Visions of Bob Dylan: cronache di una rinascita attraverso il blues e il country

Bob Dylan is a controversial character who has always been capable of (un)intentionally making the news, and his most relevant and revolutionary gestures often share the common feature of absence: he left a deep void when he retired from political engagement, he experienced a lack of faith that led him to write “Jokerman” (1983), he even failed to attend the award ceremony for his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. This dissertation focuses on the absence that begin to characterise his music from 1997 on. In fact, after he spent nearly forty years interpreting different characters, the beginning of the 21st century became a defining moment when Dylan realised that he did not want to hide behind a mask and he could show his authentic self by dissolving into his art; he went back to his roots and let the great artists of American popular music echo through his voice. I will explore his memoir Chronicles (2004) and select the most significant lyrics within this context. The analysis is also based on the works of Alessandro Carrera, La voce di Bob Dylan (2011), Nduka Otiono and Josh Toth’s Polyvocal Bob Dylan (2019) and Ian Bell’s Time Out of Mind (2013). The dissertation is structured in three chapters. The first chapter is a historical and cultural contextualisation where I will outline the main characteristics of blues and country music and indicate in which way Dylan’s work is related to the two genres. The second chapter focuses on the analysis of Dylan’s autobiographical writings, both in verses and in prose, and how his self-perception has changed with time. The chapter also includes a brief display of Dylan’s first approach to the poetics of the absence with “Visions of Johanna” (1966). The third and last chapter is entirely dedicated to the analysis of Dylan’s early-2000s trilogy and its most significant songs. The three sections aim at highlighting Dylan’s new relationship with songwriting and, most importantly, with himself. Dylan certainly is a multifaceted artist and he has undergone many transformations during his career. Nonetheless, I aim at demonstrating that Dylan’s multiplicity does not necessarily lie in the different characters he has interpreted throughout his life, but, on the contrary, it shows in his ability to disappear behind what he writes. His autobiography and his more recent songs are proof of Dylan’s in-depth knowledge of American literature and music and how he has used them to portray his experience as a human in a changing world. He has combined the voices of the great American artists that came before him and used them as his own: he has become more visible since he learned how to fade within his own creations.