to be all that there is. At which point one realizes the conjunction of the Old Testament’s “this land” and “seed” with the New Testament’s offering its hope: “being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (the First Epistle of Peter 1:23). So the song’s “corruptible seed” cannot but call up the affirmation that makes divine sense of it by antithesis: “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God”.
This final verse of Dylan’s has begun with a repudiation of hopefulness, for the line “Well, God is in his heaven” does not follow through to the naivety of the famous moment in Victorian poetry (dramatized naivety, there, for Browning’s poem Pippa Passes is darkened by the larger older sadder story within which it has its young hopes):
God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world!
When Dylan moves from “Well, God is in his heaven” to “And we all want what’s his”, he ignites a flash of doubt. We want to seize what is not ours but his? Or we do want what he wants, want what is his wish? It is an equivocal line to take, and furthermore the benign reading is itself equivocal, since not necessarily to be taken straight. Do we genuinely pray, “Thy will be done”? Or is our prayer lip-service? (We kid others and ourselves that we all want what’s His.) But Dylan’s run of lines does keep open the respectful colouring of “And we all want what’s his”, since he moves at once to a chastening “But”, where otherwise the rotation of “But” wouldn’t fit:
Well, God is in his heaven
And we all want what’s his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
Dylan does not go along with the blitheness of “God’s in his heaven – / All’s right with the world!” But his song does not rebound into All’s wrong with the world, it proceeds as “power and greed and corruptible seed / Seem to be all that there is”. Blind Willie McTell, which contemplates cruel injustice (“Hear the cracking of the whips”, cracking its rhyme with “the ghosts of slavery ships”), does not succumb either to hopefulness or to hopelessness. Try hope. (And while you’re at it, try faith and charity.) Remember that those verses of the Epistle of Peter proclaim “the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever”, and remember that this hope is immediately reasserted there in the face of mortality and loss:
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.
Yet not only the word and the voice of the Lord, but the words and the voice of a great singer.
Well, God is in his heaven
And we all want what’s his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I’m gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
What kind of answer can those last two lines of this final verse, the enduring refrain, be to its first four lines? Only an answer at once partial and heartening; McTell’s singing is one of the things that there is. And we arrive at this conclusion, at art’s being a glory of man that does not wither, via the two lines about the singer of this song itself: “I’m gazing out the window / Of the St. James Hotel”. I admire and love the way in which this claims so little, even perhaps claims nothing, does no more than report one of those moments when, abstracted from evil, you gaze out of a window in contemplative regard that is not self-regard.94
It is as if the question of envy doesn’t even arise. And yet it is knowing this, knowing that envy does not even arise, that plays so generous a part throughout this lucid mysterious song.
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
If Dylan were someone who never sang the blues (someone who limited himself to Living the Blues), then this might be a comparatively easy generosity, rather as someone who is a tennis champion might have little difficulty in granting that no one can play table tennis like A. N. Other. And if Dylan were someone who sang only the blues, then this might be demanding too much of him – or of us when it came to trusting his self-abnegation. The refrain is perfectly pitched and poised. And even the form that the magnanimous praise takes –
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
– is one that very humanly and decently combines the utmost praise with a somewhat different inflection, one that emphasizes McTell’s uniqueness, not simply or solely his superiority. That no one can sing the blues like him: this endearingly combines the superlative and the highly individual, without having to enter competitively into the proportions of the one to the other. Perfectly judged, and determined to do justice to McTell. More, determined to see and hear justice done at last to him.
After the final refrain, there is no more to be said. Or sung. But there is more to hear, the fully instrumental that is yet an end in itself.
It was the repudiation of envy that brought the hoot owl into the picture or into the soundtrack. This, with a courteous comedy. Keats had assured his nightingale that the poet’s heartache was not caused by envy: “’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot”. Dylan’s night bird sings beautifully in its way, and its way is one with which neither Blind Willie McTell nor Dylan is in any way in competition. The owl doesn’t fuss about how big or how enthusiastic his audience is:
Well, I heard that hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Was his only audience
Like the rain in Lay Down Your Weary Tune, the hoot owl “asked for no applause”. Hooting, the opposite of applause, is how they drive you off the stage. The hoot owl could well be – though it is happily not – pleased with itself. But then so could the others who are good at what they do, whom we now meet:
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
Well, “well” is a word that had opened this verse (as it will again the final verse), and that chimes with Blind Willie McTell. The owl does well, as others do, too – but, come on, admit it,
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Those others have their accomplishments – to wit the owl, and the maidens to woo – but when it comes to the blues . . . And what an accomplishment is the placing of the phrase “Can strut their feathers well”. It doesn’t forget the owl and his feathers (which it is important not to ruffle), and it brings together
