11-30-2004, 08:28 PM | #1 | |
Harper
Join Date: October 6, 2001
Location: Iceland
Posts: 4,706
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For many years this has been one of my favourite songs by Bob Dylan, it is veeery long almost 11 minutes, but the lyrics to it is si,ply one of the strangest I have heard, and recentæy I've been trying to get any meaning from them... to no avail... so I was wondering if you guys could help.
Quote:
What is this desolation row...? Am I just trying to reading something out of an old marijuana trip from 1965?... [img]smile.gif[/img] [ 11-30-2004, 08:32 PM: Message edited by: Jorath Calar ] |
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11-30-2004, 08:41 PM | #2 |
Symbol of Cyric
Join Date: September 20, 2004
Location: Maine, feel sorry for me
Age: 33
Posts: 1,163
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actually, i googled it and found that Grateful Dead sings that. anyways, songmeanings.com got no reviews of it. but it looks to me to be about how immigrants are treated unfairly or are denied human rights. or maybe its referring to ellis island, im not very good at dissecting poetry. i am sure its about immigrants and injustice though.
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11-30-2004, 09:00 PM | #3 |
Jack Burton
Join Date: November 10, 2001
Location: Bathurst & Orange, in constant flux
Age: 37
Posts: 5,452
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It seems to be symbolic for a collection of people going through hard times, perhaps depressed. Take the third verse for exampe - everybody is having a good time ("everybody is making love"), but that isn't who this is about, realy - note "except for Cain and Abel / and the Hunchback of Notre Dame". Cain, Abel, and Quasimodo aren't having fun, they're depressed. Ophelia in the next verse is only 22, she's restricted ("she wears an iron vest") and she finds death "romantic" - possibly she's considering suicide. We see this pattern in every verse, but we see it from another angle in the second to last - this verse is happy. The Tiranic is about to sail, calyso singers are laughing, "fishermen hold flowers"... and so "Nobody has to think too much/About Desolation Row". This, to me, seems to contrast this happeness against Desolation Row, implying again that it is about depression. Althoguh it's almost talked about in a physical sense I think is symbolic. Desolation Row isn't a place, per se, it's just that to be in desolation row is to be depressed.
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