Some people who haven’t read it assume that Christopher Ricks’ 2003 book, Dylan’s Visions of Sin, is about religious elements of Dylan’s work. It isn’t — it’s essentially an exploration of poetic elements, sources and strengths in Dylan’s oeuvre. Yet, the ways in which Ricks (a self-described atheist) does deal with some of Dylan’s songs of faith is notable and worthy. One of my favorite passages in that book is about Dylan’s song What Can I Do For You?. Below is some of what Ricks writes:

Addressed to God, then, the question “What can I do for You?” does not just allow, it demands, the immediate recognition of two opposite answers.

From one point of view … the answer to “What can I do for You?,” when addressed to the Absolute Being Who is God, is “absolutely nothing.” Not “relatively nothing.” But from another point of view … the answer is “everything.” T.S. Eliot wrote of such a condition with a hush that is audible in those sheltering parentheses of his that admit the point:

A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
(Little Gidding)

What can I do for You? Nothing. This is the answer granted by humility. If this may be humiliating as an admission, it is none the worse for that, since without the possibility of humiliation there would never be the possibility of humility. What Can I Do For You? seeks humility, and so it comprehends pride. For Pride, alone of the seven deadly sins, has a good side. This isn’t a matter of distinguishing a vice from an adjacent virtue (foolhardiness may look like courage but isn’t truly courage) but of the distinction that attaches to pride in itself: that it is the word for a virtue, too. The sin that is Envy must often envy Pride this. We do well to have pride in, to take pride in, the right things. Which is where the other answer to the question “What can I do for You?” comes in. Everything. By the saving grace that’s over me, this goes without saying — though not without praying.

The double assurance, nothing and everything, is an intensification of an interrogative urging of which Dylan has long heard the urgency. He has always felt the force of such questions as must be answered both yes and no — the force, not the convenience of this, because having to give two answers, yes and no, is not at all the same as having recourse to the slurred syphonation of yes-and-no, evasively lazy in its lackadaisical lack of convictions. … “I’m not askin’ you to say words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’” (Mama, You Been on My Mind) — but I may be asking you to say both the words yes and no.

From February 5th, 1980, in Knoxville, Tennessee, here’s a sample of Dylan performing this song with feeling (and some pretty far out harmonica blowing).

Soon as a man is born, you know the sparks begin to fly,
He gets wise in his own eyes and he’s made to believe a lie.
Who would deliver him from the death he’s bound to die?
Well, You’ve done it all and there’s no more anyone can pretend to do.
What can I do for You?

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