perhaps”. And given what a problem is: not just “adifficult or puzzling question proposed for
solution; a riddle; an enigmatic statement” (the song takes care to couch these “problem”-lines enigmatically, riddlingly), but a forcible projectile, “lit. a thing thrown
or put forward”. The song throws out and puts forward its weaponry.
But again, “Perhaps I’d rob them”: what does this enigmatic phrase mean? “I’d steal them” (these heartbreaks)? Then what would you do with them? And
wouldn’t that have to be “I’d rob you of them”? Rid you of them? Not rob them, the heartbreaks, presumably – except that rob is sometimes used to mean
“to carry off as plunder; to steal” ( The Oxford English Dictionary , 5, “Now rare”), as in “rob his treasure from him”, or “Passion robs my peace no
more”, 84 so Dylan wouldn’t have to be taking or stealing