Dylan's Creative Process

Bob Dylan’s (a.k.a., Sergi Petrov’s) creative process never ceases to amaze me:

I was always a singer and maybe no more than that. Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don't mean as well. Like what does it mean to not know what the person you love is capable of? Things fall apart, especially all the neat order of rules and laws. The way we look at the world is the way we really are. See it from a fair garden and everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau and you'll see plunder and murder. Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago.

(see: http://www.sonyclassics.com/masked/trailer.html).

While I originally believed Dylan was not simply using the title, but also exploring themes invoked in Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel “Things Fall Apart” in the final monologue of his 2003 film “Masked and Anonymous,” (Things fall apart, especially all the neat order of rules and laws—Okonwko’s religion, culture, rules, laws, and traditions fall apart as British missionaries invade his native land); I now believe Dylan’s ideas as well his use of the phrase “Things fall apart” come from William Butler Yeats’ famous 1919 poem “The Second Coming.”

The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

(see: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html).

Yeats was writing of the chaos gripping post WWI Europe and his poem was the source for the title of Achebe's famous novel.  It is this same chaos that mirrors the Civil War raging throughout Dylan’s film.

Equally impressive, Dylan writes that when we look at the world from "a fair garden…everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau and you'll see plunder and murder." In the Third Century, C.E., Saint Cyprian, writing to a friend, (Donatus) of being a Christian described his world:

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide land, you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the highways, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheatres men murdered to please the applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it, I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy, which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians…and I am one of them.

(see: http://books.google.com/books?id=wqI3cu3aqUYC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=This+seems+a+cheerful+world,+Donatus&source=bl&ots=CNtMPIdDDk&sig=FnchMs7RAYblYcQmfn7BBZnp1hw&hl=en&ei=Z1V-TJKoEYHGlQe3k53uAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CDcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=This%20seems%20a%20cheerful%20world%2C%20Donatus&f=false).

Certainly this is where the sentiment of Dylan’s words come from. I’m impressed that Dylan has not only read the writings of a somewhat obscure third century Bishop, but that he appears to empathize, indeed feel what Cyprian was writing about (Cyprian’s vivid description of Christian life in Rome during the third century is an added bonus).

No need to comment on Dylan's use of Plato’s aphorism of how truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. Suffice to say, Dylan‘s creative process, especially his ability to draw images, thoughts and ideas from a variety of disassociated sources, refashioning them into something solely his own remains (after nearly 50 years) impressive.