摘 要

2016年，美国著名民谣艺术家鲍勃·迪伦荣获诺贝尔文学奖，成为第一位获得该奖项的作曲家，委员会表彰他“在伟大的美国歌曲传统中创造了新的诗歌表达”。他的歌词作品富有诗意和哲理，将他所关注的全球性问题以诗歌的形式融入音乐中，从而表达内心强烈的情感。本文立足于鲍勃·迪伦早期诗歌作品，以诗歌意象角度出发，将其早期诗歌内含的忧郁意象根据不同情感和多种主题进行拆分整理，解析隐含的意境及寓意，并结合鲍勃·迪伦的个人经历剖析其内心的自我矛盾和社会反思，分析其诗歌作品对民权、战争、自由和种族主义的思考与主张，从而挖掘出鲍勃·迪伦对上世纪欧美社会的影响意义，以及对民众的引导价值。

关键词：鲍勃·迪伦；早期诗歌；忧郁意象

Abstract

In 2016, Bob Dylan, a famous American folk artist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature and became the first composer to win the prize. The Committee commended him for "creating new poetry expressions in the great American song tradition". His lyrics and works are full of poetry and philosophy, and integrate his global concerns into music in the form of poetry, thus expressing his strong feelings. Based on Bob Dylan's early poems and from the perspective of poetic imagery, this paper divides and collates the melancholy imagery contained in his early poems according to different emotions and themes, analyzes the implied artistic conception and implicature, combines Bob Dylan's personal experience to analyze his inner self-contradiction and social reflection, and to analyzes his thoughts and propositions on civil rights, war, freedom and racism from his poems, thus excavating the significance of Bob Dylan's influence on the European and American society in the last century, as well as the guiding value to the hesitant people.

Key Words: Bob Dylan；Early poetry；Melancholy image

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Researches on Bob Dylan and his Poems in China and Abroad 3

2.2 Melancholy Images Analysis Theory 7

3 The Source of Melancholy Images in Bob Dylan’s Early Poetry 10

3.1 Personal Emotion 10

3.2 Political Choice 11

4 The Melancholy Images in Bob Dylan’s Early Poetry 12

4.1 The theme of resistance in Poetry 13

4.2 The Abstract Warning of Folk Ballads 17

4.3 The Theme of Love and Religion in Poetry 19

5 The Research Value and Social Impact of Bob Dylan's Poetry 23

5.1 Research Value 23

5.2 Social Impact 24

6 Conclusion 25

6.1 Implication 25

6.2 Limitation and Further Research 25

References 27

Acknowledgements 29

The Melancholy Images in Bob Dylan’s Early Poetry

1 Introduction

Bob Dylan, formerly known as Robert Alan Zimmerman, was born in May 24, 1941 in Minnesota, USA. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and letters, a famous rock and ballad singer in the United States. In 1930s, in the late second world war and the Great Depression of the United States, Bob Dylan was born in a middle class Jewish family. His parents were descendants of early American Jewish immigrants in Eastern Europe and deeply influenced by their music-loving family. It was in such a strong musical atmosphere that Bob Dylan showed a distinctive musical talent from childhood. After trying to learn piano, Sax, trombone and other musical instruments, Bob Dylan finally chose to learn guitar. This choice laid the foundation for him to become a ballad singer in the future.

The artists Bob liked tended to write and sing songs with more serious themes, and they often interpret very grand themes. Bob Dylan was influenced by Hank Williams in adolescence. Although Williams' voice was not unique and beautiful, there was a belief in Bob Dylan's eyes. His sad songs deeply touched Bob's heart. The sad lyrics prompted Bob to think repeatedly. When Bob was a teenager, he often talked with friends like Howard about such serious topics as war and human morality. Bob was rebellious and independent in adolescence, and was influenced by Dylan Thomas to name him Bob Dylan. He never stopped writing poems, and he also has an extraordinary mature taste in literature and enjoys reading.

After entering college, Bob met his good friend Morton and learned a way of writing. By using the melody of folk music, he combined the current issues of civil rights and humanitarianism, such as racial disputes in the south, with his lyric elements to express his thoughts and opinions on politics and humanity.

In 1960, after consulting with his parents, Bob decided to discontinue his school year and head north to New York to find opportunities for music development. When he arrived in New York, Bob Dylan visited Woody Gus, a well-known folk artist who was seriously ill. He met many folk singers, such as Jack Elliott, and learned about folk songs and performance. During his stay in New York, Bob Dylan had a very difficult life. Without a regular job, he could only live on a small income and tips from stage performances, and often relied on the help of friends. Long "beggar" life made Bob Dylan well aware of the hardships of freelancers such as artists and singers, and cultivated his melancholy temperament.

In 2016, nearly 75-year-old Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first musician to win the prize since its inception. Although whether or not the Nobel Prize for Literature should be awarded to a singer has become a hot topic among people all over the world, the literary circles had already paid attention to Bob Dylan's lyrics and affirmed his literary attainments. As early as 1996, writers John Baldy and poet Alan Ginsberg had nominated Bob Dylan to the Swedish Nobel Committee for the prize. Although Bob Dylan's main identity is a musician in the eyes of the public, literary circles have awarded him many literary awards, such as Pulitzer Prize, to praise his unique and extraordinary power of poetry in his Lyric creation.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Researches on Bob Dylan and his Poems in China and

Abroad

As a ballad singer, Bob Dylan inherited the characteristics of many ballad musicians and traditional American ballads in his creation, such as the combination of lyric creation and current events, emphasizing the sincerity and nature of emotions in lyrics, etc. In the early stage of his creation, Bob Dylan, on the basis of inheriting the tradition, endowed various images with his thinking and tendency on serious topics such as social hot spots, national politics and international war, which made many of his early works melancholy. Therefore, paying attention to the melancholy images in Bob Dylan's early poems can help us better understand Bob Dylan's thoughts in that period and his influence on young people in different countries.

2.1.1 Domestic Research

Due to insufficient understanding of the literary value of Bob Dylan's works, The domestic academic circles have been blank about his research for a long time. In the database of CNKI, there are 167 papers retrieved by Bob Dylan, and 143 papers published after 2016. Among them, there are more than 60 papers discussing Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize for Literature, accounting for 35%. There are 50 papers introducing Bob Dylan's direction of music. There are no more than 20 papers really studying the literariness of Bob Dylan's works, and few about the image of poetry.

In 1996, Teng Jimeng paid attention to the literary value of Bob Dylan's lyrics. He began to study these lyrics as poetry. He analyzed Bob Dylan's creative connotation, artistic conception and plot as well as religious color in his poems. This is the earliest study of Bob Dylan's literary works in the domestic academic circles.

In recent years, with the gradual deepening of the understanding of Bob Dylan's value, some people analyze it from the angle of song creation, but they all discuss it from the perspective of literary history and social history. Bob Dylan is the pioneer of folk rock and roll, so many music critics have introduced it from the perspective of folk songs and rock and roll, but many scholars have realized Dylan's literary value and unique artistic charm, and have studied and analyzed it. It also pays attention to the influence of predecessors on Bob Dylan's creation. “Kingsburg's creation influenced a large number of creators, including Bob Dylan（Wang, 2013: 2）.” As a symbol of the times, rock and roll poet Bob Dylan expresses the spiritual crisis of the younger generation with the theme of "death" in his ballads: they have questioned the inherent mainstream beliefs and traditional beliefs and tried to rebel, and have "run away" in the real and spiritual levels, trying to find the answer "on the road", but lost their place of belonging(Kuang，2013). In his early works, Dylan widely absorbed the nutrition of traditional folk songs, and gradually formed his own creative characteristics on the basis of retaining the core value system of folk songs. There are many reasons for Dylan's turn of creation, which mainly involves three aspects: society, ideological trend and individual（Hu，2014）. Bob Dylan also has the poet's keen insight and expressive ability, which can directly connect with the common feelings and feelings of human beings, and produce the strong voice of the times. In addition, his lyrics in rhetoric and structure also conform to the characteristics of poetry, even no less than the outstanding poets in history（Shi，2018）. Through careful reading of the complete works of Bob Dylan's lyrics, we find that Dylan's lyrics are a mixture of Romanticism and Modernism, and show a distinct romantic character, which is the continuation and development of traditional Romantic spirit in the twentieth century. Its lyrics reflect this continuation and development from three aspects: rebellion against the realistic order, pursuit of self-nature, pursuit of ideals and redemption. Development（Yang， 2018）. “Dylan's works embody the political, structural and performance characteristics of traditional oral poetry, while oral poetry, as a traditional literary form, has made innovative contributions. Therefore, the author believes that learning from tradition and creating works reflecting the spirit of the times is the most important significance of Dylan's works（Liang, 2018: 2）.”

To sum up, the most striking feature of Bob Dylan's research at home is that he looks at problems in isolation and fragmentation. The literary value, folk tradition and cultural significance of Bob Dylan's creation should be combined organically and comprehensively in order to grasp Bob Dylan's creation traceably. For Bob Dylan's main work, poetry, scholars at home have not paid enough attention to it, and there are few studies on the image in his early poems. Bob Dylan's poems have exerted a great influence on young Americans in the last century. In order to discover the truth, imagery in poetry will be an important research direction.