Why it matters that Boby Dylan has read Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ellis Sharp explains:
So. Does it matter ?whether Dylan was right or wrong about Hurricane Carter, or whether ?Neighborhood Bully? is a racist song or not, or whether he?s read Edna St. Vincent Millay?? I think it does. ‘Hurricane’ is another of Dylan?s great songs about racism and corruption in the US police force and judiciary. It?s a stunningly powerful, full-blooded song that arises from and is propelled by Dylan?s fury at the injustice of Hurricane Carter?s imprisonment. In this song Dylan embodied Marx?s desire that you should not only try to understand your world, you should also set out to change it. It?s a campaigning song, set in the real world. If you say that it doesn?t matter what the song is about, or whether it?s true or not, and that it?s just great music, then I think you?ve missed a lot of the point of the song. You aestheticise it. You turn it into an artefact detached from real life. That impulse reminds me very much of the American ?New Criticism? of the 1950s. The New Critics wanted to remove literature from life and history and regard writing as exclusively a formal structure ? a well-wrought urn, an organic artefact, where all you discussed was language. The New Critics rubbished biography. The writer?s life, the writer?s intentions, were an irrelevance. Out with society and history, just stick to the words! But theory is never innocent, and the New Criticism slotted in nicely with the quietism of the age. If you don?t want to talk about history or society, you threaten nothing.