Expecting Rain

With the album title's connection to Shakespeare's last surviving play- whose inspiration is supposed to have sprung from a disastrous, shipwrecking 1609 voyage to America- and the title track which we are told is a 14-mute homage to Titanic, in the centenary year of its maiden-voyage sinking- so that's two doomed voyages to America for the price of one-I'm also taken by the use of Athena for the cover art, and a further connection that it offers up, to Homer's Odyssey, the epic poem that is dedicated to another intrepid sea voyager, Odysseus, his safe passage and survival against all odds, and the love and protection that the fiery 'grey-eyed goddess' gave him on his perilous twenty-year journey, a journey that finally returned him to Ithaca- an island that by coincidence I stepped onto for the first time, last week- and his long-suffering wife and son:

http://www.richeast.org/htwm/Greeks/athena/athena.html

That Warmuth thread has got me going, and I'll be interested to see if there are Homeric 'incorporations' coming our way, in a few weeks time. Anyone with further observations on Athena's presence on the cover, please feel free to share them here.

It's the Moldau, not the Athena. It's part of the Athena statue group

True. In the original post that I managed to wipe, I referred to a figure forming part of the Athena fountain statue. But if there's any significance, it surely derives from the fiery- note the red cover- goddess Athena, not the River Moldau.....or maybe they just stuck a pin in a coffee table book of statue faces.

Really? I've seen the play a couple of times but must have missed the America connection. Very interesting.

I posted this in the original album thread, but thought it might be useful to riff on:

The Moldau River intersects the Elbe and joins it in Bohemia (in the sculpture, the personification of the Moldau rests in the arms of the personification of the Elbe).

It runs through the Czech Republic (as well as Austria), but specifically through Bohemia.

There is a famous piece of orchestral music that is known for its sections shifting in mood and tempo to match the changing course of the river:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgWOjyQL ... re=related

More on the composer Smetana: http://flaglerlive.com/4540/smetana-fatherland-moldau/
It was also the music played in protest of the invading Nazis.

THe piece by Smetana was in the soundtrack for Terence Malick's Tree of Life
Also, maybe Dylan or Dylan's people thought it was pretty....as I said, like a Triumph motorcycle t-shirt.

I would only add that the significance and effect of this sensual, reclining, "Bohemian" sculpture is really quite different than Athena (the gray, ice-queen, goddess of wisdom and war) would be. The fact that a kind of orgasmic rapture was what people noticed first about the image (leading many to think it was Bernini's The Ecstasy of St. Theresa of Avila) proves the point.

As for the Jamestown expedition and the lost ship that was said to be a source for Shakespeare's Tempest, it's fairly conjectural. The Norton Shakespeare has a fairly concise intro to the play that gives the argument. Great stuff on Prospero and Caliban too -- on colonialism, that is.

There's an empire thing in the background though. There always in with late Dylan.

That's very interesting. These shipwrecks on the way to America. "It was a brilliant mistake". Who said that? Someone said that about America...

He mentioned Shakespear in the alley 45 years ago so its about time to lift a few lines from him too, I guess. As long as its great - and why wouldn't it be - I'm fine with it.

Shakespeare is known to have used Montaigne's writings on the New World, so the Tempest can be seen as a text engaging with voyages to and ideas about the New World. See here for example:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/gallo/tempest.html

Ithaca, the place we are destined for, would seem to fit Bob's long journey. Here's Cavafy's poem on this subject:

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C.P. Cavafy

Bob has played some very good shows in Ithaca (1999 comes to mind) and considering the classic artwork for the album it would be fitting that he would draw from the classics like Homer's Odyssey.

Mystical Ithaca (photographed last week)

Lovely, evocative picture there, Train.

Thanks, charles. I couldn't stop looking across at it all week, from Kefalonia.

Are you still in Greece, Train?

Sadly not, Giada. Got back Monday.

Hey, Train, you were right about him using Homer!

oops, not the Athena never mind.

Every time I see the words Homer's Odyssey I think of this song:

"Simpsons, meet the Simpsons
They're the something-something family
In the town of Springfield
He's about to hit a chestnut tree!"

good eye. there was no such person as Homer until now. bob is homer.

Elvis Costello may not have been first, but he called America a brilliant mistake.

he also called ray charles a bad name that i don't wanna repeat. cant stand him.
if it wasn't for american all we d have is that bellowing henry the eight twirling music.

Ah, yes, that's right. King of America. (Produced by T-Bone Burnett unless I'm mistaken.)

So much to love and relate to for me in this thread. I've actually been re-reading The Odyssey as preparation for teaching it to a bunch of 9th graders this fall. It's my first time teaching an "Honors" class (after 22 years of "non-Honors", aka "average numbskulls"), and one of the traditions of the class is memorizing the very poem quoted above. I also directed Shakespeare's "The Tempest" a few years back and named my younger daughter after Prospero's daughter, Miranda. As if my Dylan obsession wasn't great enough already, now we have all these personal connections to the new album. Oh, and a few months back, I discovered a fantastic history podcast and listened to several hours of scintillating stories about, mostly, early Roman kings and emperors.

King of America is one of my favorite Elvis Costello albums, too.

^
Do you remember what podcast it was?

Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. It's available on iTunes. He gets kind of worked up at times, but he's a great storyteller.

The Athena statue group is represented on the album cover. Now that the Odyssey (and thereby Athena) connection has been established in the lyrics to Early Roman Kings, when you've also made the Moldau connection in Tempest's lyrics, let us know.