For months, literary aficionados had been weighing in—and even betting—on who would win this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. Most had hopes for Haruki Murakami whose surrealist works are a growing popularity among YA readers and Philip Roth who—as legend has it—would wait every year in his agent’s office for the jury’s call. But the Swedish Academy surprised us all last week when they awarded the highest honor in literature to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” While fans of the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter flooded social media with congratulatory messages and tributes, the literati was left baffled by the academy’s decision to crown Dylan as a literary laureate.
Perhaps anticipating the outrage over Dylan’s win, the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius compared Dylan’s work to that of poets of Greek Antiquity. If you look back, far back,” she said, “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.”
This unlikely choice by the Swedes is forcing some to question the boundaries of literature—specifically whether or not music can be literature. Along with Danius’ defense of the musician as a poet, many have begun to interrogate Dylan’s work—both his marriage of sound and verse and his bare lyrics—as serious poetry. While his lyrics, when stripped of musical melody, offer little sentiment or pleasure to most readers of poetry, his unconventional tethering of music and verse is what makes elegiac ballads of his songs. Sure, we could try to read a transcript of any one of his songs as a poem, but Dylan’s verses are only one-half of what makes the stuff of poems. Poetry’s other half rooted in rhythm and sound—which Dylan’s lyrics alone can not deliver—is found in his crooning harmonica and aching voice. The twang of bluegrass and the soft rock instrumentals of his songs set the mood for his often metaphoric images of activism, war, and love.
While the Nobel’s pick broadens and in some way modernizes what defines literature, for many honoring a white musician with the prize does little to quell concerns over both the award’s lack of diversity in its honorees and the decline of readers in today’s electronic age. Some have been contesting Dylan's win—choosing instead to favor the Kenyan postcolonial writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o or Syrian poet and essayist Adunis.
But Margaret Atwood—a longtime contender for the Nobel herself offers this strange yet applicable reason for Dylan as this year's Nobel laureate. In an interview for BBC Newsnight, Atwood explains that this year's Noble Prize in Literature is a “strategic win.” While she is hesitant to parse down the specifics of her interpretation, Atwood asserted that the Swedish Academy's honoring of a countercultural figure of the 60s plays off of the current affairs of the U.S elections. By honoring Dylan whose protest songs became champion calls to civil rights and antiwar movements, the academy does appear to be sending a message to the electorate—though inadvertently so. In one of his more famous tracks, Dylan sings “Come gather 'round people wherever you roam /And admit that the waters around you have grown /And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.” Ominous and prophetic in its end rhymes, Dylan's tunes seems to be an apt reflection of how most feel about this year's presidential election. Like the song, the election poses an ambivalent conclusion—one that is all at once strangely apocalyptic and a blessing.
