Owed To A Nightingale

Writing a magazine piece about Rome has reminded me of standing recently in the room where John Keats died. And at the same time Bob Dylan's "Duquesne Whistle" is blowing through my mind.

The great debate about whether Dylan was as good as Keats (or vice versa) was handled beautifully by Professor Christopher Ricks in his ambitious book "Dylan's Visions Of Sin", when he looked at Keats' "Ode To A Nightingale" and Dylan's "Not Dark Yet".

Was the way these two wove in and out of each other lyrically and philosophically a mere coincidence?

"Coincidences can be deep things," says Ricks, "and if two artists were to arrive independently at so many similar turns of phrase, figures of speech, felicities of rhyming, then my sense of humanity might go up a plane." [There is a strained pun here that will be appreciated — and groaned at — only by Dylanophiles.]

Ricks goes on more elegantly to say there was no coincidence. He believes Dylan had the "Ode" in mind "even if not consciously or deliberately" when he "created his own re-creation of so much of it".

I think he's right. Few poems or songs of mortality can touch "Not Dark Yet". And it was the song that came into my mind as I stood in Keats' room.

Keats was just 25 when he died – against his will. Dylan was 25 when he had his motorcycle accident – maybe not against his will?

Dylan is 71. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there...