Thursday, October 26, 2006

Dylan’s literary borrowing: the 1960s?

Conscious of recent speculation about possible Dylan lyrical borrowings on Modern Times (Ovid, Henry Timrod…), Martin Cowan was surprised to come across a line linking early Dylan to a classic of 20thC English literature:

“I've just finished re-reading George Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying, and very near the end of the book, I came across the following passage which sounded vaguely familiar:

- "They were too busy being born, being married, begetting, working, dying."

“Does this suggest that Dylan's alleged magpie instincts were present even in his mid-‘60s period?”