Dark Eyes from Homer, the slut #8
by Robert Forryan

Sometimes you just get it all wrong, don't you? Sometimes you get an idea about a Dylan song and you just can't shift it, even though everyone else tells you its not the way you think it is. And sometimes you just have to change your mind. So it was with me and 'Dark Eyes'.

Professionally I know all sorts of theories about language and communication. Communication is how I earn my living; either face-to-face individually or in groups, or by telephone, or by the written word. I don't produce anything - all I make are connections. And yet with 'Dark Eyes' I made the wrong connections. Theoretically I knew that intercourse was a two-way process, that its not just what's said (or sung) that matters but what is heard. I knew that to say that the speaker is active and the listener passive is a distortion - that for successful communication the listener must also be active, that he or she must actually listen. Its just that for a while there, with 'Dark Eyes', I failed to do it. Oh, I thought I was listening all right. In fact, I was sure I was. But the truth is that all I heard was 'Dark Eyes' and all that meant was love and pain.

I loved the song from the very first. I still do. It was one of those Dylan performances that immediately entranced me. The trouble was that because of its title and because of the repeated line 'all I see are Dark Eyes', I assumed it was a love song, a song of lost love, that is ( well, in a sense that may be exactly what it is, but read on). Being a Dylan fan can interfere with the appreciation of the man's art. You get hung up on the story, the myth, the biography of your hero and, before you know it, you are failing to separate the man from the music. In my case, the merest mention of 'Dark Eyes' meant that the connection I was making was with Sara and Baez, with one or all of the various dark-eyed women with whom Dylan has been involved. I mean, despite the recent presence of a mature, blonde actress, I always associate Dylan with dark ladies. 'Her hair upon her shoulders in jet-black ringlets fell', and long may it continue. 'Lakes Of Pontchartrain' is a wonderful story, don't you think? The fantasy woman of Everyman.

So 'Dark Eyes' remained a wistful lament for a lost love for many months, nay, years even. In fact, I still think the blend of voice, guitar and harmonica is hugely redolent of a love song. To be honest, I would still prefer it if it were so. Dylan's performance of the song makes it an achingly beautiful work of art. It provokes a tightness in the chest or churning in the stomach, much like the sensation experienced upon coming unexpectedly face-to-face with a stunningly attractive woman. So there I am, back to women again. And whilst I'm on the subject, I've often thought that Dylan's apparent artistic preference for the dark-haired and dark-eyed over the blue-eyed blonde is somehow an acknowledgement of their stereotypical qualities in the popular imagination: the sense that blondes, being dizzy, good-humoured, frank and open, are less interesting than sultry, mysterious, alluring, intuitive brunettes. Clichés have their uses in art as in life.

Of course, and you will know this, its not a love song unless you see it as a song of love for Christ. Maybe Christians can see it that way. I wouldn't know, I'm not a Christian, though I used think that I was. I certainly see it as a song about Christ as you will see if you can bear to read on - but by now you're probably thinking 'what a berk, I can't stomach any more of this'. For some reason, though none that I can give much evidence for, 'Dark Eyes' reminds me of the John Wesley Harding album. Much of John Wesley Harding had a religious theme without trying to overtly proselytize, its protagonist appeared to be riven by doubt and it had an almost acoustic production. For me that album presented a man struggling towards a faith where 'Dark Eyes' portrays someone desperately trying to retain a faith he is in danger of losing.

Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside,
They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide.
I live in another world where life and death are memorized,
Where the earth is strung with lover's pearls and all I see are dark eyes.

A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer,
Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere.
But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise,
Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.

They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes,
They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is.
But I feel nothing for their game where beauty goes unrecognized,
All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.

Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel,
Hunger pays a heavy price to the falling gods of speed and steel.
Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies,
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.

Dylan's performance of this composition begins with an apparently hesitant harmonica accompanied by an equally diffident guitar. There is something (dare I suggest this?) like a child at music practice in the slow and deliberate, almost strained, way the melody is picked out by the artist. It is strange, too, the way the guitar follows the melody line rather than, as is more usual, accompanying the melody with a contrasting rhythm. Do my ears deceive me or is this not true? Stay your hand before dashing off a venomous missive to the editor! I'm not saying Dylan's performance is immature. On the contrary, his mastery and his achievement lies in the creation of a musical atmosphere (hesitant,doubting) which matches precisely the mood of the lyrics. It is incredibly deceptive. So much so that I believe Dylan succeeded in deceiving the esteemed author of Behind The Shades. You may recall Mr. Heylin's assassination of the song: 'Dark Eyes...is a hollow shell...Dylan sounds as if he were the worse for drink when he recorded the track...ridiculous droning melody.'

Now I'm not one of those who seek to pretend that Dylan never performs under the influence of alcohol or even something ten times worse; but this song just doesn't sound that way to me. Instead Dylan sounds utterly in control of his art. He's trying to portray a man undermined by his own self-doubt, and he succeeds brilliantly. As for droning melody, well, I'm no music student but if I had to take a wild guess at how this song should be categorized I might (ever so hesitantly, you understand) suggest that it merits the title of dirge. A genuine, musically correct and specifically-created-for-the-purpose dirge. Dirge is a word we tend to use critically, but there is no reason why this should be the case. The dirge is a legitimate music form (my dictionary defines it thus: 'a lament for the dead, mournful tune') and it is in this sense that I ascribe it to 'Dark Eyes'. It is not meant to detract in any way from the beauty and ethereal quality that the song and the performance possess for me and, I believe, for many Dylan fans. Certainly a rough straw poll among acquaintances suggest that Clinton is in a minority. Most seem to rate it very highly.

As the last song of the album, it is typically different from the rest of Empire Burlesque, but untypically it does not provide a foretaste of the next album, either in content or style (although I hear a hint of Oh Mercy in there somewhere). At the time of writing some 7 years have elapsed and we still do not have that much prophesied and desired acoustic album. (Perhaps by the time you read this though.....?)

The opening lines could easily be mistaken for English poetry. They project a very English sound, not at all American, I think. These phrases would not be out of place in a poem by Browning or Housman. Taste this fragment from Browning's Two In The Campagna:

The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air

Not only the same rhythm as 'Dark Eyes', but with a similar use of language as 'time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies'. I suppose I'll shoot myself in the foot if I suggest the first two lines of the song are also redolent of Eliot's Prufrock:

In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo

O.K., I know Eliot was American but his poetry was English! Whether or not you agree with these comparisons, there is no question that the lyrics of 'Dark Eyes' when printed are perfectly readable as poetry. That is not a claim I would wish to make for anything like all of Dylan's songs.

And so we come to the lyrics themselves; lyrics which both fascinate and tantalize me. Lyrics which I don't feel at all capable of analysing, but lyrics which I must consider no matter how inadequately. The first verse depicts the individual (Dylan the individual, as ever was) in a social setting; a social setting in which he just can't fit. The key to the verse, maybe to the whole song, is that wonderful line:

I live in another world where life and death are memorized.

In what sense though, is he in another world? Is it a simple recreation of adolescent feelings of otherness, of alienation? Or middle-aged feelings of discomfiture in almost any social gathering? Is his world somehow better than that of 'the chattering classes'? Perhaps we are being asked to acknowledge, yet again, the emptiness of much of what passes for human intercourse and the fact that most lovers' pearls are ultimately cast before the swine whose names are selfishness, vanity, unfaithfulness and cruelty. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity' (Ecclesiastes 12 v.8). 'But to search for love, that ain't no more than vanity' (Saving Grace). Maybe Dylan's world is even more than a wilful separation of himself from the corruptible and corrupt seed. Maybe it is a continuing belief that he is 'chosen' in a Christian or Judaic sense to be in this world but not of this world. As a non-Christian I hate to think that this is what my hero is saying to me, but the more I ponder upon this song, the more difficult it is to escape this conclusion.

At the same time I can't but admit a bewilderment as to how 'life and death are memorized' relates to a Christian interpretation. Is it just another way of indicating the separation a religious person inevitably feels from the world of being and doing, of the here and now? I think somehow it must be, and yet who was it that sat in judgement on Ophelia whose sin was her lifelessness? And isn't all religion in a way lifeless in the sense of distracting us from living, breathing, heart-beating, blood-flowing, warm and precious LIFE?

Verse two brings us swiftly to the heart of the matter. Desire it as I might I can find no other reference point for this than the New Testament on the night of Christ's betrayal and arrest. It is not stated unambiguously of course, but how often can we say that of Dylan? Nonetheless there are so many allusions to that immortal story in Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, of Christ's prophecy, Peter's denial, Christ's arrest and the subsequent fulfilling of the prophecy.

And Peter said, man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out, and wept bitterly

Don't you just feel for Peter in this story, even though it is told against him? You can't help but love his humanity and think that it is exactly how you might react in the situation. A man acting intuitively and, perversely, against everything he stood for as a disciple; but a man striving to preserve his life's blood even at the risk of losing all that his heart told him was true. So real, this story. Such an inspired depiction of human nature.

And they are all there, the allusions. The 'cock is crowing', the 'soldier's deep in prayer', the 'mother's child' she can't find anywhere. And I can't help feeling that what is eating at Dylan's soul in this passage is the fear that his faith won't hold up either when it comes to the test; the fear that he'll follow nature's beast instead of the drum beating for the dead that rise. And won't we all?

The phrase 'nature's beast' recalls W. B. Yeats's lines from The Second Coming:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

This, however, refers to the cyclical (as per Yeats' theory) overthrow of Christ's kingdom. Its the same beast, perhaps, but somehow I don't think Dylan envisages its victory. On the contrary, he just wants to be on the side that's winning - but is not at all sure that he has the strength to see it through. Some years earlier he warned us 'nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts'. By the time of 'Dark Eyes' nothing had really changed, had it?

The final two verses are largely a separation of the singer from the sinner, or at least a recognition of the sins of this world and of the need to evade association with those who pursue them. Mainly it seems to be an attack on selfish materialism, perhaps brought on by revulsion at the contemporary mid-80's ethos. Also, a contemptuous dismissal of those who place objects and possessions above beauty, truth and God. Madonna, she may have showed herself to be a Material Girl, but it just won't wash in 'another world'. The idealists and believers, those who are on the side of the angels, will not be discreet and self-serving; neither will they keep quiet in the face of injustice merely to preserve their jobs or their status in society. They won't exact revenge. And they won't sit idly by whilst the Third World continues to subsidise "the falling gods of speed and steel". Who says Dylan doesn't write politically anymore?

But all through this Dylan seems to be expressing his anxieties and fears. The song is a dirge because he is lamenting his own self-doubt. Christ commands his followers to be faithful. Dylan doubts that he has such a faith. 'Time is short and the days are sweet' are the words of a hedonist, not a Christian. I suppose they are the sort of words that express my own love for life. But 'passion rules the arrow that flies' and our passion drives us to fill up those precious days with pointless activity, doesn't it? You'll hate me for this, but being a Dylan collector is part of this passion and of this pointlessness. Roy Kelly (The Telegraph No.43 page 30) expresses exactly how I feel about collecting: 'desired objects and their myths and legends are very powerful, very seductive, until you hold the objects in your hand, until you own them. Suddenly you find they dwindle in importance. They mean less precisely because you do own them. You demean them in the act of possessing, by the act of possessing. Being an audience is more complicated than one might first imagine.' Don't get me wrong. I treasure my Dylan tapes, my records, books, magazines, posters. But the ones you've got cease to be the point, it's always the ones you haven't got that matter. And then you're hooked. And then you've lost touch with the heart and soul of it all. We even waste our precious time writing pointless essays for Homer, the Slut.

And all he feels is heat and flame - a doom-laden premonition that the price of his self-doubt - may be his being: Cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever (Revelation 20 v10)

Nature's beast again! The soles of my feet, I swear they're burning.

And all he sees are "Dark Eyes". Not the eyes of some beautiful woman as I had so unthinkingly assumed for so long, but the eyes of Christ. Oh, the beauty and the horror of it! If Dylan really believes this, then those eyes must be morebeautiful than any woman's. But if he really believes (or believed) it, how awful to know that every act is seen and judged, to know that the innermost secrets of his heart and soul are open to He of the Dark Eyes. Dylan once said something like 'what matters is how you live your life in the face of the knowledge that you are going to die' (as I write I can't lay my hands on the exact quote, but you'll remember the one I mean). That seems pretty easy compared with living your life under the endless gaze of those Dark Eyes. Oh, I know Christians who will tell me Christ doesn't judge like that; who say he gave his blood for us, for all who accept him. Well, it's easy for them, they're on the inside. I'm on the guilty outside. He judges me. No wonder he chose to offer us a mournful dirge; what else could express his predicament so well?

Some way back I suggested there were echoes of John Wesley Harding for me in this song. I'm probably stretching your credulity (and patience?) to the utmost, but I actually see similarities between 'Dark Eyes' and 'Drifter's Escape'. Try this on:

Oh, help me in my weakness - the whole message of Dark Eyes?

And my time it isn't long - Time is short and the days are sweet

Well, the judge he cast his robe aside-Christ the judge of all? O.K. perhaps I'm over-associating here!

Outside the crowd was stirring - A million faces at my feet, and all I see are dark eyes

While the jury cried for more - They tell me revenge is sweet, and from where they stand I'm sure it is

The trial was bad enough, but this is ten times worse - a plea for justice, as in the singer's stance in verses 3 and 4 of 'Dark Eyes'.

But, "the Drifter did escape". Has the Dylan of 'Dark Eyes' escaped? I'm not sure, I know I haven't. Look, I'm not too serious about this Drifter's Escape thing you know. It's just an example of what being a Dylan fan can do to a person. You do start looking for connections where there aren't any. And so we've come full circle - that's what I did with Dark Eyes in the first place. Maybe you still think I've got it wrong. Please write in if you do, that's what this is all about. It's all part of this two-way process. What Dylan and I make of a song (he the singer, me the receiver) may be different to what Dylan and you make of it. But that's part of the wonderfulness of it all, don't you think? I can't think of another singer who gives us so many options.

In Dark Eyes we have a strange and unique performance of an arresting and unusual work. I'll never agree with Clinton's view on this one. Certainly Dylan sounds hesitant, insecure even. But that's because he's living the words in the instant that he sings them - an artist in touch with his work at the deepest possible level; in his very soul. It's not only like no other song on Empire Burlesque, it may, despite my pathetic attempts with Drifter's Escape, be like no other song in his career. I still love that song but, Dear God, I wish it didn't say what it does...

In The Telegraph 42, Terry Gans criticizes Dylan for the expressed in The Bootleg Series Interview with Elliot Mintz. Gans seems to want Dylan to retain the arrogance and swagger of his youth. But how can you expect that of a man of 51 years? The self confidence and conceit that is just about acceptable in youth would be both obscene and unreal in middle-age. In my view the humility and the very real self-doubt revealed in the Mintz interview were very attractive. They seemed to offer a glimpse of the inescapable truths which face an artist in his maturity. We should not mistake his realism for pessimism.