She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"I thought you'd never say hello" she said
"You look like the silent type"
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of those words rang true
and glowed like burning coals
Pouring off of every page
like it was written on my soul
from me to you
Tangled Up in Blue
Plato is Tangled Up in Blue
As I am writing this, "Tangled Up in Blue" is crackling through my turntable speakers and I am once again reminded why it is my favorite Bob Dylan song. I am drawn to the simple, yet haunting strum of the guitar and the honesty and purity of the lyrics. Even before I made the connection to the Platonic idea of knowledge being written on the soul, I have always been drawn to this particular moment in his narration. I have always been blown away by the image of words being so true and so powerful that they could glow like burning coals and pour off the page—so much so that I may be convinced that it actually has been permanently written on my soul. However, since learning about Platonic philosophy and in particular the dialectic that he sets up with Socrates in Phaedrus, I am understanding even deeper layers of meaning that I may have missed before.
Even in the set up of the scene, Dylan’s love interest takes on the identity of the divine philosopher and follows Socrates’ assertion about intelligent words being “graven in the soul of the learner…and knows when to speak and when to be silent” (70). His love interest has developed this greater understanding of the power of words and she knows when to speak and when to remain silent because he looks like the silent type. She then acts as the divine philosopher in this narrative and gives Dylan the knowledge in the form of a book of Italian poems from the thirteenth century. At one point in Phaedrus, Plato defines rhetoric as “the art of influencing the soul through words” (48) and the lover exercises her influence by exposing him to this true knowledge. Once Dylan is exposed to this true knowledge of the Italian poets, he is immediately struck by the power of their words and claims that it seems that the “new” knowledge felt like it was written on my soul from me to you. The words and the knowledge were immediately so powerful, that he becomes a divine philosopher himself because divine philosophy can be written only on the soul rather than the page. The text on the page had lost all physical meaning to him because he recognized the words as transformed and now divine. Even though the words had always been written on his soul, it is his recognition of the words as divine that give them the power and meaning.
Perhaps this divine recognition is why he creates the image of the words glowing like burning coals and pouring off of every page—he no longer recognizes them as everyday language because their metaphysical meaning had been altered for him. He has to reconceptualize the way that he understands the function and meaning of the words themselves. Through this reconceptualization and reification of words and knowledge, Dylan then brings this new understanding to the listeners of the song and demonstrates how he is truly a masterful songwriter because as Socrates said, “the man who speaks with the skill of art can make the same thing appear to the same people” (48). And no artist or songwriter is as skilled at this transubstantiation than Bob Dylan.
Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. W.C. Helmbold and W.G. Rabinowitz. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1956.