In a previous post I mentioned the writer Christopher Hitchens, who is suffering from some serious cancer, and posted a clip of an interview with him which was bookended by Bob Dylan’s song Gates of Eden. Thanks to Sue who responded with a note titled “The Two Christophers”:

Just recently finished Christopher Ricks’ “Dylan’s Visions of Sin” – on your recommendation. A very interesting book and, thankfully, very easy to read. I fairly raced through it. Two things i particularly liked about Ricks was firstly his unwillingness to belittle Dylan’s faith – and at the same time speak quite rightly about the hypocrisy of those who did; and his digs at the “works” of Michael Gray and his ilk. Fascinating stuff.

On the subject of Christopher Hitchens…. I too like him a lot, but tend to agree with him on a lot of things. It was a shock to see him in that clip. I hadn’t heard of his illness and the last time I saw him was looking his usual self on The Daily Show. It so happens I’m reading “Hitch-22″ at the moment – and also racing through it – and found a quote regarding Christopher Ricks that may interest you.

Hitchens speaks about how, at a meeting of his school Poetry Society, he was first urged to listen to this Bob “Dillon” person and soon became hooked:

“…I’ve since had all kinds of differences with Professor Christopher Ricks, but he is and always has been correct in maintaining that Dylan is one of the essential poets of our time, and it felt right to meet him in the company of Shelley and Milton and Lowell and not in one of the record shops that were then beginning to sprout alongside the town coffee bars.”

Perhaps that explains for you the choice of music for the clip…

It’s interesting that Hitchens makes that tribute to Christopher Ricks. Professor Ricks’ book, Dylan’s Visions of Sin, got generally favorable reviews as I recall, along with some bemused ones, but Hitchens himself actually gave it a pretty brutal treatment in the Weekly Standard. I looked it up to refresh my memory as to what bones he had to pick with it. Perusing it again, I personally think his chief problem with the book came down to not being able to take Ricks’ playful and really rather guileless sense of humor.

Be that as it may, in looking up that article I also came across a so-called “Proust Questionnaire” that Hitchens answered in the pages of Vanity Fair, just a few months ago (but before his cancer diagnosis — which inevitably imparts a degree of irony to some of the answers). To the question as to who is his favorite musician, Hitchens answers: “J. S. Bach, Bob Dylan.” Solid choices, albeit that he’s cheating by choosing two, but I think that’s entirely appropriate in order to cover both classical and popular music.

However, his choices also raise a question, which has surely been raised before regarding these recent highly-vocal advocates for atheism, the most high-profile being Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. The question is this: How many of them would really like to live in a world where everyone agreed with them that there was no God (or that if there was a God that he must be either evil or entirely unknowable)? It’s hard to figure what kind of music Bach and Dylan would have made had they been without any belief in God (and not just any god, but the particular God of the Bible). But I have to honestly doubt that in such a case Johann’s and Bob’s music would have achieved that quality necessary to have gotten them selected by Hitchens as his favorite musicans on his Vanity Fair questionnaire.

Of-course many atheists or agnostics are smart enough to acknowledge this; i.e. that while they themselves may not find any reason for faith, they are grateful that many others can, not only for the value that faith has brought to things artistic, but for what it has meant for the ordering of human society, and in particular what the Judeo-Christian bedrock has meant to Western societies. (This is as opposed to those ubiquitous voices who blame “religion” for “causing all the wars,” blindly ignoring what are by far the bloodiest death tolls of all history, which are those that came as a result of the anti-God ideologies of Communism and Nazism.)

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Thanks also to David H. for his e-mail relevant to Bob Dylan’s song Love Sick:

Recently, I was reading Pilgrim’s Progress and came upon the following towards the end. I’m not sure if you have commented on this in the past. Seems as though the lyric in Lovesick references Bunyan. I was hoping that you might have some comment.

From Section 2.46 (John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress)

Now as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound; and drawing near to the city, they had yet a more perfect view thereof. It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold; so that by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick; Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease. Wherefore, here they lay by it a while, crying out, because of their pangs, If ye find my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.

But, being a little strengthened, and better able to bear their sickness, they walked on their way, and came yet nearer and nearer, where were orchards, vineyards, and gardens, and their gates opened into the highway. Now, as they came up to these places, behold the gardener stood in the way, to whom the Pilgrims said, Whose goodly vineyards and gardens are these? He answered, They are the King’s, and are planted here for his own delight, and also for the solace of pilgrims. So the gardener had them into the vineyards, and bid them refresh themselves with the dainties. He also shewed them there the King’s walks, and the arbours where he delighted to be; and here they tarried and slept.

That was a new one on me, because I confess I have not read The Pilgrim’s Progress. (Wikipedia summary here, and full text available here.)

As I wrote back to David, I was aware that a similar sense of being “sick of love,” in reference to love of the Divine, appears in the Song of Solomon (aka the Song of Songs). And this certainly provides a way to reflect on Dylan’s song Love Sick, especially if one hears the album Time Out of Mind as a song sequence inspired by the singer’s relationship with God (as Ronnie Keohane has written on at length).

Looking more closely at this particular line, however, it turns out that Bunyan was actually quoting the Song of Solomon here, rather than coming up with his own usage. Chapter five, verse 8 goes (in the King James): I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

And the phrase also appears in chapter two, verse 5: Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.

Some other translations, naturally, use the term lovesick instead. (And then there are others which use sick with love or faint with love.)

So knowing Dylan’s familiarity with the Bible, I guess we could assume that his sense of the phrase is more likely to have come directly from the Song of Solomon, although (who knows?) he could have had it brought to his attention again in reading The Pilgrim’s Progress.

It’s all wonderful food for reflection, in any case.

Sometimes the silence can be like the thunder
Sometimes I feel like I’m being plowed under
Could you ever be true? I think of you
And I wonder

Just don’t know what to do
I’d give anything to be with you

A question that I won’t even begin to speculate upon, however, is what this all tells us about the Victoria’s Secret commercial.

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Addendum: Well, others have speculated! Thanks very much to Steve who suggests this interpretation of the VS commercial:

I also have thought about that Victoria’s Secret commercial. With the way Bob throws his hat down in the commercial and ends up walking away, I think he was saying he was sick of that kind of “love” (lust) that is so prevalent from someone neither one knows nor has the right to be that way towards. Plainly speaking, it was immoral. I’ll have none of it . . . . I think he says. While he may like to be with her, he can’t the way she is. As for the clothing company, just as long as Dylan the legend did their spot, they were going to let him do it his way. And I think he sent a message, too. (What is also interesting is at the beginning of the commercial, the distance shot looks somewhat like a religious altar area with this “angel” dressed the way she was. Fallen angel?)

Wow. I honestly figured the VS people just came up with some storyboards and Bob signed off on it. But there you go, more food for thought if you like.

Steve also forwarded some notes on the Hebrew for that expression “sick of love.” You can find it at this link.

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