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In those pleasantly average days
before our airwaves were bombarded with wall-to-wall jingoism and
floor-to-ceiling propaganda, I started writing a series of articles
about ‘Visions of Johanna'. I always appreciated the enormity of the
task because ‘Visions of Johanna' is such an enormous song: enormous
in its popularity among all the songs in Dylan’s vast canon of work
and enormous in its influence on every popular song that came after it.
As I progressed past the first 33,000 words or so I realised that my
interpretation of the song was becoming more and more visual, i.e. the
characters and circumstances that I found in the song were forming
themselves into a collage. In part 13 of the series I confessed : “ I
suppose that I am trying to paint a picture of the song where characters
are my brush strokes, circumstances are the colours that I use and one
young lady, not much more than a girl, is my canvas”. Nothing much has changed over the
ensuing 5 parts in this series of articles: that young lady is still my
canvas and the mainstay of my interpretation of the song. She has
however been joined by various other characters who have been introduced
to support, nay illustrate, my view of the song. For the purpose of my
continued exploration of the song, I wish to add a few more characters
so that the collage becomes wider and more complicated. My next characters then
are two women who are specifically mentioned in the song. From
the aspect of building a visual experience of ‘Visions of Johanna' I
would point out that just the mention of these two names will
immediately create an image in the mind, for they are famous icons.
After I have declared their names, I invite you to close your
eyes and you will immediately see the faces of these two women.
So, without further ado I paint them in: 4.
Enter the Madonna and the Mona Lisa In
part 16 of this series of articles, I dealt at some length with Paul
Williams’ deliberations on Dylan’s show at the Tramps Club in
Manhattan on the 26th July 1999 where Dylan replaced his
‘visions of Johanna’ with ‘visions of Madonna’. For this
performance only, Paul renamed the song ‘Visions of Madonna’ and
he masterfully summed up the performance
as follows: ‘The master of language can
also be a master of non-verbal language. And on this July ’99
‘Visions of Madonna’, as on the Feb.’66 ‘Visions of Johanna’,
the two work together to produce a transcendent work of art’. I would like to dwell for a while in front of my canvas here and consider that expression ‘Visions of Madonna’ because it has a universal connotation and it underlines, should there be any doubt, exactly which ‘Madonna’ I think we are talking about. I mention this because it has been suggested that the ‘Madonna’ referred to was Joan Baez. Indeed in her song ‘Diamonds and Rust’ which has been interpreted as having biographical references to her liaison with Dylan, she includes the lines: ‘the Madonna was yours for
free’ I
have however dealt quite thoroughly
with the claim to fame of Joan Baez in the terms of the song ‘Visions
of Johanna' (126)
and all I have to say again here is that, because of her very name,
Joan came close but the inspiration behind the song came, in my
view, from a different
Joan. (As an aside, I found it a little amusing that, when announcing
news of Joan’s tour and the release of her new album in March 2003,
the newspaper The Buffalo News proclaimed the events under the banner
‘Joan of March’!). In
the original version of the song Dylan doesn’t of course sing, in that
final line, ‘visions of Madonna’ but, who knows, perhaps at Tramps
in 1999 he was correcting his manuscript. In any event, there are many
who have claimed to have had ‘visions
of Madonna’. Those claims have been treated with such overwhelming
importance that holy shrines have been established at the site of the
visions and pilgrimages to those holy shrines have brought
immense comfort to many millions of people.
This is what I mean when I say that the expression ‘Visions of
Madonna’ has a universal connotation; indeed if a peasant girl in
Portugal is blessed with such a vision on a Sunday, then the entire
world would probably know about it on Monday. If I adopt that universal
connotation in my interpretation of ‘Visions of Johanna', then the
‘Madonna’ we are referring to is the Virgin Mary, Mother of God: an
immensely powerful female figure, an icon that represents supreme piety
and the woman at the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Let
me then set Dylan’s ‘Madonna’ free from the final verse of
‘Visions of Johanna' and treat her, in my picture of the song, as the
Virgin Mary. Let me then
break that name down further and state the utterly bleeding obvious that
what makes the name so recognisable to the character is the first part
of the name, i.e. ‘Virgin’. This
is then the most important part of the name and of course it refers to
the Christian belief that the plain Mary was the subject of a human
miracle in that she conceived and gave birth to the Son of God whist she
was still a virgin. Mary is just plain Mary but the Virgin Mary is
something else. It is this aspect of virginity that gives her such
worldly importance. I
now present a double image on my canvas.
The first image is of the Madonna –in
the form of the Virgin Mary and, standing next to her, is my
image of ‘Johanna’ in the form of Joan of Arc. What enjoins these
two images, so that they almost become one, is their most important
characteristics- their virginity. In
her book ‘Joan of Arc’ – The Image of Female Heroism’ (127) the
author Marina Warner makes certain observations regarding the way that
Joan wished others to see her. Joan was in fact illiterate and she was
known by many names. But, as Marina Warner records: ‘In the evidence of
(her) trial and in Joan’s letters that have survived, written
at her dictation with her guided, uncertain signature appended in some
cases, there is only one name she used, and that is Jehanne la Pucelle’.
(128) The
author then goes on to explain why Joan chose that particular surname
‘Pucelle’ for herself: ‘Pucelle means ‘virgin’
but in a special way, with distinct shades connoting youth, innocence
and, paradoxically nubility. It is the equivalent of the Hebrew
‘almah, used of both the Virgin Mary and the dancing girls in
Solomon’s harem in the Bible.’ (128) But
perhaps there was more to the choice of the word ‘Pucelle’
as a surname than is immediately understood: ‘With a instinct for seizing a
central image of power, which Joan possessed to an extraordinarily
developed degree, she picked a word for virginity that captured with
double strength the magic of her state in her culture. It expressed not
only the incorruption of her body, but also the dangerous border into
maturity or full womanhood that she had not crossed or would not cross. Her virginity was magic. ….It
was magic because of the long Christian tradition that held since the
second century that the inviolate body of a woman was one of the holiest
things possible in creation, holier than the chastity of a man, who
anatomically cannot achieve the same physical image of spiritual
integrity as a woman. The
virginal ideal also flourished under the influence of the cult of the
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who, in the early fifteenth century, was
seen above all as a powerful and merciful intercessor, who could grant
humanity forgiveness through the purity she had preserved, even in
childbirth’. (129) Marina
Warner also makes reference to certain writings where Joan was described
as having ‘miraculous
powers’ as a result of her
virginity and she provides a few anecdotes about the fate of those who
sought to alter Joan’s
status. One story recorded that: ‘Whenever anyone looked upon
her with impurity or thought dirty thoughts
about her he was immediately struck impotent forever.’ (130) And
what happened to other ‘unchaste sinners’
who had designs on unprotected females: ‘Rooted to the spot, dumb,
paralysed, blind or otherwise stricken, they are for the most part
forced to repent, usually by the purifying magic of the virgin mother of
God. In Joan’s case, the magic of her inviolate body, reflecting that
of the Virgin Mary’s, exercised wonderfully the minds of her contemporaries’. (130) I
am going off a little at a tangent here but the following observation by
the author brings into focus the line from ‘Visions of Johanna' where
Dylan refers to ‘Madonna’: Jean d’Aulon, (Joans squire)
thought that Joan never menstruated: “I’ve heard it said by many
women who saw the Maid undressed many times and knew her secrets, that
she never suffered from the secret illness of women and that no one
could ever notice or learn anything of it from her clothes or in any
other way”. This inference, circumstantial as it is, becomes an
accepted aspect of Joan’s power and uniqueness’ (130) A
reminder of the line: ‘And Madonna she still has not
showed’ It
is not only in the perceived power arising from their common virginity
that the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc have been stable mated. They have
also both been depicted in historic art works by the use of similar
imagery, in particular with regard to battle dress. Marina Warner
observes further: ‘The metaphor of chivalry tugs
with such force at the minds of the age that even the Virgin Mary
sometimes appears at the time in full armour, in her aspect as The Tower
of David, “whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of
mighty men” one of her titles from the litany of Loreto that is taken
from the Bible (Song of Solomon 4:4). The Virgin is like the bride,
“fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with
banners” (Song of Solomon 6:10).
In the Albrecht altar painted in Mary’s honour before 1440,
possibly while Joan was alive, the Virgin wears mail shirt and
breastplate, gauntlets and leg pieces of armour under a voluminous
mantle. Her fine wavy blonde hair spills down her back. Behind her stand
two knights with rainbow wings carrying shields. It is not surprising
that she, like so many other images , was identified as Joan of Arc.”
(131) This
tantalising reference to artistic imagery brings me back with a jolt to
my own canvas. That double take of the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc has
now almost merged into one image and thus the ‘Madonna’ in
‘Visions of Johanna' has been firmly fixed into my painting.
There is however the face of another woman who now appears and
has to be dealt with. It is the face that looks out from probably the
most famous painting in the world. She is not quite ready yet, but in my
next instalment I will ask her to enter into my own frame. In the
meantime I can only dream about…….the Mona Lisa. JRS 126
Freewheelin’207. Part 16 ‘Like Ice Like Fire’ |
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