Who struggled
with pain so the world could go free
Mother of
Muses, sing for me.
Sing of
Sherman, Montgomery and Scott
And of Zhukov, and
Patton, and the battles they fought
Who cleared
the path for Presley to sing
Who carved the
path for Martin Luther King
Who did what
they did and they went on their way
Man I could
tell their stories all day
I’m falling in
love with Calliope
She don’t
belong to anyone, why not give her to me
She’s speakin’
to me, speakin’ with her eyes
I’ve grown so
tired of chasing lies
Mother of
Muses, wherever you are
I’ve already
outlived my life by far.
Mother of
Muses, unleash your wrath
Things I can’t
see, they’re blocking my path
Show my your
wisdom, tell me my fate
Put me
upright, make me walk straight
Forge my
identity from the inside out
You know what
I’m talking’ about.
Take me to the
river, release your charms
Let me lay
down a while in your sweet lovin’ arms
Wake me shake
me, free me from sin
Make me
invisible, like the wind
Got a mind to
ramble, got a mind to roam
I’m travellin’
light, and I’m slow comin’ home
In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory, and the mother of the nine Muses. The term Mnemosyne is derived from the same source as the word mnemonic, that being the Greek word mnēmē, which means "remembrance, memory". A titaness, Mnemosyne was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia. Mnemosyne was the mother of the nine Muses, fathered by her nephew, Zeus:
BLOGGER'S COMMENTARY. I have fallen in love, not with Calliope, but with Bob Dylan, all over again. Only now he's an 80-year-old phenomenon once more in the thick of a year-long world tour, a task which would be daunting to a man half that age. Yes, and that tour likely features mostly new material, including songs we have not even heard yet. Through the wonders of YouTube, we are now able to hear and even SEE him perform only a day or so after the show. Entire performances are popping up that only took place last week.
Mother of Muses is one of my favorite songs on Rough and Rowdy Ways (released last year, and considered by many to be the finest album he has ever produced). It's both tender and haunting, with an undertone of flinty defiance as he rhymes off the names of the heroes he so admires. (Only Dylan could mention Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King in almost the same breath, and still make it work.) Initially, this post was going to be "the divine feminine in Rough and Rowdy Ways", but there were so many references to women, divine in one way or another (like the "transparent woman in a transparent dress"), that I had to cut it down and focus on one song which seemed like the concentrated essence of all the others.
Yes, Mother of Muses is a lovely and poetic title for a sighingly beautiful song - but until I did a little bit of digging, I had no idea what it really meant. My Greek mythology is rusty, but Dylan's isn't. His knowledge of mythology, literature, and (most especially) the Bible is legendary. Not only that - his knowledge has both tremendous breadth and spooky, mysterious depth. In fact, I believe Bob Dylan is one of the greatest minds of our time. Who else has won the Nobel Prize for writing what is so erroneously labelled as "popular music"?
So what I found, and maybe it should not have astonished me as much as it did, is that there WAS an actual "mother of Muses" named Mnemosyne. I had heard the name before, of course, and the term "mnemonic" as a device for remembering things. But Mnemosyne is not only the mother of memory, but the mother of NINE muses, the first one being Calliope (the one Bob Dylan is falling in love with), who is responsible for EPIC POETRY.
Which is why this song completely knocks me over.
It's perhaps no mistake that in calling on his "muse", Dylan chooses the "mother of all Muses", one who has the power to transform and redeem. She is not unlike the female face of Jesus. This verse especially spells out the extent of her power:
Mother of Muses, unleash your wrath
Things I can’t see, they’re blocking my path
Show my your wisdom, tell me my fate
Put me upright, make me walk straight
Forge my identity from the inside out
You know what I’m talking’ about.
The line "put me upright, make me walk straight" has made me weep more than once. Dylan is 80 years old, looks as old as time, and seems small, slight and frail. I know very well from my own deteriorating body about the ravages of age and the slipping away of mobility. This line describes a power which can literally lift him up bodily and set him down on a purposeful path, guiding each step along the way.
But the spookiest line of all in this richly-laden poem is, "Forge my identity from the inside out/You know what I'm talkin' about." No, we don't, Bob - we are gasping in awe at the way in which an ancient Greek goddess can become your own mother, with the relationship close enough that she seems to have literally given birth to you. I've worked my way through many a Dylan biography, and the one I am reading now (a 1,000-page tome by a Scottish writer named Ian Bell) focuses mainly on the fact that Dylan's identity as an artist is in a constant state of flux, as if he doesn't really have one. I hope he is listening to this song right now.
Just think of it: those "women of the chorus", the nine Muses who call Mnemosyne their mother, are almost literally Dylan's backup singers. But this primal mother-figure also has a son, and as we trudge through the travesty of a season originally meant to honor the Son of Man, I am immensely grateful that our greatest living poet has found yet another way to be born again.
POST-POST-OBSERVATIONS. You knew there had to be more! I noticed that in the Wikipedia entry, Mnemosyne was called a "titaness", which is a half-assed way of saying she was a bloody TITAN (why not just come out and say it?). This means, among other things, that she really kicks ass, with considerable mythological clout behind her motherly legend. I knew nothing of titans, and found way too much when I looked it up, but here is the gist of it for those who are interested:In Greek mythology, the Titans were the pre-Olympian gods. They were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), with six male Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus, and six female Titans, called the Titanides or Titanesses: Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne,Phoebe, and Tethys. Cronus mated with his older sister Rhea and together they became the parents of the first generation of Olympians – the six siblings Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. Some descendants of the Titans, such as Prometheus, Helios, and Leto, are sometimes also called Titans.
So if we got the whole clan together for Christmas, we'd need more than one turkey.
