It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the Socialist Party of the United States, who ran for President of the United States while in jail for opposing WWI ,was born today.
"The old form of trade unionism," cried Debs, "no longer meets the demands of the working class ... It is now positively reactionary, and is maintained, not in the interests of the workers who support it, but in the interests of the capitalist class who exploit the workers." So long as the working class was parceled out among thousands of separate unions, united economic and political action would be impossible. The IWW provided new hope.
He was a popular socialist leader who championed the workers cause and in return even those who politically disagreed with him on the left praised him.
"When the working class unites, there will be a lot of jobless labor leaders."Eugene Debs, 1905 speech to the IWW Convention
We could use a Debs today. Especially in the U.S. Presidential Elections. There is a need for a third party and Debs recognized that it should be a party of the working people. The other two of course represent the ruling classes regardless of how inclusive they may be.
"The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles." Eugene V. Debs
Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 6, 2007; Page D02
NEW YORK -- The politician took the stage amid red balloons and American flags and spoke his famous fighting words: "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want and get it."
With this, Eugene V. Debs last week announced his sixth bid for U.S. president
Dead man running.
The real Eugene V. Debs passed away in 1926, after five unsuccessful bids for the presidency from 1900 to 1920. But actor Brian Pickett is staging a modest, mock presidential run in his name, starting with Wednesday night's campaign kickoff in a tiny, crowded bar in Manhattan's East Village.
The actual Debs ran on the Socialist Party ticket -- the fifth time from a prison cell -- after being convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 for speaking out against World War I. Though never even close to being elected, he became a national figure who galvanized people with his fervor and idealism. Pickett's theatrical performance, to continue in various forms until the 2008 election, "will resurrect this fiery leader from historical bondage," according to the campaign literature.
The quadrennial season of windbaggery is upon us. Canned speeches, quick retractions, the same old sound bites -- we're in for months and months of it. The more we hear, the more we pine for something authentic. This small-time utopian campaign speaks to that frustration, said Pickett, 28, who teaches drama to New York public school students and has appeared in independent theater productions.
Pickett, like Debs, is tall and wiry. You could even say his gaze echoes Debs biographer Nick Salvatore's description: "piercing yet loving." On Wednesday, Pickett wore a three-piece suit with watch fob and spectacles. As the race develops, he plans to work with campaign manager Sophie Nimmannit, 27, the "Red Genie" -- who wore a short red dress, red feather hat, slash of red lipstick and a scarf printed with the word "Vote" -- in street, bar and theater performances in New York and other cities ( http://www.myspace.com/votedebs).
"I wish you were all socialists," Pickett told his audience of about 35 people. They were artists, activists, at least one Wall Streeter -- and they laughed. Even in Debs's time, many of those who came to hear his impassioned speeches were not socialists. He attracted working- and middle-class people and whipped them into such a frenzy that at one event, according to Salvatore, in the book "Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist," one woman asked another, "Is that Debs?" and the first answered, "Oh no, that ain't Debs -- when Debs comes out, you'll think it's Jesus Christ."
Debs, originally from Terre Haute, Ind., married an upper-class woman who became famous for wearing diamonds to visit him in jail, and he grew more radical as he got older. His life spanned that brief window when socialism was not yet a dirty word but rather a new idea from Europe. He tried to Americanize it, claiming Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as precursors, wrote Salvatore. America was becoming the greatest industrial power of the world, and the questions socialism addressed were on everyone's mind. In 1912, Debs drew 6 percent of the national presidential vote.
Things have changed. The socialist demands of Debs's time -- the eight-hour workday, abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work -- have become standard, if not always applied. The word "socialist" seldom comes up. And there are new problems.
"Oh where, oh where have my benefits gone, oh where, oh where can they be?" sang a character in Wednesday's show. The finely dressed Capitalist chimed in: "My PDA's beeping, I'm afraid I can't stay. I'm self-employed and I work all day."
"I would vote for him in a New York minute because he speaks his mind," said Andy Shulman, 34, the actor playing the Capitalist, who works a Wall Street day job. He adds that he is not interested in the radical or extreme, but in someone without the slickness and distance of the big campaign.
"Has a dead man ever run for president?" asked Nola Strand, 24, who played accordion for the show. "Dead men have voted."
Pickett's idea came from television's "West Wing," when Jimmy Smits's character, Matthew V. Santos, ran for president, and fans of the show donned "Vote Santos" shirts and bought "Vote Santos" mugs. If a fictional character could gain a constituency, why not a dead one?
But the ardors of a Debs campaign could wear on him.
In 1900, Debs crisscrossed the country and slept upright on long train trips, refusing to take a Pullman berth with a bed because of labor problems at that company. In 1908, he traveled on his own Red Special train. His speeches could run to two hours, and he would often give 10 a day.
Pickett said he's not sure he has the funds to command a 2008 Red Special. He cut Debs's speeches to something like sound bites, which often sound familiar, except for the florid language. (On war: "The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both.")
It all seems very strange to me now, taking a backward look, that my vision was so focalized on single objective point that I utterly failed to see what now appears as clear as the noonday sun.... The skirmish lines of the American Railway Union were well advanced. A series of small battles were fought and won without the loss of a man.... Next followed the final shock--the Pullman strike--and the American Railway Union again won, clear and complete. The combined corporations were paralized and helpless. At this juncture there were delivered, from wholly unexpected quarters, a swift succession of blows that blinded me for an instant and then opened wide my eyes....
An army of detectives, thugs, and murderers were equipped with badge and bludgeon and turned loose; old hulks of cars were fired; the alarm bells tolled; the people were terrified; the most startling rumors were set afloat; the press volleyed and thundered; and over all the wires sped the news that Chicago's white throat was in the clutch of a red mob; injunctions flew thick and fast, arrests followed, and our office and headquarters, the heart of the strike, was sacked, torn out and nailed up by the "lawful" authorities of the federal government; and when in company with my loyal comrades I found myself in Cook County jail at Chicago with the whole press screaming conspiracy, treason and murder ... I had another exceedingly practical and impressive lesson in Socialism.
The Chicago jail sentences were followed by six months at Woodstock and it was here that Socialism gradually laid hold of me in its own irresistible fashion. Books and pamphlets and letters from Socialists came by every mail and I began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered and battered and splintered... --From the New York Comrade, April 1902, in Speeches of Eugene V. Debs (New York: International Publisher, 1928)
"Will it succeed?" has been the uppermost question in the minds of thousands of people regarding the effort in co-operation at Ruskin. "Can such an enterprise be made permanent, even if it does attain material success?" and "Will the men and women engaged in it be able to hold together and work together for their common interests?" ... Ruskin HAS SUCCEEDED, and the measure and kind of its success INSURES ITS PERMANENCY and the accomplishing of greater things in the future. We are now in the material stage of development and the close of the first year of co-operation shows a favorable termination to the enterprises started in that time. The year began with the establishment of a co-operative hotel on the old site, it closes with the occupancy of the commodious and substantial structure, herewith illustrated, on the new. THE COMING NATION publishing house is the largest building in this section of Tennessee. It is a frame structure, built entirely of oak, sawed from timber taken from our own land and in our own saw mill. Everything entering into its construction that possibly could be made by Ruskinites is a product of co-operative labor.... --The Coming Nation, July 18, 1896
Not "free silver," not "free trade," not "free gold," not "free high tariff" is what the working class needs. All of these "free" things are like free coffins to be buried in. Our slogan is "Free the Tools of Production." --The People, New York, in Public Opinion, August 6, 1896
Socialist Eugene V. Debs was one of the major players in American politics at the turn of the 20th century. He made five attempts to gain the presidency - in 1900, 1904, 1908 1912 and 1920 - all as the standard bearer of the Socialist Party. He conducted his last campaign from behind the bars of a federal prison. A gifted orator, Debs rivaled William Jennings Bryan in his ability to move a crowd with his words.
Born in Indiana in 1855, Debs went to work for the railroad at age 14 but soon gave it up at his mother's urging. He became active in the union movement forming the American Railway Union, the nation's largest, in 1893. Arrested during the Pullman Strike of 1894, he served six months behind bars. In jail, Debs converted to socialism. He helped found the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897, the Socialist Party in 1901 and the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. "I am for socialism because I am for humanity" he declared.
He opposed America's entrance into World War I and denounced the Espionage Act designed to silence all antiwar sentiment. In 1918, he received a 10-year prison sentence for his public opposition to the war. At his trial, Debs admitted he spoke the words the federal government considered traitorous and addressed the jury in his own defense. "I am doing what little I can to do away with the rule of the great body of people by a relatively small class and establish in this country industrial and social democracy." A guilty verdict sent Debs to the federal prison in Atlanta.
In 1920, the Socialist Party again nominated him as their presidential candidate and over 915,000 voted for prisoner #9653. President Wilson vigorously denied a request for Deb's pardon in 1921. Finally, Warren G. Harding released Debs under a general amnesty on Christmas Day 1921. Harding asked the old socialist to stop by the White House. "I have heard so damned much about you, Mr Debs, that I am very glad to meet you personally" Harding remarked at their meeting. Debs died in 1926.
References: Currie, Harold W., Eugene V. Debs (1976); Morgan, H. Wayne, Eugene V. Debs: Socialist for President (1973).
This speech was originally delivered in 1904 and shortly thereafter recorded at one of Edison's sound recording studios. By this time Debs was a leading figure in the U.S. Socialist party, and in this impassioned speech describes a time when the socialist party will "win the world" from the 'frenzied revelry of capitalism." "What man," Debs asks, "unless his brain be atrophied and has become blinded can fail to perceive the impending crisis of a capitalist modern age?" The central metaphor of this speech is "the machine," which refers to the the proliferation of new labor-saving technologies, inventions that Debs saw as fundamental to the social revolution. Here Debs celebrates technology as a great equalizer and emancipator of the working classes: "The mute message of the machine, could but the worker understand and could he but heed it, child of his brain, the machine has come to free and not to enslave; to save and not destroy the author of its being... The machine compels the grand army of toil to rally to its tender, to recognize its power."
In 1912, four candidates battled to become President of the United States. Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, a moderate governor, represented the two major parties. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, angered over what he felt was a betrayal of his policies by Taft, his hand-picked successor, abandoned the Republican party and founded the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party. While all four candidates appealed directly to working-class voters, whose votes would prove decisive, by far the most radical platform in the campaign was that of the Socialist Party nominee, Eugene V. Debs. Running for the fourth time, Debs called for the abolition of capitalism rather than for its reform. In this speech accepting the party’s nomination he proclaimed the Socialist Party “the party of progress, the party of the future.” Debs finished last in the contest, receiving 900,000 votes.
Eugene Debs delivering his legendary speech in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918.
Comrades, friends and fellow-workers, for this very cordial greeting, this very hearty reception, I thank you all with the fullest appreciation of your interest in and your devotion to the cause for which I am to speak to you this afternoon.
To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love.
I have just returned from a visit over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.
I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail—and some of the rest of us in jail—but they cannot put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all the ages of history for standing erect, and for seeking to pave the way to better conditions for mankind.
If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles.
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.
They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
And here let me emphasize the fact—and it cannot be repeated too often—that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.
Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die.
That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation.
If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.
Eugene Debs delivered his Statement to the Court to the Federal Court of Cleveland, Ohio on September 18, 1918 after being convicted of violating the Sedition Act, a protective law passed by Congress to promote the war by banning anti-war propaganda and rhetoric. Under this new law many socialists were unjustly persecuted and stripped of their freedom of speech. As an active socialist, Debs became concerned and attacked American capitalism in an effort to protect first amendment rights. This speech was a plea in his defense for his and other socialists’ freedom of speech. Introduction by Mary Litton Fowler.
Enacts movement from rupture to constitution through identification with marginalized class
Your Honor,years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Invokes revolutionary tradition
I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions…
oppositional
Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means…
Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…
Mammon: Gospel allusion (oppositional tradition accepted by and borrowed from dominant public)
I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
Invokes providence; expresses sense of rupture between land of plenty and suffering of millions; transfers guilt from providence to society
In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…
Radical extension
I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all…
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
Re-genesis
This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.
Communality
There are today upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex. They are all making common cause. They are spreading with tireless energy the propaganda of the new social order. They are waiting, watching, and working hopefully through all the hours of the day and the night. They are still in a minority. But they have learned how to be patient and to bide their time. The feel—they know, indeed—that the time is coming, in spite of all opposition, all persecution, when this emancipating gospel will spread among all the peoples, and when this minority will become the triumphant majority and, sweeping into power, inaugurate the greates social and economic change in history.
In that day we shall have the universal commonwealth—the harmonious cooperation of every nation with every other nation on earth…
Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.
Re-genesis
I can see the dawn of the better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own.
Re-genesis
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
I am now prepared to receive your sentence.
Eugene V. Debs
Time Magazine, Monday, Nov. 01, 1926
As it must to all men, Death came last week to Eugene Victor Debs, Socialist.
In Woodstock, Ill., there is a boys' school, a collection of retired farmers, a prison. In the prison in the year 1895 sat a hot-blooded orator† of 40. He was Eugene Victor Debs, labor leader. He was in jail for the violation of an injunction. Back of this event was the story of an Indiana grocery clerk, a locomotive fireman, who became the organizer of the American Railway Union, who twice made the nation feel the fist of unionized labor. The second time was the great strike against the Pullman Co. in 1894 when President Cleveland had to despatch troops to Chicago to quell the riotous bloodshed. Eugene Debs and three others, indicted for conspiracy against the Government, were successfully defended by Clarence S. Darrow. Later Mr. Debs defied an injunction—and that is why he found himself in Woodstock. One day he had a visitor, Socialist Victor L. Berger. The visitor left him an unimportant-looking little book.
Prisoner Debs read it slowly, eagerly, ravenously. The book was Karl Marx's Das Kapital. In the brain of Prisoner Debs there began to simmer a more militant type of Socialism for the U. S. than the mere reading of Utopian books.
Mr. Debs came from his cell with a gospel. In Chicago, 100,000 cheered him as he roared out his speech on "Liberty." Then, strangely enough, he stumped for Candidate Bryan in 1896. A year later the Socialist party was born, and in five presidential elections from 1900 to 1920 (except in 1916) Mr. Debs was a candidate, polling almost a million votes in each of his last two campaigns.
During the World War he attacked war in general and the draft in particular; was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for a speech made in Canton, Ohio, in 1918. Addressing the jury, he told his creed:
"Gentlemen, I have been accused of obstructing the War. I admit it, gentlemen; I abhor war. I would oppose the War if I stood alone. . ..
"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest of the earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
On Christmas Day, 1921, President Harding pardoned a model prisoner, a broken prophet. Around him he saw his Socialist Party disintegrating; within him he felt his strength ebbing. His speeches seemed almost pathetic; his pen had lost its throb. A month ago he went to a sanitarium in Elmhurst, Ill., where he died, aged 71.
Said Arthur Brisbane, Hearst columnist:
"Eugene V. Debs, a sincere and honest man, is dead, killed by imprisonment inflicted upon him for saying what he thought about the War."
†James Whitcomb Riley once wrote: And there's Gene Debs, a man that stands And jest holds out in his two hands As warm a heart as ever beat 'Twixt here and jedgment seat.
One of my favorite Dylan songs for its William Burroughs like poetic imagery. And it still influences folks today, see here and here.
"Desolation Row" is the ninth and final song of Bob Dylan's sixth album, Highway 61 Revisited. This eleven minute song contains lyrics full of evocative imagery, poetry, and cultural references. It is the album's only purely acoustic track, in contrast to the thunderous electric rock and roll sound that Dylan was completely embracing for the first time with the album. It was recorded in New York City, New York on August 2, 1965; the take on the album was the second time Dylan had sung the song. Charlie McCoy plays the lyrical acoustic guitar passages throughout the song.
The songs of this period received wide critical acclaim. In the New Oxford Companion to Music, Gammond used Desolation as an example of Dylan's work of the mid-60s that achieved a "high level of poetical lyricism." In 1969, Dylan told ROLLING STONE he wrote this song in the back of a New York cab. Since it is 659 words and clocks in at more than eleven minutes, that's a long cab ride. It was spliced together from two consecutive takes during the last sessions for Highway 61.
They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town Here comes the blind commissioner They've got him in a trance One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker The other is in his pants And the riot squad they're restless They need somewhere to go As Lady and I look out tonight From Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy "It takes one to know one," she smiles And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style And in comes Romeo, he's moaning "You Belong to Me I Believe" And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend You better leave" And the only sound that's left After the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up On Desolation Row
Now the moon is almost hidden The stars are beginning to hide The fortunetelling lady Has even taken all her things inside All except for Cain and Abel And the hunchback of Notre Dame Everybody is making love Or else expecting rain And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing He's getting ready for the show He's going to the carnival tonight On Desolation Row
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window For her I feel so afraid On her twenty-second birthday She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic She wears an iron vest Her profession's her religion Her sin is her lifelessness And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking Into Desolation Row
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago With his friend, a jealous monk He looked so immaculately frightful As he bummed a cigarette Then he went off sniffing drainpipes And reciting the alphabet Now you would not think to look at him But he was famous long ago For playing the electric violin On Desolation Row
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world Inside of a leather cup But all his sexless patients They're trying to blow it up Now his nurse, some local loser She's in charge of the cyanide hole And she also keeps the cards that read "Have Mercy on His Soul" They all play on penny whistles You can hear them blow If you lean your head out far enough From Desolation Row
Across the street they've nailed the curtains They're getting ready for the feast The Phantom of the Opera A perfect image of a priest They're spoonfeeding Casanova To get him to feel more assured Then they'll kill him with self-confidence After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls "Get Outa Here If You Don't Know Casanova is just being punished for going To Desolation Row"
Now at midnight all the agents And the superhuman crew Come out and round up everyone That knows more than they do Then they bring them to the factory Where the heart-attack machine Is strapped across their shoulders And then the kerosene Is brought down from the castles By insurance men who go Check to see that nobody is escaping To Desolation Row
Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers Between the windows of the sea Where lovely mermaids flow And nobody has to think too much About Desolation Row
Yes, I received your letter yesterday (About the time the door knob broke) When you asked how I was doing Was that some kind of joke? All these people that you mention Yes, I know them, they're quite lame I had to rearrange their faces And give them all another name Right now I can't read too good Don't send me no more letters no Not unless you mail them From Desolation Row
In this song, Desolation Row, Dylan is warning people that society is heading for destruction, an apocalype, if it continues in its then direction. With the US locked in a deadly embrace with Russia, teetering on a knife-edge of mutually assured nuclear destruction, it was reasonable for people to be concerned (more like scared half to death), but governments of the time characterised anyone who spoke out against the Cold War as unpatriotic, even traitorous. When we read the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, it is horrifying to realise just how close the world came to letting the generals on both sides unleash a nuclear holocaust that would have likely destroyed much of the world as we know it.
In this song, Desolation Row, Dylan uses cultural and religious stereotypes as metaphors to describe this lunacy of main stream 1960's American society. Desolation Row is the name he gives to the place where people have gone to opt out of the lunacy, and who are being punished by society for not wanting to participate in the lunacy. For example, the lines "They're spoonfeeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured. Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words. And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls "Get outa here if you don't know, Casanova is just being punished for going To Desolation Row"
Desolation Row is a counter-culture destination, though more a state of mind than an actual place. In this example he is referring to the average wage slave who is made to work long hours doing dehumanising work until they have a heart attack and die: Now at midnight all the agents, and the superhuman crew (the FBI and other covert agencies looking for un-American activists), come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do (and who are therefore dangerous). Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine is strapped across their shoulders (the yoke of dehumanising work) and then the kerosene (to burn the midnight oil, to work long hours) is brought down from the castles (capitalist corporations) by insurance men (Actuaries who calculate how long someone is likely to live under these circumstances) who go check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row (no-one is opting out of the system)
The name Desolation Row may have been derived by combining the best of Desolation Angels (Kerouac) with Cannery Row (Steinbeck).
Jack Kerouac spent the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak, and wrote The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels from his life transforming experiences on the peak. On the other hand, John Steinbeck'sCannery Row is a place where the outcasts of society found a home. Cannery Row is an actual place in Monterey California. It refers to the derelect sardine cannery whose close environs was occupied in the book by homeless men and the town brothel. The cannery was derelect because the sardines had disappeared through a combination of over-fishing, agricultural run-off and unspecified pollutants from a nearby army base. For Steinbeck, what happened to the sardines was symbolic of the ruthlessly exploit until exhausted attitude that society and the military-industrial complex had for the environment and ordinary people. Wring all the goodness out of something, then when it worthless, toss on the rubbish-heap and give it to the worthless people who are no use to us.
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