A Visit with Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas, Author of Why Bob Dylan Matters

2017 was yet another good year for Dylan literature. Late fall as I began reading a friend's copy of Richard F. Thomas' Why Bob Dylan Matters, I put it aside till I could acquire my own copy so I could underline passages and write notes in the margins. Every four year the author, a George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics at Harvard, teaches a class on Dylan which is nicknamed "Dylan 101" and called the "the coolest class on campus."

How this came about and what he learned from writing this book is part of what you will read here. It is a privilege to be able to announce that Professor Thomas will be one of the featured speakers at this year's 2018 Duluth Dylan Fest. Details at the end of this interview.

EN: Your interactions with the songs of Bob Dylan were filtered through the lens of one who has been immersed in classic literature for five decades. How did you come to take an interest in the writings of ancient Greek and Roman poets?

Richard F. Thomas: I started Latin at the age of 9, Greek at 13, in New Zealand, over five decades ago. I liked the challenge of the languages, and eventually came to appreciate the literature of these two old worlds. I was also attracted to movies back then that brought the Greeks and Romans to life, Ben Hur, Spartacus, Last Days of Pompeii, The Robe. These were the same movies that Bob Zimmerman was seeing in his uncle’s movie house in Hibbing, where Dylan also did a year or two of Latin and had contact with Roman history in the Latin Club at Hibbing High. Those ancient civilizations speak, and have always spoken, to the imagination of curious minds across the centuries.

EN: When did you first take an interest in Dylan? What were his first songs that spoke to you?

The author in his youth.

RFT: I’ve followed Dylan from the beginning, since my teens. ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ of course, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin'', for different causes in a different time and place, as they worked in Washington DC last week when Jennifer Hudson sang the second of these songs at the March for Our Lives rally to 800,000 people. Then as I got older the songs about love won and love lost, ‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit’, ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’, everything else.

EN: You've been teaching the classics, but then started teaching a class on Dylan. This was while you were at Harvard, right? How did that come about?

RFT: My Harvard dean asked me to teach a freshman seminar in the early 2000s. I had for years been thinking the lyric genius of Dylan was pretty much in the same stream that would eventually flow down to Dylan. When he started incorporating my favorite Roman poet Virgil into his song, specifically into ‘Lonesome Day Blues’ on Love and Theft in 2001, I thought ‘Why not a seminar on Bob Dylan?’ Since 2004 I’ve taught it every four years, fourth time around in the fall of 2016, including a meeting on the day of the Nobel Prize announcement on October 13 of that year.

EN: What were your biggest takeaways from writing Why Bob Dylan Matters?

RFT: As I wrote the book, I came to grasp in a broader sense what genius is, and to understand in a more deliberate way that Dylan’s genius is, at the end of the day, like any literary, musical, artistic genius. To have lived in the time of Bob Dylan is a gift. I have spent much of my life as a scholar and teacher explaining why the greatest poets of the last two or three millennia have continued to appeal to those who have ears to hear and eyes to read. I see Why Bob Dylan Matters as a book that is completely at home with the books and articles I have written on the great classical poets of the past

EN: I personally believe Dylan will still be studied in a hundred years. What do you think? Are there any other contemporary songwriters who will be looked back on as a significant voice for the 20th century?

RFT: This is a tough one. Each time I teach the seminar three or four of the twelve 18-year-olds are as knowledgeable about Dylan, all of Dylan, as you or I are. They know why songs written before their parents were born are here to stay--at least for them. So that’s promising as we think about Dylan’s legacy. In my field the death of the Classics (Homer, Virgil, the rest of them) has been predicted across the ages, but they stay with those who discover them and are enriched by the discovery. Dylan will be the same, however small the community of those who understand what happened may get. Other contemporary songwriters? That’s invidious. Songs last forever once they’re written down. The question is what songwriter/performers will have the same longevity. There are a few. I’d just add Leonard Cohen for now. Blonde on Blonde and Songs of Leonard Cohen were the two albums I took from New Zealand to the US back in 1974.

EN: Of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero... do you have a favorite? (or some other contemporary of these writers)?

RFT: I love them all, but Virgil is my favorite. Next week I’ll see Dylan perform in Mantova (Mantua) in Italy, the hometown of Virgil. The English poet Tennyson wrote a poem for the people of Mantua in 1881, celebrating the 1900th anniversary of the death of their poet in 19 BC:

I salute thee Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began
Wielder of the stateliest measure ever molded by the lips of man.

That goes for Virgil, but would also go for Dylan. You could even keep the same meter by replacing “Mantovano” with “Minnesotan”.

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The schedule for this year's 2018 Duluth Dylan Fest has been established beginning with the first of two John Bushey Memorial Lectures featuring author David Pichaske, Saturday May 19. His lecture will be on the theme Songs of the North Country: A Midwest Framework to the Songs of Bob Dylan.

Prof. Thomas will be presenting his lecture from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Saturday May 26 at Karpeles Manuscript Museum Library, also as part of the John Bushey Memorial Lecture Series. His theme, Why Bob Dylan Matters, likewise promises to be enlightening, informative and engaging.

Related Links
Professor Thomas' Why Bob Dylan Matters is available here at Amazon.
Professor Pichaske's books can be found at this link.