Thinking Activity : Bob Dylan and Robert Frost

 Hello Beautiful People,

I am Riddhi Bhatt. You know...what is today's blog ?This blog is about giving Bob Dylan and Robert Frost.As a part of the syllabus, students of English department are learning the paper called The American Literature (paper-108).our professor Ms. Vaidehi Hariyaani discussed this unit and assigned us one of the most creative tasks to interpret and given to answer this question.BUt first we know some brief introduction about Bob Dylan & Robert Frost.

✅Bob Dylan :

"How many roads must a man walk down Before you can call him a man? . .  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, The answer is blowin' in the wind."

-Bob Dylon

Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning nearly 60 years.American folksinger who moved from folk to rock music in the 1960s, infusing the lyrics of rock and roll, theretofore concerned mostly with boy-girl romantic innuendo, with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry. Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan sold tens of millions of albums, wrote more than 500 songs recorded by more than 2,000 artists, performed all over the world, and set the standard for lyric writing. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.

"Don't criticize what you can't understand."

✅Robert Frost :

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

-Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime and is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution."

"I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.."

Now I am trying to answers of the questions who given to as blog task.

1.)  Which song of Bob Dylan has made an impact on you? Why? Can you find a song similar to the same theme in other language?

⟶

Make You Feel My Love

When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case

I could offer you a warm embrace

To make you feel my love

When the evening shadows and the stars appear

And there is no one there to dry your tears

I could hold you for a million years

To make you feel my love

I know you haven't made your mind up yet

But I would never do you wrong

I've known it from the moment that we met

No doubt in my mind where you belong

I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue

I'd go crawling down the avenue

No, there's nothing that I wouldn't do

To make you feel my love

The storms are raging on the rolling sea

And on the highway of regret

Though winds of change are throwing wild and free

You ain't seen nothing like me yet

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true

Nothing that I wouldn't do

Go to the ends of the Earth for you

To make you feel my love

To make you feel my love

There are hit songs, and then, there are classics. Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” off his 1997 studio album, Time Out of Mind, has reportedly been covered by nearly 500 artists. The original version features Dylan’s signature tone, a bit rough around the edges, and a nice counterbalance to the twinkling of piano and the melody’s gentle sweetness.

“When the rain is blowing in your face / And the whole world is on your case / I could offer you a warm embrace / To make you feel my love,” he extends on the opening verse. His voice guides the barebones arrangement, relying solely on the power of the lyrics.

Over the years, many have speculated the song draws parallels to Christian imagery, namely the figure of Jesus Christ. The second half of the chorus is often cited as a reference to the crucifixion: “I’d go hungry / I’d go black and blue / I’d go crawling down the avenue / No, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do / To make you feel my love.” Of course, this is all speculation ─ but it has neither been confirmed nor denied outright.Now I tell you why i like this because of The narrator’s egocentricity comes out fully in the first verse. The opening lines have him sympathising with his lover, but for being in  a situation which is near to what he sees as his own:

‘When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case’

‘In your face’, in its colloquial sense, might seem to apply to what she sees as him in his relationship with her, rather than the other way about. Also what, we might ask, is meant by ‘your case’? The expression has a pathological feel to it, and would therefore be more obviously appropriate to the narrator whose ‘hearing voices’ in Cold Irons Bound suggested he was becoming insane. Also, rain imagery seems more apposite to him than to her. As early as Love Sick he was complaining that the ‘clouds are weeping’, and in Dirt Road Blues he was ‘rolling through the rain and hail’. In applying his situation to her, it’s as if he’s found an opportunity to feel sorry for himself. It’s wrong, he thinks, that the sympathy he gives her hasn’t been extended to him .

A further consequence of seeing his lover as a version of himself is that he makes her lot out to be as bad as he thinks his own is. This is presented in the song by his references to things associated with night – shadows and stars:

‘When the evening shadows and the stars appear

And there is no one there to dry your tears’

But why stars? Stars are beautiful and not a cause for tears, as the lines imply. Their inclusion is an indication of the narrator’s pessimism – his failure to recognise when things are going well. And we’ve been given no reason to suppose that his lover should be attributed with a similar one-sided outlook.

2.)  Which poem of Robert Frost has made an impact on you? Why?

➝

Acceptance

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud

And goes down burning into the gulf below,

No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud

At what has happened. Birds, at least must know

It is the change to darkness in the sky.

Murmuring something quiet in her breast,

One bird begins to close a faded eye;

Or overtaken too far from his nest,

Hurrying low above the grove, some waif

Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.

At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!

Now let the night be dark for all of me.

Let the night be too dark for me to see

Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

I like this poem most because when we see this entire poem.He says that nothing is disturbed by “what has happened.” Frost’s choice of “happened” almost suggests that the sun’s going down is something that has happened to someone or something.First appearing in West Running Brook, this sonnet represents a sense of both yielding to nature and exhibiting a healthy respect for it. Near the beginning of the poem the speaker points out that no voice in nature gives a cry when the sun goes down.

But nothing is ever as simple as it seems in Frost. The title, “Acceptance,” alerts the reader that the poem is about anything but. While it seems that the bird is accepting of the darkness, he too is haunted by it. There is a touch of sarcasm in the phrase, “Let what will be, be.” The bird says, “Now let the night be dark for all of me. / Let the night be too dark for me to see.” This darkness is unpleasant and enveloping. It is not so much acceptance that is being witnessed, but a sort of repression. Ultimately, the bird is no better equipped to accept the scheme of things than humans are, and the irony of the title is that the poem is really about the inability to accept. In “Acceptance,” nature’s power is evident, but so is the desire to accept that power as a given and not to resist it. Frost is, however, uncomfortable with nature’s powers, despite the assertion in the poem that those powers should not be challenged.

THANK YOU .....