Among Nobel Laureates in literature, there are few as controversial as Bob Dylan. “But he can’t sing!” I hear you cry, or, worse still, “I preferred Timothee Chalamet’s version!” Yet there is a strong literary voice beneath the nasal Minnesotan drawl; certainly the voice of a poet. I think his song ‘Shelter from the Storm,’ a personal favourite of mine, proves this.
The speaker recalls a woman who provided him refuge from a post-apocalyptic, warring world. This world is in a vague point of the past: “twas in another lifetime,” giving it a sense of the ancient, mythical, and obscure. Dylan describes it as “a world of steel-eyed death.” He personifies death by granting it a face, only to then strip it of this humanity in the mechanical, cold image of “steel.”
It is a world of darkness, in which “blackness was a virtue.” The speaker is described as “void of form,” as though engulfed in, or even made of, shadowy darkness. He is not a person, but rather part of the process of the decay around him. He is a “creature:” elemental and animalistic.
Yet where he is vague, slippery, and alien, she is feminine, beautiful, and expressly human. Decorative personal details are pointed out, such as the “silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair,” contrasting with the barren darkness of the outside world. Dylan closes each stanza with the repeated refrain “come in, she said/ I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.” The use of the casual dialectal “ya” touches on a relatable, comforting humanity.
Dylan writes how she “took my crown of thorns,” alluding to Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. By removing this religious symbol, she draws him out of the world of ancient mystery and back into the tangible human world. She heals his suffering and, above all, restores his humanity.
Yet of course, like all Bob Dylan songs, ‘Shelter from the Storm’ is obscure, abstract, and, honestly, utterly confusing. This was simply a glimpse into his poetry.
Photo by Nikoloz Gachechiladze on Unsplash