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larry Fyffe's avatar

The play "Resurrection" by Yeats, depicts a "Great Wheel" of history that turns. A Syrian, a Greek, and a Hebrew are in a room and the figure of Christ appears to them. The Greek says it's only a phantom, not flesh and blood; but when he touches the "ghost", the doubter declares "The heart of the phantom is beating!"

In a hotel room by himself, Bob Dylan takes on the mask of the Greek above:

""Jesus put His hand on me. It was a physical thing. I felt it all over me. I felt my whole body tremble. The glory of the Lord knocked me down, and picked me up".

larry Fyffe's avatar

Dylan claims for a time anyway that he 'converts' to the Christian religon; Yeats becomes a Paganism because for him Christianity defies historical reality with its focus and focuses on love and sacrifice

larry Fyffe's avatar

*becomes a Paganist

larry Fyffe's avatar

In his aristocratric search for stability, Yeats turns to the poetry of his associate Ezra Pound. Pound moved on from Vortex poetry where there is energy all around but stillness at the centre to Imagism with the focus on a central figure, linked to the East, especially to Japanese art:

Seventy years have I lived

No ragged beggar-man

Seventy years have I lived

Seventy years man and boy

And never have I danced for joy

Dylan is aware of Pound's sympathy for Nazi Germany; nevertheless, a number of Dylan's songs show the influence of Pound's poetic styles.

But Dylan seldom expresses the degree of blackness as there is in Yeats' poem above.

larry Fyffe's avatar

Dylan claimed his "Hard Rain" refers to the Cuban Missile Crisis but the song was written before that happened... then again maybe he's no false prophet.

Anyway, WB Yeats could well be referenced in that song - "Heaven blazing into my head"

(Lapis Lazuli).

There's - "Heard one hundred drummers/Whose hands were a-blazing"

(Hard Rain).

Margot's avatar

Send me a text

larry Fyffe's avatar

Sad-Eyed Lady, Dylan's Baroque conceit of America:

With your silhoutte when the sunlight dims

Into your eyes where the moonlight swims

larry Fyffe's avatar

Dylan too becomes concerned that some of his songs were inciting violence between protesters against the Vietnam War and the authorities of a powerful state.

In Sad-Eyed Lady, he echoes the words written by a Puritan/Baroque poet Edward Taylor cited below:

You want clear spectacles, your eyes are dim

Turn inside out, and turn your eyes within

Your sins like motes in the sun do swim: nay see

Your mites are molehills, molehills mountains be

(Edward Taylor: The Accusation Of The Inward Man)