Re: Love Minus Zero. Violent undercurrents?


the q is silent wrote:
Mr Jinx wrote:
"The wind howls like a hammer,
The night blows cold and rainy,
My love she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing." (LOVE MINUS ZERO)

I thought about these final lines of Love Minus Zero this morning and
something struck me that had not before: the barely suppressed violence
in the words. Especially as they follow mention of 'cloak and dagger'
which is a well known term for foul play (or in the case of the raven:
fowl play?). ;-)

My mind went to the song Idiot Wind - not yet penned at the time of
Love Minus Zero, of course - and the wind which in description of that
shattered 1973 relationship is "blowing every time you move your
teeth". The wind here in the Love Minus Zero relationship 'howls' (a
howl being a cry that comes from a mouth of teeth - one thinks
unavoidably of wolves). Also of Ginsberg's 'Howl'.

"The wind howls like a hammer" (room full of men with their hammers
a-bleedin'?) The night (Knight? for this is a song of courtly love)
blows cold and rainy. A hammer does indeed offer a blow. A cold blow?
Cold blooded murder perhaps? Back to cloak and dagger.

"My love she's like some raven" (black birds at the Tower of London who
guard the tower where people are executed - again back to Knights and
courtly chivalry).

"At my window with a broken wing" (perhaps the protagonist is looking
from the window of the tower waiting for sentence. Perhaps he is on
trial for the relationship he has metaphorically slain.

I think the murder imagery is a bit of a stretch (though you do know
the term for a group of crows, do you not, Mr Jinx?), but the "the wind
howls like a hammer" line is a very interesting one. Hammers don't
usually howl, unless they're being swung by John Henry, although I
don't think that's the association Bob is going for here. Just another
of his composite, synaesthetic turns of phrase, and an especially
subtle and effective one, at that.

The violence and noisiness of this final stanza is also an important
contrast to the first stanza, in which "my love . . . speaks like
silence, / without ideals or violence." The first three stanzas of this
song describe a woman who is cool and confident, standing outside the
rest of society because she knows better than the rest of them: she
rejects their ideologies (i.e., their ideals and violence), she refuses
to be commodified (i.e., Valentines can't buy her), she rejects their
teleology (i.e., she doesn't speak of the future and twists their ideas
of "success"), and of course she knows too much to argue or to judge.
She thinks she knows more than everybody - "She winks."

And yet, on a cold and rainy night, she's just as scared and vulnerable
as the rest of them, seeking comfort and healing from her lover. She
relies on him just as all of the other characters in the song rely on
their various crutches at which she rolls her eyes.

Jinx, I'm surprised this stanza makes you think of Ginsberg but not
Poe. That's the most obvious literary reference here.

Final thought: Make more posts like this, Jinx. This is a very
interesting topic, which hopefully will inspire everyone to come with
their own ideas about this song, and it's a far more worthwhile use of
everyone's time than the relentless strawman/genius/has-been crap.

-Jyqm

Thanks for that, Q.

I hadn't thought of the 'murder of crows' aspect at all. This song
suddenly seems like a murder ballad to me now. It has the same
sinister overtones that Moonlight does 'I know when the time is right
to strike' set inside a seeming love ballad.

I only mentioned Ginsberg because of his poem 'Howl'. I did not mean to
equate his style with the lines.

Again the mention of violence in the opening section makes the claim
for this as a murder ballad even stronger. The thought also occurs
that to 'wink' is to shut an eye. Forty winks = sleep = big sleep =
death?

Mr Jinx

(ps. Dylan is still a genius etc. etc. etc.) ;-)

.

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