Forty years later, the critic and professor of the history of civilizations Greil Marcus devoted a book with the same title to Dylan, delving into the crazy adventure of the song’s composition.
Drawing on this work, Marie Rémond and Sébastien Pouderoux, a pensionnaire of the Comédie-Française, let loose the “merry mayhem of rock” and ponder the origins of artistic creation: doubt, chance, mystery and poetry. “There was something in his demeanour that challenged you to define him, catalogue him and ignore him, but it was impossible”, says Greil Marcus about Dylan.
“Based on his way of singing and moving, you couldn’t tell where he came from, what he had gone through or where he was going –although the way he moved and sang inexplicably made you want to know more.” At the height of the American identity crisis during the Vietnam War, Dylan seemed to turn his rage into an existential questioning, “[he was] capable of seeing into the heart of things, the truth of things. Not metaphorically, in fact, but really seeing, like seeing into metal and making it melt, seeing it as it was, with strong words and a fierce lucidity.” Did he realise at the time that these six minutes thirty-four seconds of music would change the face of rock for all time?

Sur une idée originale de Marie Rémond
Le texte est publié chez Galaade éditions.

And Hugues Duchêne, Gabriel Tur