Love in Fourteen Songs

‘Short Letter, Long Farewell’, the title of a 1972 novel by Peter Handke, could well serve as a leitmotif for many a Dylan song.

‘Milk’ is a dark siren song. Sure of the allure of her emptiness, the lover is adept at feminine wile: ‘I am weak but I am strong, I can use my tears to bring you home’.

‘We are always tempted to simplify our emotional lives in order to diminish the constant conflict we are in.

Passion devours. It is possessive, excessive, exclusive, unique. Out-of-time, out-of-the-world, it is ecstatic delirium, a waking dream.

In this vision of the couple as curving parallels, is the man simply being realistic, is he rationalizing, or is he refusing responsibility?

When a love story ends, it’s the one who leaves who assumes the right to define the story.

‘Wild Horses’ echoes both the lyric poetry of courtly love and the confessional poetry of sixties America.