Cicero, Dylan, and Nothing Human Is Alien

Dylan's English teacher's desk is for sale.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher who served as consul in 63 BC. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order and is still counted among Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists. I came across his name again last weekend in my reading and, along with this week's news about Nobel Prizes, it triggered some old thoughts. (See links at the end.)

This connection to Cicero runs through Richard F. Thomas’s Why Bob Dylan Matters, reviewed by Thomas Palaima for Bryn Mawr Classical Review. The gold Nobel medallion Dylan received in 2016 carries an image and inscription linked to Virgil’s Aeneid 6.660–665 and Eclogues 1. Thomas sets those lines beside T. S. Eliot’s 1945 essay “What Is a Classic?” and Cicero’s De Officiis, then against Dylan’s “Desolation Row” and Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” 

Dylan, Thomas argues, absorbed the Virgilian words and scene on the medal as both painter and songster. The book follows one of the many “roadmaps for the soul” that show the empathy for the human condition at the center of Dylan’s work. Hence the nod to Cicero. Thomas renders the idea this way: “I am a human. I consider nothing connected to humanity to be alien to me.”

David Gaines made a related point in the John Bushey Lecture Series during Duluth Dylan Fest several years back. He stressed the lasting influence of teachers and noted that Dylan took two years of Latin in high school—then a normal course of study, and a direct encounter with the ancient classics. Like Thomas, who had spoken in the series the year before, Gaines observed that Dylan belonged to the Latin Club. The detail is small, but it places the later allusions inside an ordinary classroom rather than a later affectation.

It is to Dylan’s credit, and to Cicero’s, and now to Thomas’s, that they keep returning to the need for human empathy. Cicero does it by argument. Dylan does it by redeploying passages from texts that have grown obscure—classical authors, or the Civil War poet Henry Timrod—so that readers and listeners see, think, and feel what it is to be a struggling human being in any time or place, inside what Dylan calls “this weary world of woe.” The ideas are recognizable. The clothing of those ideas is also beautiful; the prose itself--and his style of delivery when recording or performing--carries moral weight.

That combination of thought and style is why Cicero kept being recovered. 

The 14th century Italian scholar and poet Petrarch is often credited with the rediscovery of Cicero’s letters, thus helping open the fourteenth-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, and classical Roman culture. Cicero’s authority peaked again in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. His impact on Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, and Burke was substantial. America's founding fathers were likewise acquainted with Cicero as well. George Washington purportedly had two books on his nightstand, the Bible and Cicero.

Cicero's works remain among the most influential in European culture and still supply primary material for the history of the late Roman Republic. Augustine, who was living and writing as Rome fell, read him closely and argued with him while valuing his insights and contributions to beautiful writing. 

It's interesting to find that these ancient writers and philosophers continue to speak to us today. In our modern/post-modern era, we see that people are pretty much the same as they have always been, wrestling with issues of meaning, power, powerlessness, greed, envy, deceit, pride, ambition, freedom and injustice. 

The Old Testament prophets seemed to specialize in confronting kings and powerful entities with honest, often critical facts about their abuses or mistakes. Today we call it, "Speaking truth to power."

When I Googled the origin of that phrase, I was surprised at its recent vintage, though we well know the idea behind it goes far back in time. The phrase was broadly popularized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the 1955 pacifist publication, Speak Truth To Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.

"In the land of An Eye for an Eye, all men are blind.

Related Link
More Thoughts from Cicero: On Life, Death and Philosophy

Photo Source:

https://x.com/Matt_Stike/status/2108940566037967181

The Library of John Adams

This is not Adams' library. These are from my own.

I believe it was in fourth grade that I first got hooked on biographies. Reading the stories of significant people was both educational and entertaining. Those early bios may not have had the depth that one discovers as the mature, but they were using for forming ideas about our history and human history.  

When I read David McCullough's biography of John Adams (2002) it not only displayed the man himself, but introduced readers to a whole cast of Adams' contemporaries and the major event that threw them together, our American Revolution--the subject of Ken Burns' latest documentary series, currently airing on PBS.

Something that really stood out in that Adams biography was how devoted to writing Adams was. In addition to all his correspondence--he wrote volumes to his wife Abigail when away from her--he wrote legal briefs as a lawyer and legislation as a leader. He also wrote ideas and comments in the margins of his books. One story I recall is that he wrote as many as 5,000 words in the margins of just one of his countless books. 

A voracious reader, he imported hundreds of books from London booksellers like John Stockdale throughout his life. A full collection of his papers, along with his book lists, can be found at the Massachusetts Historical Socety. His personal library (around 3,000 volumes!) is today housed in the Boston Public Library. A review of the titles reveals the scope of his interests: law, history, politics, theology, science, classical literature and poetry. Isaac Newton, David Hume, Adam Smith, Plutarch, Homer, Milton (Paradise Lost) and Edward Gibbon (Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire) reveal the breadth of his interests and thought.

One observation that stands out when I look at his library and copious notes: Leaders are Readers. 

It's been said that Adams’ London imports formed the intellectual backbone of his defense of liberty, law, and balanced government. His library wasn’t just a collection—it was a working arsenal for revolution and nation-building.

As the United States enters its 250th year, there will be much wrangling about whether the Constitution is still valid in the 21st century and whether it's time for an overhaul. We're already hearing the rumblings as some point out its weaknesses and shortcomings. On the other hand, let's be careful here. Though there may be things the founders got wrong, it's still remarkable how much they got right.

Harvard Classics Prof Pulls Back the Curtain to Reveal New Insights on Dylan's Art

Prof Richard F. Thomas

Yesterday afternoon, May 26, more than 100 people crammed into Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum to hear Dr. Richard F. Thomas deliver a lecture on Bob Dylan and the Classics. Whether you were a lifetime fan or a relatively new follower of Dylan's art, the Harvard professor's hour-long talk offered much to chew on. In return he likewise relished the opportunity to make this pilgrimage to the Northland to see points of interest in Hibbing and Duluth as well as experience the power of these places that were formative in making Dylan the poet he grew to become.

Phil Fitzpatrick, a local writer/teacher and Harvard grad, introduced Dr. Thomas after briefly reading a tribute to John Bushey, founder/host of KUMD's Highway 61 Revisited and for whom the John Bushey Memorial Lecture Series has been named. Phil welcomed everyone on behalf of Duluth Dylan Fest, Karpeles and the City of Duluth. He then noted that Dr. Thomas received his Bachelors and Masters in Auckland, New Zealand, his Ph.D. in classics at the University of Michigan. He's published more than 100 article and reviews and ten books, including this most recent Why Bob Dylan Matters. And incidentally, in addition to teaching classic literature he also teaches a class on Bob Dylan.

This was not his first visit to Minnesota. He gave a lecture in the Twin Cities in 2006.

* * * *

Dr. Thomas began by noting that Dylan may not be here in 50 years but “I believe his art will be. I hope that in 200 years people will be studying Dylan like they do Virgil."

In the initial portion of the lecture he laid out some of Dylan's early influences. The Hematite, Hibbing High's Yearbook (which archivist Bill Pagel has on display in his "Einstein Disguised As Robin Hood" exhibit), shows that Dylan was not only a fan of Little Richard, but was also a member of the Latin Club and the Social Studies Club, indicators that his later interests had early roots.

His uncle owned the movie house in Hibbing and the young Bob Zimmerman no doubt saw films like The Robe and Demetrius & the Gladiators which were released in the early 1950s. Due to this being the McCarthy era, Hollywood produced quite a few films in which the Roman Empire became a metaphor for unjust power, the contemporary reality of the American '50s.*

Dr. Thomas showed ways in which this early influence re-emerges later. First example: Chronicles, Volume 1. After noting that chapters 2 & 4 are mostly made up, he underscored the beautiful writing of chapters 1, 3 and 5 and showed that "the idea of Rome mattered to him."

Some examples from Dylan's songs were then identified, including the obscure “Goin’ Back to Rome” that he played once at Gerde’s Folk City.

In August 1962 he sang Long Ago, Far Away
"Gladiators killed themselves
It was during the Roman times,
People cheered with bloodshot grins
As eyes and minds went blind"

During the Rolling Thunder Revue Dylan opened his shows with "When I Paint My Masterpiece," which includes this reference:
“Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere”

Other examples were cited, and then we began the deeper dive into Dylan's use of intertextuality, a major theme in Why Bob Dylan Matters.

Love & Theft, released Sept 11, 2001 is "an album of songs addressing antiquity" in which Dylan begins to draw from Virgil.

He then cited T S Eliot:: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

* * * *

Signing a book for local musician Tom O'Keefe.

We were then treated to a deeper analysis of "Lonesome Day Blues" in which Dylan literally replicates passages from Confessions of a Yakuza, Huckleberry Finn and Virgil's Aeneid.

With this pattern of looking back to the classics set in motion, Dylan began drawing from Ovid for the album Modern Times.

Dr. Thomas' enthusiasm for his topic was palpable. (You never knew the classics could be this exciting, did you?) “This recent stuff is just miraculous,” he said regarding Dylan’s albums from Time Out of Mind to Tempest.

He then began identifying as many as 30 Dylan lines that are directly parallel to or identical with lines from Ovid’s exile poems.

"Getting a linear meaning out of a Dylan song is never easy or sometimes even possible," he said, and yet the manner in which Dylan reconstructs this passages is nothing short of amazing. "Dylan is unlike any other," he said. "Especially in performance.

In 2010 Dylan began drawing from yet another classic source, passages from Homer. He "began a process of becoming Odysseus, the Trickster."

And yes, afterwards we had more birthday cake.

While here this week he had the opportunity to be inside the Armory where Dylan saw Buddy Holly. As many of us know, Dylan began his Nobel Speech with this story from that encounter at the Armory. Dr. Thomas then cited a line from another Dylan speech, from 2015: “Character always mattered to me.”

The Odyssey has themes that appear vividly in Dylan's last album of original music, Tempest. What Dylan is doing is "bringing life to history." After detailing the story of Odysseus killing the Cyclops, he underscored the greatness of Bob Dylan. Dylan's themes are all there in the Classics, and it makes sense that a Classics professor would be among the first to comprehend the genius behind Bob Dylan's borrowings.

Much more can be said, but for now the best advice I can give is: Read the Book.

* * * *

Photos courtesy Michael Anderson

Related Link
Interview with Richard F. Thomas earlier this spring.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.

*Some Bible scholars have suggested that the Book of Revelations, which circulated during the first century, was written using assorted symbols that could only be interpreted by "People of the Book" for the same reason. Only those who understood the symbols would "get it."