Visions Of Johanna Essay

Gloria Keeley
First Draft
Dylan’s “Visions Of Johanna”


I first heard Visions Of Johanna in 1966. Blonde On Blonde had just been
released. I was 19. Dylan never provided lyrics to his songs when his albums were
released. I stayed up all night trying to decipher what he was saying. I
originally thought the song was Visions Of Gehenna, which is the Latin and Greek
word for Hell or a place of torment and misery. I thought, wow, this guy is
DEEP. I, of course, misheard him. However, at 19 I thought it was a PERFECT word
for this song. The imagery is stark and scary. I could have read it quite
comfortably along with Dante’s Inferno and not batted an eye.

I have been haunted by this song ever since I heard it, but never ventured to
sit down and write about it. It was a BIT of a letdown to learn that the word
is Johanna. Or is it?

I’d like to try a line-by-line reading of these lyrics. I’m not assuming
that Dylan meant what I interpret his lines to mean. Not in a conscious way.
Maybe yes, maybe no. However, whether he consciously meant it or not, in a deep,
inherent architypical way, he knew exactly what he was outright saying or
implying.

AIN’T IT JUST LIKE THE NIGHT TO PLAY TRICK WHEN YOU’RE TRYIN’ TO BE SO QUIET?

Why a question? It doesn’t seem to be directed to anyone, for example,
Louise. I believe it’s addressed to the listener, a rhetorical question. We’re not
expected to responded, indeed, how could we. It also follows that the quesion
expects a positive answer. I’m not expected to say, "Well, no, I’ve never
really thought that the night’s job was to play tricks on me". The night playing
tricks invokes a feeling of disharmony between human emotions and the natural,
hopefully safe, environment. Saying "just like the night" can’t really be
supported as a general supposition about the nature of nighttime. The question
itself is a trick. It pulls the listener into the song to conspire with the
singer. We MUST answer yes, we MUST accept his point of view, there’s nowhere else
we can go. His use of "Ain’t it" hasalready pulled us in his direction, his
interpretation. We have no say.

Now, we must deal with the term "the singer". Dylan is constantly projecting
images of himself in disguised form, be it ghosts, masks, aliases, etc. The
words "I" and "he" are never fully distinct in Dylan’s writing. In this song he
MAY be "the litle boy lost", the "fiddler", the "peddler". I will refer to
"the singer" but be cautious as to who it may mean. Stretch yourself, it’s fun
and extremely healthy.

That being said, who is the "you" of "when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet"? It
coud be Louise, but that seems unlikely. This particular song doesn’t use
this form of direct address; the word "you" occurs very rarely and when it does,
it is not addressed to any character in the song. It’s a general "you". If
it’s to the reader, it’s to the reader in general. Another possibility is that
the "you" could be self-reflexive, referring back to the singer himself. After
this first "you" the "you" more or less disappears from the song. You’re
hooked, he doesn’t have to rub it in. Suffice to say, the singer NEVER uses "you"
to refer to Louise or Johanna.

"WE SIT HERE STRANDED, THOUGH WE’RE ALL DOIN’ OUR BEST TO DENY IT."

How many people here are "we"? If it’s a general "we" then we’re all
included. Being "stranded" is a general condition of humanity, just as playing tricks
is the general condition of the night. Another possibility is that this line
could introduce us to the specitic narrative situation of the characters in
the song, the characters "IN THIS ROOM". How man are there? The lowest possible
number is two – the singer and Louise. The problem is the word "all", which is
not usually applied to two people: "both" would be a more normal usage. At
19, when I first heard the song, I envisioned a small group of people, about 5
or 6, gathered in a dark room. It is possible that the "all" includes not just
those who are physically present (the singer and Louise) but also all those
who are spiritually present: Johanna, and all the other characters who will
progressively appear as the song widens its scope beyond the enclosed room: the
all-night girls, the night watchman, the "little boy lost," the women in the
museum, the peddler, the fiddler, etc.

The ambiguities of "we" and "all" already point to the two major structural
oppositions on which the song is built: presence/absence and
enclosure/expansion. The question of who is included in "we" is the first pointer to the ABSENCE
of Johanna, a physical absence which is always also a spiritual absence. The
song begins in a room, in a confined setting with a strictly limited cast of
characters (most likely only two), but from the poing it will steadily expand,
until we reach the ultimate explosion of the singer’s consciousness.

"LOUISE HOLDS A HANDFUL OF RAIN."

Let’s face it, rain is PROBABLY a drug reference. "Rain" can be used as slang
for either heroin or cocaine, and all of Dylan’s many uses of the word in the
mid-60s (lost in the rain in Juarez," "The rainman gave me two curses," etc.)
can be interpreted as references to drugs. Dylan has denied that "Visions of
Johanna" was "a drug song". The problem is, when he said this at a concert in
England in 1966, he sounded very much as if he was very stoned. The problem
with "drug songs" is that the interpretation tends to be reductive: once you’re
said a song is about drugs, that absolves you from saying anything else about
it. All meanings become reduced to the one meaning. Drugs are undoubtedly part
of "Visions of Johanna", the whole song can be read as the gradual onrush of
a psychedelic hallucination, starting within the realistic confines of the one
room and moving out to the surrealist action of the final verse, in which "my
conscience explodes." But I believe that movement from enclosure to expansion
is much more general: the drug references are only one inflection of a theme
which is also stated in many other ways throughout the song.

While "rain" may be read as heroin or cocaine, it also has other resonances
within Dylan’s work. In "Love Minus Zero/No Limit, in the line "The night blows
cold and rainy," it is associated with the loneliness and fragility of his
lover, who is outside in the rain, "At my window with a broken wing." In
"Chimes of Freedom," it is a force of liberation and the proclamation of truth, as
"the rain unraveled tales/For the disrobed faceless forms of no position."

All of these associations could be read into Louise’s "handful of rain." The
song is certainly about loneliness and vulnerability, and there is in it a
strong sense of overshadowing destiny, and of imminent death. At the same time,
"rain" can be an image of life, of fedundity and growth, of the returning
spring ("Western wind, when wilt thou blow,/The small rain down can rain?"). If
Johanna’s visions are deeply ambiguous, and often associated with death, then
perhaps what Louise offers here is an alternative vision, a handful of life.

And finally, quite simply, why not take the line literally? Louise holds,
cupped in her hand, a handful of rain; perhaps she has just reached out a window
and gathered it in. It will not stay there long: cupped hands are not a stable
or permanent container. Very soon, the rain will trickly through her fingers,
and be lost.

"...TEMPTING YOU TO DEFY IT."

How do you "defy" rain, in all the various senses outlined above? If rain is
heroin, then to defy it is presumable to refuse to use it. If rain has some
more general, emotional meaning, such as loneliness or destiny, then to defy it
is again to refuse to submit, to assert your own worth and survival against
the "cruel" rain, the "hard" rain. However you read it, the action of defiance
to me is a praiseworthy one.

The odd word is "tempting." A temptation is usually an inducement to do some
thing that you should not do. Can you be "tempted" to do good? Louise is
pictured here in one of the stereotypical female roles, that of temptress. But she
is not tempting you to join her in her heroin addiction (if that’s what it is):
she is tempting you to DEFY it. Louise is always a complex and ambivalent
character; it is typical of her that this gesture should be one both of positive
action and of temptation.






"LIGHTS FLICKER FROM THE OPPOSITE LOFT
IN THIS ROOM THE HEAT PIPES JUST COUGH
THE COUNTRY MUSIC STATION PLAYS SOFT
BUT THERES NOTHING, REALLY NOTHING TO TURN OFF"

These 4 lines set a scene: not just the physical location but a mood, an
emotional ambience. "This room" is an enclosed space, but the idea of
enclosure is
evoked by words which simultaneously open that space out. The "opposite"
loft
suggests that this too is a loft, that is, an unusually LARGE room; and
"opposite" already takes us out of this room, across the street,
beginning the
songs outward direction.

In 1965, the reference to "country music" might well have been understood
as
condescending, especially for the hip urban circles that Bob Dylan was
moving
in; but Dylans own later move to country music (and the very fact that
the
definitive track of this song was recorded in Nashville) should prevent
us from
seeing too much disparagement in "nothing, really nothing to turn off."
"Turn
off" could also be seen as a sly inversion of "turn on": country musics
conservative response to psychedelic rock.)

What the lines convey to me is a feeling of weariness, of things running
down, which amounts almost to Ophelias "sin" of "lifelessness" in his
song
"Desolation Row". All the images are of energy failing or muted: lights
that
"flicker"; the heat pipes malfunctioning; the radio turned down.
"Nothing, really
nothing to turn off" conveys weariness on the edge of total apathy.
Nothing of
any importance or vitality is happening in this room...

"JUST LOUISE AND HER LOVER SO ENTWINED"

Still, that lack of energy. "Entwined" suggests a motionless embrace
rather
than active lovemaking; and the aura of passivity is reinforced if we
take "her
lover" to be a reference to the singer himself, distanced in the
third-person. But is this lover indeed to be equated with the singer, or
is this lover a
third character, as yet unnamed, male or even female? So far the singer
has not
appeared as "I" (the word "I" will not occur until the third verse). He
is
perhaps part of the "we" of line two; he may be displaced in the
second-person
"you" of lines one and three. The next line will finally give us
first-person
singular "my." So it is no surprise that he might also appear, distanced
in the
third person, as "her lover." Any way you look at it, the mood of
passivity
is enhanced: whether seeing himself from a distance, or watching other
people
make love, the singer is not involved in the dramatic situation. His
attention,
his thoughts, and his emotions are engaged elsewhere focused, as
always, on
the absent Johanna.

"AND THESE VISIONS OF JOHANNA THAT CONQUER MY MIND"

Before we even consider who Johanna is, or what her visions might
represent,
not that verb "conquer." It is by far the most active verb of this first
stanza. After a whole string of images that suggest lassitude and
passivity comes
the sudden, strong, active incursion of "conquer." Johanna does not sidle

into the singers mind: she takes it over by force, like an invading
army.
Although physically absent from the room, she dominates the scene, she
takes center
stage. The first-person pronoun, "my," appears in the song only to
surrender
its territory.

JOHANNA

What significance can be attached to the name "Johanna"? My two major
possibilities:
First, perhaps, is the biographical interpretation, that "Johanna" is
intended to recall Joan Baez. There is a precedent for the use of a
slightly altered
form of "Joan," assuming, that is, that "Queen Jane Approximately" is
also a
song about Baez. Johannas insistent ABSENCE in the song could then be
related
to the ending "not here." The problem here is that why would Dylan be
writing
and first performing a song dominated by Joan Baez during the week of his

marriage to Sara. Even a person with Dylan' notorious insensitivity to
women,
this seems a bit much. An interpretation of the song being about Baez
really adds
nothing to the song. The stark imagery, the nature of Johannas visions
in no
way illuminate or expand with an identification with Joan Baez. Although
possible, Im going to vote against this interpretation.

There is an interpretation, albeit MY interpretation, that does add
layers of
meaning and richness to the song. Remember, at 19, I thought the title
was
"Visions of Gehenna". Again, the definition: GEHENNA: 1. The place of
future
torment, hell. 2. A place of torture; a prison.

"Gehenna" is the word for hell in the Greek and Latin New Testaments; in
medievel Latin it also referred to the process of judicial torture.
(Well come to
his line in a moment, "Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial.")
These
dark, sinister connotations of "gehenna" always shadow the image of
Johanna.
The definitions of Ggehenna correspond to the two major themes I am
proposing.
As hell, the place of FUTURE torment, Gehenna speaks to absence; it is
not
yet here, and, paradoxically, when it IS here, it will be the greatest
absence
of all, the absence of heaven. And as a prison, as the place of judicial
torture, it is an ultimate image of enclosure. The two senses hell and
torture
will be strikingly combined in a later line of the song "Inside the
museums,
Infinity goes up on trial."

"THESE VISIONS OF JOHANNA"

This line is repeated, without variation, in each of the five verses.
Why?
First, there is a grammatical ambiguity built into the preposition "of."
These
are visions OF Johanna in the sense that Johanna herself is what is seen,
is
the subject-matter of the visions. So if you ask, what does the singer
actually
SEE in these visions, one answer is, Johanna herself. Nothing else. At
the
same time, the phrase can mean visions BELONGING TO or ORIGINATING FROM
Johanna.
In this case, the singers mind has been "conquered" even more
thoroughly: he
sees what Johanna sees, her perceptions have become his.

Both these senses imply something quite restrictive, even oppressive,
about
the nature of the visions. As against that, note that the word is in the
plural
not A vision, not one fixed way of looking at the world, but several
visions, a multiplicity of viewpoints. What ARE the visions of Johanna?
What is it
that the singer sees in, or through, her eyes?

Visions are notoriously difficult to describe. Almost by definition, they
are
beyond definitoin. They can only be approached indirectly, through poetic

images, through analogies; like Bob Dylan himself, a vision always comes
to you
as something else, as an alias. Often, what a poet or mystic will do is
not so
much try to describe the actual content of the vision as recreate the
conditions in which the vision took place. But the poem will do this from
within the
transformed consciousness of the vision itself so the poem becomes
circular,
self-reflexive, self-referential. THESE visions of Johanna: five times
repeated, THESE visions. The visions are th e song itself. The visions
describe the
conditions of their own taking place.

What is it that the visions of Johanna tell you? They tell you that
Johannas
not here.











"IN THE EMPTY LOT WHERE THE LADIES PLAY BLINDMAN’S
BLUFF WITH THE KEY CHAIN
AND THE ALL-NIGHT GIRLS THEY WHISPER OF ESCAPADES OUT
ON THE ‘D’ TRAIN..."

With these lines the song begins its process of opening out, of moving away
from the enclosed room and the confined cast of characters. We move quickly
from the room to th neighboring lot to the suburban train; in addition to the
singer and Louise, we have an unspecified number of "ladies" and "all-night
girls." But the emotional mood hasn’t changed: the lost if "empty," with the same
vacancy, the same lack of energy as te flickering lights. There is an implied
moral vacancy as well: the phrases "all-night girls" and "escapades" suggest a
kind of desperate, forced gaity as a cover for the reality of prostitution.
The game that the "ladies" are playing is swapping car keys to see which man
they will go home with. It is a game played by people who have voluntarily
imposed blindness upon themselves, for whom statements of loyalty and affection have
become simply "bluff."

At the same time, the "key chain" restates the image of imprisonment. The
sexual "freedom" they appear to be enjoying is itself another form of
enslavement. When "the all-night girls...WHISPER OF ESCAPADES," surely the word "escape"
is itself imprisoned inside "escapade."

I’m not implying that Dylan was moralising about all of this, though there is
at times a Puritan streak in his presentation of the sexual morality of the
swinging 60s. The song simply sees these women as sad and empty, trapped inside
a bleak and meaningless charade of freedome. The environment of "Visions of
Johanna" is always of emptiness and despair, of the effective ABSENCE of
anything of value – except, perhaps, for those ambivalent "visions" themselves.

"WE CAN HEAR THE NIGHT WATCHMAN CLICK HIS FLASHLIGHT
ASK HIMSELF IF IT’S HIM OR THEM THAT’S REALLY INSANE"

The order of confusion in the lyric is such that the "night watchman" is
unable to measure himself in relation to incoherence. The line between reasons and
unreason upon which the constructions of logic depend is blurred for the
night watchman just as it is blurred in the surrealistic register of the lyric’s
language. The sense of a suspension of rational measure and control is
emphasized even by the image of the night watchman clicking his flashlight. The detail
of the flashlight invokes the metaphor of a light shining in darkness and
raises the possibility of explanation and clarification. But the stock metaphor
is called up only as a ghost of itself. It is raised only to be parodied. For
the image of a light flashing works here not to celebrate enlightenment but to
confirm a greater darkness, a larger unintelligibility. All’s NOT well with a
world where the watcher upon the night, the guardian of the day’s order
through the hours of darkness, has lost his bearings. The uncertainty about whether
"IT’S HIM OR THEM THAT’S REALLYL INSANE" reinforces the general fluidity in
the definition of identity, not only in this song but in Dylan generally.

"LOUISE, SHE’S ALL RIGHT, SHE’S JUST NEAR
SHE’S DELICATE AND SEEMS LIKE THE MIRROR"

The mirror is a complex image, with multiple meanings and cultural
connotations. It can be used to suggest a view of the self which is, variously,
accurate, idealised, or distorted:
- a mirror gives you an accurate picture of yourself, as you really are, with
no flattering disguises or self-deceptions;
- especially in Renaissance times, the mirror presented an idealised image,
you as you ought to be, a model to aspire to. The curiously disembodied feeling
of a mirror image lent itself to this kind of idealisation;

- more frequently in modern times, the emphasis has been on the mirror’s
distortion: the fact that it is a REVERSED image, in which all values are also
reversed.

So the mirror is, broadly speaking, an image of truth, an image of
self-knowledge, but it does come in these three different (and indeed contradictory)
inflections. What kind of mirror is Louise? What, or who, is she a mirror of?

On the one hand, Louise may be the mirror-reflection OF JOHANNA. In this
case, it seems that distortion or reversal is the primary inflection. Louise is
everything that Johanna is not: she is physical while Johanna is spiritual; she
is very much HERE while Johanna is absent, is absence itself. As a
mirror-image, Louise "MAKES IT ALL TOO CONCISE AND TOO CLEAR": and what her mirror shows,
in all it concision and clarity, is that "JOHANNA’S NOT HERE."

On the other hand, Louise could be the mirror-image in which the singer sees
himself. He and Louise are very much alike (perhaps even, as lovers,
"entwined"), and both of them feel acutely their separation from Johanna. The visions
that conquer HIS mind in the first verse are now about to occupy HER face. The
next verse will produce, in the "little boy lost," another mirror-image of the
singer. Within the surrealist landscape of the song, all the other characters
act as his reflections (or projections); all of them "seem like the mirror."
But if Louise, in this sense, presents the singer with an accurate reflection
of himself, there is no guarantee that he sees or understands it: "LIKE LOUISE
ALWAYS SAYS/YA CAN’T LOOK AT MUCH, CAN YA MAN?" This line reminds me of T.S.
Elliot: human kind/Cannot bear very much reality." The mirror tells a truth
which is not always palatable.

Finally, the curious equivocation of "SEEMS like the mirror." How do you seem
like a mirror? A mirror is itself a visual illusion; another association of
mirrors is with trickery – "they do it with mirrors" – with making things SEEM
to be what they’re not. Louise is the semblance of a semblance, the illusion
of an illusion. That "seems like" sets up a dizzying recession of images, like
an array of facing mirrors which multiply reflections into infinity.

Perhaps the equivocation also protects Louise herself. As a mirror, whether
of Johanna or for the singer, she exists only in relation to other people, in a
subsidiary role. What she is as herself, the part of her that is not
dependent on either Johanna or the singer, is held back, guarded behind the deferral
of "seems."

"TOO CONCISE AND TOO CLEAR..."

"Too" implies a criticism. The singer doesn’t want things to be concise and
clear; he prefers expansiveness and vagueness. Louise, with her more
down-to-earth realism, cuts straight to the point ("Johanna’s not here"); the singer
wants to work around and around that point, as if to disguise the brute fact of
her absence. So the song will become ever less concise and clear; as it verses
progress, it moves out into an ever wider, more surrealistic landscape.
Louise’s vision – clear, concise, realistic – is seen as too restricted, too
reductive, in comparison with the vision(s) of Johanna.

"...THAT JOHANNA’S NOT HERE."

Johanna’s absence is the whole point of the song. Its ramifications are
endless: there are three possible directions for extrapolating the implications of
"absence":

- Absence is death. It is just possible that Johanna is actually dead. But
whether that is literally true or not, the imagery that surrounds her is full of
intimations of death: ghost, skeleton, Gehenna. Johanna’s physical absence
from the scene prefigures the ultimate physical absence of death.

- In linguistics, absence is the condition of the sign. A sign always points
to something that is not there; the signified is not present within the
signifier. Meaning is always absent, always deferred somewhere else. (Or: Louise is
the signifier; Johanna is the signified.)

- As in any binary pair, one term implies and underwrites the other. The
image of Johanna’s absence is always shot through with the image of her presence.
Her "visions" have more immediacy and reality for the singer than does the
actual presence of Louise. Johanna’s absence FILLS the song.

"THE GHOST OF ‘LECTRICITY HOWLS IN THE BONES OF HER FACE"

This line diminishes me to mush. It is my FAVORITE Bob Dylan lyric. This line
might well have been envied by Rimbaud. It’s reference to French Symbolist
poetry is striking. It finely exemplifies Baudelaire’s theory of
CORRESPONDANCES. It might well have been envied by any poet who has ever written. It’s an
unbelievable line; when I first heard it, I had to write it down, memorize it,
and repeat it every day. I still repeat if every day.

It is a beautiful line; it is a terrifying line. It speaks of a kind of a
ravaged, hollowed-out beauty in Louise’s face; but it also speaks again of death
and of imprisonment. The ghost howls in the gehenna of its bones. As in the
first verse, the energy of electicity has died, has become a ghost of itself.
Over and over, the song returns to REMAINS: to what’s left: the flickering
lights, the useless memories, the paintings in museums, the corroding empty cage.
The visions of Johanna are "all that remain," all those remains. They ARE the
ghost that howls, imprisoned, in Louise’s face.

"WHERE THESE VISIONS OF JOHANNA HAVE NOW TAKEN MY PLACE."

Again, the visions conquer, usurp, take over by force. The singer’s
"rightful" place in Louise’s thoughts has been taken over by Johanna, just as,
reciprocally, ini the first verse, her place in his thoughts had been occupied. Louise
and the singer are united – indeed, they become interchangeable – in their
common possession by Johanna. From this point on, the song will move away from
the particular picture of these two people in this room; the visions demand a
broader scope.

"NOW, LITTLE BOY LOST..."

The song begins to broaden out. From the enclosed room of verse one, and the
"empty lot" of verse two, we are now out "in the hall" – of the same building?
of another building? There is no way of telling.

The cast of characters has expanded too. At a literal level, the "little boy"
is a new character (unless he is to be identified with Louise’s "lover" in
verse one). He and the singer are both portrayed in relation to an unnamed
"her," who in turn could be Louise, or Johanna, or yet another new character. This
lack of specific reference is a common feature in Dylan’s pronouns. At a more
symbolic level, the "little boy lost" can be read as a projection of the
singer himself, the singer dividing and objectifying an aspect of his own
personality.

The little boy lost is the target of criticism which may well be all the more
scathing for being self-criticism. There is a juvenile posturing here which
seems very far removed from either the world-weary realism of Louise or the
visionary insubstantiality of Johanna. The portrait is brilliantly done – but the
little boy is just too easy a target for Dylan’s sarcasm – this may be why
this verse seems the thinnest in texture, the least interesting section of
"Visions of Johanna."

Even the chorus lines of this verse are much thinner than those that have
gone before. After "The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face," I su
ppose anything would be a comedown, but "HOW CAN I EXPLAIN"/OH, IT’S SO HARD
TO GET ON" seems to take anti-climax a little TOO far. Perhaps it is the
"little boy lost" himself who speaks these lines: they have a whining, self-pitying
quality which is found nowhere else in the song.


"INSIDE THE MUSEUMS, INFINITY GOES UP ON TRIAL"

This is the most daring leap in the song. The previous transitions – from the
room to the empty lot outside; from Louise and Johanna to the "little boy
lost" – could at least be located within a continuing dramatic situation. But the
fourth verse affords no direct connections at all to the previous three: none
of the same characters appears, and the setting (even the time of day) shifts
totally. It is only by virtue of thematic links and parallels that this verse
maintains the continuity of "Visions of Johanna."

The first thematic link is that leap itself. The verse continues the outward
movement: from room to emty lot to hall (all more or less private places), we
are now in a public location, a museum. It is still a real place – the next
verse will take us to an entirely imaginary setting – but it is a place far
removed from the intense privacy and self-enclosure of "this room (where) the heat
pipes just cough.:

But a museum is a paradoxical space, especially in relation to issues of
privacy. In terms of public or private spaces, works of art themselves display a
range of origins: some were designed to be seen in public places, on a large
scale (murals, altar-pieces, etc), and some were designed for more private
situations (the easel-painting, whose whole dominance in the history of Western art
stems from its amenability to being owned, possessed, placed in a room in its
proud purchaser’s house). Now the museum puts them all into a public space
(open at certain hours each day), within which each viewer is invited to
recreate a private space. How often have you stood in a museum waiting until someone
moves out of the way so that you can have an uninterrupted view, so that you
can commune in peace with your favorite Cezanna? How often have you left the
room in which the tour guide is talking? It is very difficult to create a
private space for yourself in a museum – you could never do it, for instance, in
front of the MONA LISA in the Louvre, with its constant hordes of tourists, with
its shield of bulletproof glass – yet that privacy seems a condition which the
works of art themselves demand.

Paintings are uneasy in museums. There is something about the museum setting
which works against the ideal conditions – of privacy, of peace, of prlonged
exposure – in which paintings should be viewed. In the museum, the painting
"GOES UP ON TRIAL": it is there to be ranked, catalogued, criticised, used as an
object in art history. The work of art is often seen as an emblem of freedom –
of the creator’s free imagination, of the liberating influence it may have on
its viewers – but in the museum this freedom is enclosed, put on trial. (The
second meaning of "gehenna," was judicial torture.")

In Dylan’s line, this tension is expressed by the paradox of "Infinity" being
put "on trial." By definition, infinity is beyond all restrictions: it
cannot be put on trial. What the museum does – what all the structures of cultural
institutionalisation do – is to ATTEMPT to confine, measure, categorize, and
contain what is in fact beyond confinement, measurement, category, or
containment. We are back at the theme of expansion and restriction, here stated in its
most acute form. The song has expanded its view, beyond the private room and
into the social world; but what it meets in that social world is another,
stronger image of confinement. Inside the museum, we will find the forces of
freedom – Infinity, salvation, the MONA LISA, Johanna – surrounded by, and fighting
against, the forces of imprisonment.

"VOICES ECHO..."

What voices? Whose voices? The judgement that follows ("this is what
salvation must be like...") is delivered anonymously, by an impersonal and deferred
authority. Perhaps they are the "voices" of the paintings themselves; perhaps
they "echo" down the museum’s long, empty halls and galleries. Again, the singer
is subtly avoiding his own responsibility for the opionions expressed. Just
as, in the first verse, he had enlisted the listener’s agreement by the form of
the question "Ain’t it just like the night...," so, here, the source of the
judgement is deflected onto these anonymous "voices," and, even farther, onto
the ECHOES of these voices. The echo is one of Dylan’s repeated images, as
images of IDENTITY AT ONE REMOVE: echo, shadow, brother, alias, ghost. These
voices echo in this song, delivering their judgement on salvation from some
unidentified site or source of authority...

"...THIS IS WHAT SALVATION MUST BE LIKE AFTER A WHILE."

...some unidentified site or source of authority: NOT, that is, from within
Infinity or salvation. For they do not say that this is what salvation IS like,
only what it MUST BE like. The museum, the work of art, gives you a glimpse
of something you cannot fully know, an intuition rather than a certainty. The
paradox is that within "Infinity," which is timelessness, the words "after a
while" would have no meaning. But again, we are not yet truly in Infinity: we
are, instead, stuck "inside the museums." The line expresses a kind of weary
cynicism which is certainly in keeping with the mood of the song. Even salvation,
it suggests, must get boring. Even the most ideal state becomes a prison. The
paintings in the museum long for change, for movement, for anything...Almost
twenty years later, Dylan returned to the same image, in the same setting:

"BUT IT’S LIKE I’M STUCK INSIDE A PAINTING
THAT’S HANGING IN THE LOUVRE,
MY THROAT STARTS TO TICKLE AND MY NOSE ITCHES
BUT I KNOW THAT I CAN’T MOVE
(Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight," 1983).

"BUT MONA LISA MUSTA HAD THE HIGHWAY BLUES
YOU CAN TELL BY THE WAY SHE SMILES"

In these lines, Dylan places himself in a long tradition of poets who have
written about painting, and who have offered in their poems creative
interpretations of the meanings of paintings. In 20th century poetry, the most famous
example is perhaps W.H. Auden’s "Musee des Beaux Arts," with is reading of
Breughel’s "Landscape with the FAll of Icarus; one could also mention John
Ashbery’s "Portrait in a Convex Mirror," or, in Canada, Earle Birney’s "El Greco: Es
polio,". All these poems are verbal responses to non-verbal images: language
rising to the bait, unable to resist the challenge to spell out in words what the
painter has left implicit. The "Mona Lisa" itself has long been the object of
this kind of speculation: there are endless attempts to SAY, in words, what
her famous smile "means." Language, in these poems (and in art-historical
criticism), acts as a supplement to the visual. In using the word "supplement," I
am taking into account Jacques Derrida’s analysis of that word’s curious
double meaning: if something is SUPPLEMENTED, it has to be both complete in itself
(a supplement is added only to something which is already finished) and at the
same time INcomplete (otherwise it would not need a supplement). The "Mona
Lisa" is, notoriously, self-sufficient; the painting is greater than the sum of
its commentaries; that smile seems to suggest a secret which can never be
told. The visual can do without the verbal. But at the same time, the smile cries
out for interpretation; it wants stories to be told about it; it wants words.
The painting demands that some irreverent young hipster comes along and says
"Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues/You can tell by the way she smiles."

"...HIGHWAY BLUES..."

Another drug reference. In drug parlance, the "highway" is the main vein or
artery into which heroin is injected. So perhaps Mona Lisa’s smile indicates
that she’s just scored; or, if she has the "blues" maybe she’s going through
withdrawal. Who cares? I prefer to set the drug reference aside and see "the
highway blues" simply as an endemic restlessness, a longing to be somewhere else,
a desire to be out on the highway again. I thing this fits better with the
later reference to "A PAINTING/THAT’S HANGING IN THE LOUVRE," and with the
general theme of enclosure/expansion. Mona Lisa feels imprisoned "inside the
museum"’; she wants to be out there on the road again

So one of the reference points for Mona Lisa is, of course, Johanna. Like
Mona Lisa, Johanna is presented in the song as an emblem of feminine mystery:
elusive, never quite definable, absent. What that smile says is that Mona Lisa
is always somewhere ELSE: however present she may be to the painter’s vision
and brush, the smile guards a secret place that Leonardo will never penetrate.
Like Johanna, she has her own visions, private and unknowable; and they make
her smile.

So the images in the first half of this verse sum up and encapsulate what I
have argued to be the two structuring binary pairs in this song:
presence/absence and enclosure/expansion. Inside the museum, the image of Mona Lisa is
present and enclosed; but it contains within itself the possibility of being always
absent (somewhere else, on the highway), and of breaking away entirely from
the "trial" to which the institution of the museum subjects. If Mona Lisa
stands, most obviously, for Johanna, she also stands for Louise (and there are
faint echoes of both names: Mona/Johanna; Lisa/Louise). Louise much moe than
Johanna, feels the restriction and imprisonment of being on display. And Mona Lisa,
behind her screen of bulletproof glass in the Louvre, might very well look
out at the constant crowds of tourists watching her, and say, like Louise always
does, Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?"


"SEE THE PRIMITIVE WALLFLOWER FREEZE"

Again the listener is address directly, but this time without the appeal for
agreement and complicity implied by the rhetorical question "Ain’t it...?"
This time the address is in the imperative mood: "See." An apposite word, one
might think, since we’re in a museum. But of course, the listener to a song can
never truly "see," only hear. And what follows in this line is something to
listen to: a complex series of puns and wordplay.

The word "freeze" is printed in the LYRICS as f-r-e-e-z-e, that is, as a
verb, to be very cold, or, metaphorically, to become motionless. That reading
encourages us to understand "wallflower" in its sense as a person who has not been
asked to dance, a neglected outsider. So the "wallflower" would "freeze" in
the sense that the person excluded from the celebration would be left, alone
and motionless, on the outside. The line would then relate to other images of
loneliness and exclusion, such as the "little boy lost," last seen "Muttering
small talk at the wall." As an aside, the working title of this whole song was
"Freeze Out."

But "freeze" can also be spelled f-r-i-e-z-e, in which case it means a
horizontal band of painting or decoration on a wall. This sense works much better in
the museum setting, and provides a possible application for "primitive,"
which the previous reading does not. What we are being asked to "see" is another
museum image: a frieze, or mural painting, in a so-called "primitive" style, of
flowers painted a wall.

These two senses co-exist in the line, neither one cancelling the other out.
What we are asked to "see" is something we can only hear: the indetermninacy
of the freeze/frieze pun. Both senses, however, convey an image of delicacy and
fragility – the lonely wallflower at the dance; the frieze preserved in the
museum – which stands in stark contrast to the grossness of the image which
immediately follows.

"WHEN THE JELLY-FACED WOMEN ALL SNEEZE
HEAR THE ONE WITH THE MUSTACHE SAY, ‘JEEZE
I CAN’T FIND MY KNEES.’"

Where are these women? Are the, like the wallflower, images in paintings on
the walls? Or are they actually present as visitors to the museum? I tend to
favor the latter interpretation, and to see them as gross caricatures of
uncultured museum-visitors who cannot appreciate the artistic images in front of
them. If that is the intended meaning, then I would also argue that it backfires
badly; the creation of the image is itself an act far more vulgar and
mean-spirited than anything it supposedly depicts. In these lines we can hear the
sneering, put-down tone of Dylan at his least sympathetic: the kind of vicious but
easy vituperation in which Dylan and his circle tended to indulge themselves.
(Take a look at the Dylan movie Don’t Look Back to see what I mean here). As
with the sarcasm directed, in the previous verse, at the "little boy lost,"
the target is just too obvious; the lines are devoid of subtlety or even
originality. They are also blatantly sexist. (It’s always been my observation that
Dylan has nothing but contempt for women; look at the way he treats Joan Baez in
the movie Don’t Look Back.)

"BUT THESE VISIONS OF JOHANNA, THEY MAKE IT ALL SEEM SO CRUEL."

The obvious question about this line is, to what does the pronoun "it" refer?
Perhaps to the bizarre decoratoin of the mule in the previous line (I’l come
back to this); but possibly, just possibly, to the whole cruel vision and
presentation of the "jelly-faced women." That is, the singer comes up with this
cruel and sexist jibe, and then, in the light of his visions, realizes how cruel
it is. The tone would then be one of self-disgust, and as such could be seen
to continue from the displaced self-criticism of the "little boy lost," and
even from the world-weary cynicism of "there’s nothing, really nothing to turn
off." The visions of Johanna are working to purge the singer of his own
despair, to bring him to the point where he can look at his own bitterly sarcastic
vision of the world and see it as "so cruel."

It’s an attractive interpretation, but it still leaves me with the sense that
the singer is having his cake and eating it too. He gets to give you the
nasty, mean image, and then he gets to tell you how nasty and mean it is, and you
should be ashamed of yourself for enjoying it. More to the point, perhaps, I
find very little evidence elsewhere in the song that the "visions of Johanna"
do have such an edifying effect. Most of the time, IT IS THE VISIONS THEMSELVES
that "seem so cruel" – they conquer my mind, take my place, keep me up past
the dawn. They are absolute and uncompromising in the demands they make on the
singer; they don’t have time to stoop to correcting his pettiness.

And again, that word "seem" slips in, trying not to be noticed. The visions
may make Dylan’s satire SEEM cruel – but that still leaves the possibility
that in "fact" they are NOT cruel. This equivocation hangs over any
interpretation of th eline.


"...THE ONE WITH THE MUSTACHE..."

But another curious echo lurks in these lines: I refer to the infamous
painting, or "ready-made," by Marcel Duchamp. What Duchamp did was to take a
reproduction of the MONA LISA (who, being three-quarter length, has no kees) and draw
a mustache and beard on it. Then he added the title, which reads in French as
an obscene pun. The two gestures – mustache and pun – are both adolescent
nose-thumbing at the seriousness of "high art," and at the institutionalisation
of the museum which places the Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass. Duchamp’s
gestures are performed with a cool, detached irony: while puncturing the
pretention which surrounds the adulation of the Mona Lisa, Duchamp also proposes
that his own piece, which is deliverately devoid of conventional artistic
"craft," is just as worthy of a place "inside the museums" as Leonardo’s masterpiece.

I don’t know if Dylan even knew of Duchamp, or intended this reference,
although in my mind the reference is valid even if he has never seen it – heh heh).
However, Duchamp was much in vogue in New York in the 60s, still living there
in fact. And many of the artistic gestures of Andy Warhol, whom Dylan
certainly was familar, are deeply indebted to Duchamp.

If Duchamps image is an irreverent parody of the Mona Lisa, then Dylan’s line
can also be read as an equally irreverent, indeed savage, parody of Johanna.
The singer, perhaps, is beginning to resent the saint-like image he has
himself created. Having given us Johanna as Mona Lisa, perfect image of ethereal
enigma, he now gives us the exact opposite, the grossly physical "jelly-faced
woman," of whom the little boy lost sniggers "Elle a chaud au cul."


"OH, JEWELS AND BINOCULARS HANG FROM THE HEAD OF THE MULE."

Marcel Duchamp has taken us from the classical painting of Leonardo to the
modern art of Surrealism. Much of Dylan’s poetry in the mid-60 was indebted to
his reading of the French Symbolist poets (I remember reading very young that
he was familiar with Rimbaud, to me, he was MORE than familiar. Rimbaud was
influential in the development of French Surrealist painting in the 1920s. A
central technique of Surrealism, the sudden juxtaposition of bizarrely unrelated
objects, was redrived from a line by the Symbolist poet Lautreamont: "the
chance meeting, on a dissection table, of an umbrella and a sewing-machine."
Dylan’s songs in the mid-60s are full of such meetings. Poetically, the danger is
that the technique becomes just too easy, too predictable: ANY juxtaposition of
unrelated objects serves the purpose, and the novelty fades very quickly.

I think this line works better than a lot of Surrealist imagery – partly
because of its internal patterns of rhyme and alliteratio (jewel/mule; hang/head),
but mainly because of subtle variations it plays on the themes of the
preceding stanza. We have been concerned with painting, and with vision: the
painter’s vision that creates the Mona Lisa, the spec tator’s vision that reads her
smile, the scornful vision that ridicules the "jelly-faced women", the ironic
vision that draws a mustache on the Mona Lisa. "Jewels and binoculars" are both
concerned with vision. Jewels are objects of vision, beautiful things to look
at. They are also supplementary, added to the beauty of a woman – it is
relevant here that the Mona Lisa wears no jewels? Binoculars are an instrument of
vision, improving it in some cases, but singularly ineffective and inapposite
for looking at paintings. Both in turn are irrelevant to the mule who wears
them, or is forced to wear them. It is this inappositeness of visiion that the
other vision, the vision of Johanna, declares to be "so cruel."

The whole stanza may be read as dealing with the distortion of vision:
Infinity put up on trial, salvation turning against itself, paintings stifled in the
museums, Mona Lisa longing for the highway, Leonardo’s painting defaced by
Duchamp – all culminating in this dumb, patient beast who bears the instruments
of a vision which is totally alien to him. The "visions of Johanna" are
becoming progressively darker.

"THE PEDDLER NOW SPEAKS TO THE COUNTESS..."

The final stanza of the song completes its outward journey, or inward
journey?: from the private room to the social world of the museum to a frankly
imiginary landscape, a landscape of surreal or "psychedelic" images. Instead of
named characters (Louise, Johanna), we now have symbolic characters, named by
their function – peddler, countess, fiddler. These may be seen as entirely new
figures, appearing and disappearing as they flash briefly across this fast
succession of images; but it is more interesting to see them as continuations of the
same characters in new guises. I would see both the "peddler" and the
"fiddler" as further projections of the singer himself; "Madonna" is clearly Johanna;
and the "countess" is probably Louise.

In terms of binary opposition of enclosure and expansion, this shift in tone
can be seen either way. As a movement outwards, it represents the final
liberation of the singer’s mind and imagination; unrestricted by the confines of
the room in which the song started, he now moves freely into a world where his
own imagination is the only law. But the recurrence there of the same obsessive
figures – Johanna, Louise – suggests that this freedom is largely illusory.
The movement outward is also a movement inward, into the enclosure of his own
psyche.

The tension between enclosure and expansion is also enacted, in this final
verse, by its extraordinary manipulation of line-length and rhyme. The verse
starts with three exceptionally long lines -


"THE PEDDLER NOW SPEAKS TO THE COUNTESS WHO’S PRE-
TENDING TO CARE FOR HIM
SAYIN’ "NAME ME SOMEONE WHO’S NOT A PARASITE AND
I’LL GO OUT AND SAY A PRAYER FOR HIM"
BUT LIKE LOUISE ALWAYS SAYS, "YA CAN’T LOOK AT MUCH,
CAN YA MAN?" AS SHE, HERSELF, PREPARES FOR HIM

- which strain the limits of the singer’s breath and push against the whole
idea of "the line" as an enclosed unit. Then follows the series of seven much
shorter, rhyming lines. The first six are sung to the same repeated musical
line, and the process mimics the build-up, the accumulation of held-down energy,
which leads up to a physical explosion. This explosion comes, of course, on
the word "explodes." The structure of this verse, with its extra ryhmes and
exceptionally long lines, provides in itself a definitive statement of the
enclosure/expansion theme.

The exchange of dialogue in these lines is a tit-for-tat in terms of
cynicism, each stage marked by an increasing bitterness and callousness. "Peddler"
suggests a vagabond, someone out on the road with something to tell – a rold in
which Dylan frequently depicted himself. "Countess" may suggest a social rank
more exalted than anything previously associated with Louise, but I think th
eword is delivered with considerable irony, and is undercut by the context. The
major point is the incompatibility of the two figures, coming from opposite
ends of the social spectrum. The countess may be engaged in social work, doing
good deeds for the poor, "caring" for the peddler, but she is only pretending.
Any gesture of care or affection is quickly cancelled out in the bleak world
of this song.

The peddler’s statement responds to the hypocrisy of the countess’s
pretended care. Everyone is a parasite; everyone lives off other people’s needs or
fears or troubles. Even the countess is a parasite on the peddler, as she makes a
show of her charity. It would indeed be difficult, if not impossible, to name
someone who is NOT a parasite. Such a person, if he existed, would be a worth
object of prayer, in two senses:

- such a person would be so rare that he would be the object of veneration,
and gratitude. You could say a prayer of thanks "for" his existence;

- you would say a prayer "for" him because he would NEED your prayers.
Someone who managed to exist in the social world without being a parasitewould be an
innocent abroad, helpless, the prey of all those who ARE parasites. You would
have to say a prayer "for" his simple survival. This second sense fits more
closely into the general cynicism. Louise responds with her dismissive
put-down, "Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?" That is, SHE HERSELF "can’t look at
much"; she uses the line to avoid dealing with the peddler’s argument. Moreover,
this is a habitual gesture: the line is "like Louise always says." It is her
stock response to anything which challenges or threatens her view of the
world. Accusing other people of avoiding the truth, she avoids it herself.

Finally, Louise’s words are undercut by her action. Whatever she thinks about
the singer/peddler, nevertheless she "prepares for him. I take it that this
line means that she prepares for a sexual encounter which both of them know
will take place, despite all the rhetorical slanging matches they have been
engaged in against each other. The countess and the peddler acknowledge that they
are, sexually, parasites on each other; this is what remains for them, whatever
they may say, in the continuing absence of Johanna.

"AND MADONNA, SHE STILL HAS NOT SHOWED..."

"Madonna" is clearly another reference to Johanna. It extends the atmosphere
of feminine mystery, spirituality, and other-worldliness already present in
the image of Mona Lisa and in the contrast between Johanna’s "visionary" absence
and Louise’s more carnal presence. "Madonna", the Virgin Mary, is the obvious
ultimate image for Johanna – so obvious, in fact, that one can detect a
distinct air of sarcasm. The singer, frankly, is getting a little pissed off with Jo
hanna. This comes across partly in the vocal delivery, partly in the contrast
between the dignity of "Madonna" and the colloquial slang of "showed." Her
absence is beginning to irritate him: the lines comes as a caustic commentary on
the contrast between Johanna’s reticent purity and the cynical realism of
Louise’s "preparations." The whole song has been spent "waiting for Johanna,"
but, like Beckett’s Godot, she shows no signs of showing up.

"WE SEE THIS EMPTY CAGE NOW CORRODE
WHERE HER CAPE OF THE STAGE ONCE HAD FLOWED..."

The first line here presents a paradoxical cross between the pairs of
absence/presence and enclosure/expansion. The cage is an image of enclosure, like the
room, like the key chain, like the museum, like Gehenna. But this case is
already "empty" – Johanna is absent from all enclosing structures – and,
moreover, it has lost its power to imprison. Its bars are corroded, rusted away. The
corroded cage might be an image of liberation, but "there’s nothing, really
nothing" to set free. Johanna is freedom, but what use is freedom if it simply
translates as absence? More positively, one might argue that the cage corrodes
BECAUSE it is empty, because it has lost its function and is no longer needed.

The following line indicates that the site of the cage was in fact a stage
(the identification being reinforced by the internal rhyme). The blue gown
traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary now becomes a stage cape, flourished
before an audience. Like a magician’s cape, it enables Johanna to disappear.
Johanna’s absence seems like an ES-CAPE from a imposed role: leaving the
stage/cage behind her, she moves into the invisibility of her visions.

"THE FIDDLER, HE NOW STEPS TO THE ROAD..."

The similarity in sound suggests that the "fiddler" is the same character as
the "peddler". Both are projections of the singer himself. As he "steps to the
road," he continues the song’s expansive outward movement. "The road" is a
traditional site of freedom; stepping there, he is going out on his own (or
perhaps in search of Johanna). A fiddler is a musician (as well as being a
cheater, a trickster), so the association to the singer is a simple one of metonymic
displacement. But there is a twist here: "the road," for a touring musician,
is the workplace. To step to the road, then, is by no means an unambiguous
declaration of freedom; it may equally well have been seen as a form of servitude.

"HE WRITES EV’RYTHING’S BEEN RETURNED WHICH WAS
OWED..."

Given the general cynicism and disillusion of the song, one might find this
rather an unexpected line. It would seem more in keeping if NOTHING had been
returned which was owed – as, for instance, in the 1967 song "Nothing Was
Delivered."

But this whole section of the song – the succession of lines rhyming with
"showed" – is building up a sense of finality. By the end of the song, after the
explosion of the singer’s conscience, nothing at all will remain, except for
the visions. The cage is empty, the truck is loaded, all debts have been
settled. Nothing is left to get in the way of the final encounter with Johanna.

"ON THE BACK OF THE FISH TRUCK THAT LOADS"

I’m afraid that I can’t make much of "the fish truck." (It would sure be
pushing things to make any serous connection to the fish as an emblem of Christ!)
I can only point out that a fish truck presumable "loads" at a harbor, where
the fishing boats come ine; and thus that the setting of the song has now
taken us to the seashore, that marginal edge which is so often, in Dylan songs,
the site of vision. (Think of "Lay Down your Weary Tune," "Mr. Tambourine man,"
"Oh Sister"...) Or perhaps the image is deliberately incongruous, a mundane
(and rather smelly) setting, as far as possible from the ethereality of Johanna.

"WHILE MY CONSCIENCE EXPLODES"

"Conscience," sure, in its slightly unusual sense as "consciousness," rather
than in the sense of "moral guide." (Though the two ideas may, of course, be
linked.) This line clinches one aspect of the "drug" interpretation: the
hallucinogenic experience has been getting steadily wierder, more and more
surrealist in tone, and at this point the drug (LSD?) finally takes over. Any remaining
semblance of rational thought or communication vanishes, and the song can do
nothing but end. Ex-plode continues to insist on the movement out, the
expansion of consciousness, rather than IMplode, the collapse of the mind into
itself, into its own visions. Still, it is a violent image, with the threat of
destruction: what guarantee is there that an exploded conscience can ever put
itself back together again?

"THE HARMONICAS PLAY..."

Well, the harmonica plays, at any rate is Bob Dylan’s most characteristic
instrument. But although Dylan carries with him a selection of harmonicas in
different keys, it always appears as a solo instrument: I am not aware of any
recording, at any point in Dylan’s career, which features more than one harmonica
at a time. Why the plural? Perhaps, with the explosion of his conscience,
Dylan sees himself scattered and split: the elusive "I," the little boy lost, the
peddler, the fiddler, all playing their various harmonicas?

"THE HARMONICAS PLAY..." for the most part, then, the harmonica is used for
punctuation, and for laconic commentary, rather than being allowed to extend
into a full solo.

"...THE SKELETON KEYS AND THE RAIN"


This line is a brilliant pulling together of the major themes and images of
the whole song. "Skeleton," on its own, suggests death. It takes us back to the
various associations of Johanna with death: her absence, her ghost, "Gehenna"
as the future state beyond death, even the missing nightingale. The image of
an actual skeleton appears for a moment, and then (absence/presence)
disappears into the phrase "skeleton keys." The double meaning of "keys" picks up on
all the earlier references to enclosed spaces: to the "key chain," to the museum
where "Infinity goes up on trial," and to the "empty cage" which rhymes with
"stage." A curious association here is that a skeleton key is usually thought
of as a key which can OPEN any lock: it is an image of liberation, of e
xpansion. But logically, a skeleton key can also LOCK any door: there is no reason
why it should not also be an image of imprisonment, of enclosure.

"Key" is the key word of the line. Besides its association with skeleton, it
also works backward, to "harmonicas," and forward to "rain." The harmonicas
play in a certain musical key: a key here defined as "skeleton." That is, the
harmonicas play in the key of death. Or, the harmonicas play in a key which
will open every door, every possibility within the music. (Even more than most
wind instruments, the harmonica depends upon the performer’s BREATH: it is the
only instrument which sounds on the breath IN as well as the breath OUT. The
edge of a harmonica, with its white bars over black spaces, also looks vaguely
like a skeleton.)

But a "key" is also a kilo of heroin, of "rain." The juxtaposition of "keys"
and "rain" takes us back, one last time, to Louise. It recalls her "handful
of rain," with all the other associations I outlined earlier. For a moment,
Louise appears in the skeleton keys of the harmonica’s music, before she too is
swept away into the dissolution of the final line.

Similarly, the whole line – "The HARMONICAS PLAY THE SKELETON KEYS AND THE
RAIN" – is like a final assertion of the writer’s mastery before the song
vanishes into the silence of the visions. It stands alongside "THE GHOST OF
‘LECTRICITY HOWLS IN THE BONES OF HER FACE" as one of these moments when the sheer
brilliance of the imagery transfixes the listener. Long before you have any idea
what the line "means," it embeds itself in your memory. These are the moments
of poetry which remind us that behind and beyond all these characters –
Johanna, Louise, the singer/peddler/fiddler – stands the figure of Bob Dylan, the
creator of this song. And for all its bleakness, cynicism, world-weariness,
despair, "Visions of Johanna" remains a work of art, something created, an
assertion, no matter how dark its vision, of the poet’s power.

"AND THESE VISIONS OF JOHANNA ARE NOW ALL THAT REMAIN."

Yet, in the last line, he appears to stand aside from that power. All of the
surrounding world that he has so brilliantly portrayed is now allowed to
vanish. The singer moves entirely inside, into his visions; the visions have become
his only reality. (Except, of course, insofar as the visions ARE the song.
Given this circular self-referentiality, the outside world is not abandoned but
recreated. The song describes the process by which the singer arrives at the
point where the visions are all that remain: but the visions are, in turn, the
condition for creating the song.)

"ALL THAT REMAINS": what remains? What remains may be the remainder: what is
left over, unneeded, a useless residue. ("REMAIN," is the plural, is a word
for relics: bones, ghosts, skeletons. The skeleton keys and the r(em)ain.) But
what remains is also what survives, what refuses to die, what goes on
stubbornly living.

The visions of Johanna remain paradoxical to the end. One can see this
conclusion as utter defeat: the singer allowing his own mind to be occupied
(conquered) by another person’s vision. The singer loses all touch with the external,
social world, and moves into his own private Gehenna: a place of torment, and
trial. Equally, one can see the conclusion as victory: his conscience,
exploded, is finally free from all restraints, and can move into the visionary
reality in which creation is possible – the creation, for instance, of this song.

This song has intruded into many hours of my "think time" since I was 19.
With Dylan, it all comes down to personal interpretation. He has NEVER talked
about the meanings of any of his songs. I sometimes have no idea what he means,
but his songs, taken line by line, have always fascinated me and I put my own
interpretations into his meanings. They have meaning for me and that’s all
that counts for me. Dylan. His wordless cries always seem right to me. To quote
Eliot yet again: "Words, beyond speech, reach into the silence."