Quote:
Originally Posted by william z
Song lyrics are song lyrics, literature is literature.
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I already posted about this, but I'll say it again. While I don't expect you to change your mind, that is an opinion probably based in a particular literary tradition that separates the two.
The Nobel committee is Swedish, and the Swedish literary tradition for the past 1200 years or so since we've had written literature here, is to do no such thing.
My daughter is currently analysing Swedish poet Gustav Fröding (by FAR my favourite Swedish poet) in her high school classes. Or is that Gustav Fröding, my favourite Swedish songwriter? Nearly all of his poems have been set to music, beginning in his lifetime and most recently in 2012 where this was a major hit in Sweden, some 110 years after it was written. This is one of Sweden's most popular rock bands btw, who normally don't sing in Swedish.
Cornelis Vreeswijk was a major Swedish poet. Or songwriter. He's reknowned as
both. He published books of poetry that included some of his lyrics, and many of his songs were very close to Dylan's style. Despite actually being Dutch he was Sweden's "nationaltrubadur", I doubt I need to translate that, but the fact Sweden has such a thing where other countries have a Poet Laureate
This has been published as both a song and a poem, for instance:
Here's another translation (the one in the video is better though.)
http://lyricstranslate.com/en/somlig...ken-shoes.html
Going back further, we have things like the Eriksrönikan: The official records of Swedish kings were recorded in written verse, and regularly [I]sung[I] to the public - a tradition also found in German, and in French (Chanson de geste - "Song of heroic deeds") much more than in English. Think of the "Song of Roland" for instance. This tradition wasn't entirely missing in English with "The Ballad of....", although it developed in a later period of the middle ages is essentially a similar artform. And although the word ballad apparently means "dance song", the lyrics were sold on the street in broadsheets. Where's the line there between poetry and song?
Wikipedia's entry on Modern Swedish Literature even brings up the 1970's progressive rock movement and mentions the fact that many involved in it were published simultaneously in other literary circles: Ulf Lundell, still recording music and publishing poetry both, wrote Sweden's equivalent of "On the Road" in the novel "Jack".
To pull this back to Dylan, not only does Sweden have a very very long history of blending poetry and music and treating them as essentially the same thing, but there's also a long history of using verse to promote social change, in much the same way Dylan first came to prominence.
In the end, you can tut tut about it all you wish, but from a Swedish point of view, it's just not that big of a deal.
(I will finally point out, before anyone else does, just because up here we tend to mix up poetry and music, doesn't mean it's all
good poetry/music. I don't think there's much danger of Taylor Swift winning the prize any time. But I can think of a couple of hip-hop artists who maybe might.)