Dylan's Visions of Sin (39 page)

Six times in this first verse,
you
– plus a
your
thrown in, en route to the next verse, which may be free of
you
but does need what are
yours
.
The song chides but it hopes not to nag, which is one reason why
you
is used more sparingly after the first verse, even while the word
your
keeps the thought of you unremittingly in
play, twice in the second verse (“your pen”, “your eyes”), twice in the third (“your windows”, “your walls”), and five times in the fourth verse
(“Your sons and your daughters”, “your command”, “Your old road”, “your hand”). As for the shorter sharper word, although
you
is off
convalescing during the second and third verses,
yous
return with certain values in the fourth verse: “What you can’t understand”, rhyming with (and parallel to) “If
you can’t lend your hand”.

The pronunciamento is willing to acknowledge, for a brief moment, the
word “he”, provided that this pronoun identifies no one in particular (“For he
that gets hurt / Will be he who has stalled”). There are plenty of occasions for “they” – but only on condition that the word refer not to people, solely to the times:
“For the times they are a-changin’”. The alignment of the song is the human “you” and the larger-than-human “they” of the times. And of these two, only the
latter is left in the last verse, a verse that has no other pronoun except, be it noted, “it”, the forgettable pronoun that at last comes into its own, the little “it” that
has figured four times earlier but only now finds its opening, an opening that – with an emphatic syntactical redundancy of “it” – draws its two lines tightly parallel:

Not just “now”, and not just the admonitory “now, now”, but three times the urgency of “now” at the line-ending. All the verses until this
last one have launched an imperative address: “Come gather ’round people”, “Come writers and critics”, “Come senators, congressmen”, “Come mothers
and fathers”. But when the last verse comes, it is too late for any such injunctions. The line is drawn under all that.

This final verse, rising exhilaratedly above any accusatory “you”, might invite us once more to set the refrain, “For the times they are a-changin’”, against its
forebear: “Times change”. And then to feel the transformation of tone that Dylan effects. “Well, times change, I guess”: this remark from 1949 is quoted in Bartlett Jere
Whiting’s
Modern Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings
(1989), and although “Times change” wouldn’t
have
to carry this tone of concessive reluctant acquiescence,
this is a tone that comes naturally to it. “Times change”: granted, it does lend itself to shrugging (I guess) more than to shouldering. But “The times they are
a-changin’”: this squares its shoulders while it rounds on people.

Dylan once said “I’ve never written any song that begins with the words ‘I’ve gathered you here tonight . . .’”
²⁹²
True, literally, but it is an unexpected thing for him to say, given that he has written “Come gather ’round people”, to say nothing of “Come gather
’round friends / And I’ll tell you a tale”; “Come around you rovin’ gamblers and a story I will tell”; “Come you ladies and you gentlemen, a-listen to my
song”; or “Come you masters of war”.
²⁹³
What can Dylan have been thinking of, then, with this claim, “I’ve never
written any song that begins . . .”?

Yet there are differences in the air.
The Times They Are A-Changin’
is unlike
North Country Blues
, or
Rambling, Gambling Willie
, or
Hard Times in New York Town
,
each of which tells a story. Nor is it like
Masters of War
, which foretells a story.
The Times They Are A-Changin’
admonishes, that is for sure, but it doesn’t take the
tone of “I’ve gathered you here tonight . . .”. Its imperatives, immediately after the first one (which is simply “Come gather ’round”), put it to you at once
that you already know the truth that is being pressed upon you: “And
admit
that . . .” And the recurrent urging finds its humanity and its decency in its own admission that it is
putting to you something that you have already (come on, admit it) put to yourself. Admit it, and accept it.

As so often in Dylan, it is words of scripture that may be the bridge by which one word of his has crossed over to another.

Where might we gather that the waters are from? From a biblical gathering together? Perhaps Genesis 1:9, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together.” More
probably, Exodus 15: “the waters were gathered together”, given that this same chapter gives us a song (“Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and
spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord”), a song that exults in terms that may sound the depths of Dylan’s song:

Pharaoh’s chariot and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red sea. The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as
a stone.

“Or you’ll sink like a stone”. “The curse it is cast”. Or, in the very different accents of exuberant word-work from the moment
When the Ship
Comes In
:

Dylan’s words are never quite what you might have expected. “If your time to you / Is worth savin’”: we know perfectly well what it perfectly means, but if this were a
crossword clue, given the context of drowning the four-letter word
-i-e
would probably be filled in, not as
time
, but as
life
. (The time of your life, but not with the usual
pleasure in the thought.) If your
life
is worth savin’, you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone: isn’t that a line of thought?

Saving your life is one idiom; saving time is another; and the two mingle fluidly. Is time worth saving, however short? (Is it worth saving a few minutes?) And then there is a third way of
putting it that may mingle with the others: “If your time is worth” – not
saving
but – “anything”. All this, with “your time” set against what
immediately ensues, “the times”.
And with the words “Or you’ll sink like a stone” sung by Dylan a moment ahead of the music, as though
plummeting, “sink” sung out of synch.

The second verse comes in with a word that is both new (not in
The Oxford English Dictionary
. . .) and true:

What’s the matter, Dylan, the verb “to prophesy” not good enough for you?

That’s right, not good enough here because what’s needed is something that will not sound good: to
prophesize
, which gets and whets its sardonic edge from what the suffix
-ize
often implies, that the whole thing has become a predictable formula or an empty abstraction, complacently explaining away. You can hear this in the Dylan sleeve-notes for Peter, Paul
and Mary,
²⁹⁴
from the same year: “At these hours there was no tellin what was bound t happen – Never never could the greatest prophesizor
ever guess it –”. No tellin what,

But you’ll know what I mean by “Who prophesize”, you who “criticize / What you can’t understand”, or (elsewhere) “you who philosophize
disgrace” (
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
).

The coinage rings true because “prophesize” chimes naturally with “to prophesy” and with “prophesied”: “Who prophesy with your pen”, say, or
“Who prophesied with your pen”. “My tongue”, says the singer of Psalm 45, “is the pen of a ready writer.” Dylan’s tongue curls at the thought of the
too-ready writers.

We may need to keep our wits about us when we hear “And keep your eyes wide”.
The Oxford English Dictionary
points out that
“wide” is in some respects “now superseded in general use by
wide open
”. But “wide-eyed” has changed with the times. It used to be “having the eyes
wide open, gazing intently”, with D. H. Lawrence urging upon the human soul the duty of “wide-eyed responsibility” (
Man and Bat
). But then it comes to mean naivety, true or
simulated: “You ask him all those wide-eyed innocent questions about making profits from cheap labour” (Len Deighton, 1983). It was back in 1894 that the New York
Forum
praised
Madison’s “wide-eyed prudence in counsel”. The virtue that is urged and celebrated in
The Times They Are A-Changin’
is prudence. This virtue asks courage and great
good sense, and is to be distinguished from petty caution, in the knowledge that few things are more dangerous than playing safe. Tough maxims can be plaited into a rope that is thrown to you.

“Stalled”, as
come to a halt
and (an altogether different verb) as
prevaricated
. Very apt to
The Times They Are A-Changin’
, since to stall
is to play for time or temporize. Anyway, be warned. Prudence, though mannerly,
demands
. Be advised.

Dylan’s writings are happy to give advice, often of a derisory kind.
Advice for Geraldine on Her Miscellaneous Birthday
, which appears in
Lyrics 1962–1985
as the
conclusion to the songs from the
Times They Are A-Changin’
album, is a formidable sequence of prudential assurances. It begins:

Stay in line, do not cross the red line. The line it is drawn.

The Times They Are A-Changin’
says what we can understand clearly, and is determined to
say it simple
. Not “simply”. Yet in
Advice for
Geraldine
, too, this wasn’t so simple. “Say it . . .” looked likely to be completed with “simp
ly
”, right after “understand clear
ly
”. What
“say it simple” does is join forces with “keep it simple”, the word “keep” then immediately surfacing: “say it simple / t’ keep your tongue out of
your / cheek”.

“This was definitely a song with a purpose,” Dylan said of
The Times They Are A-Changin’
. “I knew exactly what I wanted to say and for whom I wanted to say it
to” (
Biograph
). A characteristic touch, this, in its throwing in more prepositions than it might seem to need.
²⁹⁵
Which do you want to
say, sir, “for whom I wanted to say it”, or “whom I wanted to say it to”? Both, because “to whom” is
as addressed to
, but “for whom” is
on
behalf of
. It may seem surprising that so combative a song could be on behalf of those whom it berates, but salutary words are words on behalf of those who stand in need of them. As will later
be realized.

Again, there is the small but telling divergence from the likely ways of putting it. Will be later
the winner
? Will be later
the one to win
? (Will be
certain to
win
?) The word “later” comes early in the song (this second
verse) but it is only late in the song, the last verse, that its time comes, its triple
time: