Crossing the Rubicon (song)
| "Crossing the Rubicon" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Bob Dylan | |
| from the album Rough and Rowdy Ways | |
| Released | June 19, 2020 |
| Recorded | January-February, 2020 |
| Studio | Sound City Studios |
| Genre | Blues |
| Length | 7:22 |
| Label | Columbia |
| Songwriter(s) | Bob Dylan |
| Producer(s) | None listed |
| Rough and Rowdy Ways track listing | |
"Crossing the Rubicon" is a song written and performed by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and released as the eighth track on his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways. It is a slow electric blues that musically resembles Dylan's earlier songs "Million Miles"[1] from 1997's Time Out of Mind, and "Cry a While"[2] from 2001's Love and Theft, with lyrics that heavily reference classical antiquity and the life of Julius Caesar in particular.[3]
Background and composition
Making allusions to and appropriating phrases from the literature and cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome has been an important part of Dylan's songwriting process in the 21st century (beginning with a single quotation from Virgil's Aeneid in his 2001 song "Lonesome Day Blues" from Love and Theft).[4] These references, as charted by historian and Harvard Latinist Richard F. Thomas in his 2017 book Why Bob Dylan Matters,[5] have become more frequent and prominent in Dylan's original songs over time, culminating with Rough and Rowdy Ways featuring two songs that use classical antiquity explicitly as their subjects (as evidenced by their titles): "Mother of Muses" and "Crossing the Rubicon". It was likely intentional on Dylan's part for these two songs to be sequenced next to each other on the album.
Themes
The expression "to cross the Rubicon" is a metaphor meaning to "to take an irrevocable step that commits one to a specific course". The phrase has its origin in Julius Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon river in 49 BCE, bringing his troops from Gaul into Italy and starting a five-year civil war that ended the Roman Republic and began the Roman Empire. The decision sealed Caesar's political future as he was declared "dictator for life" at war's end.[6] In the song, Dylan seems to use the refrain "And I crossed the Rubicon" in both a figurative as well as a literal sense (i.e., singing in the first person as Caesar). The first-person narrator of two other songs on Rough and Rowdy Ways also mentions either identifying with or being Caesar: "My Own Version of You" ("I pick a number between one and two / And ask myself what would Julius Caesar do")[7] and "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" ("Got my right hand high with the thumb down").[8]
The opening line of the song ("I crossed the Rubicon on the 14th day of the most dangerous month of the year") is interesting in that it references not the day Caesar actually did cross the Rubicon river (which was the 10th of January) but rather, according to Richard F. Thomas, the 14th day of "what for Julius Caesar was emphatically the most dangerous month, March, whose Ides of course fell on the next day, his death day". Thomas sees this reference to Caesar's murder as significant in that it positions "Crossing the Rubicon" as the first song of "the closing epic triad of the album, each founded on political assassination": Julius Caesar (44 BCE) in "Crossing the Rubicon", followed by William McKinley (1901) in Key West (Philosopher Pirate) and John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1963) in "Murder Most Foul" (with "Mother of Muses" serving the important structural function of being the "epic invocation" to this triad).[9]
Critical reception
Carl Wilson, writing at Slate, called the song "a diss-track/battle-rap/crawling-kingsnake number in which, like several times here, Dylan imagines himself as a strutting ancient Roman general, promising, 'I'll make your wife a widow / You'll never see old age'".[10] Variety's Chris Willman also compared the song to hip-hop, calling it "Every Grain of Sand" meets "gangsta rap" for the way it alternates between murderous boasts and spiritual observations such as "I feel the Holy Spirit inside, see the light that freedom gives / I believe it's in the reach of every man who lives."[11] Ann-Margaret Daniel, writing at Hot Press, calls the "one-two punch" of "Crossing the Rubicon" and "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" "my favourite section of Rough and Rowdy Ways. Were the record an epic poem construction, I'd say these are my favourite books. Both are long songs, telling stories, giving and taking, promising and threatening, cautionary and yet comforting".[12]
Spectrum Culture included the song on a list of "Bob Dylan's 20 Best Songs of the '10s and Beyond". In an article accompanying the list, critic Pat Padua observes that the title's reference to passing a point of no return seems to echo the title of D. A. Pennebaker 1967 Dylan documentary Dont Look Back. Padua notes that while the film functions as a "profile of a young star at his peak of fame; the resonance here, when it's 'darkest before the dawn', is that of an old man looking back at his youthful arrogance and realizing it's time to pay his dues. So Dylan's biblical visions appear in almost every verse: 'purgatory', 'heaven and earth'. He's misbehaved, and he has regrets...He takes on all this in the ancient form of the blues, his grizzled voice like that of an old country bluesman worried about the troubled life he's lived".[13]
Cultural references
The second verse describes the Rubicon as being the "Red river...redder than the blood that flows from the rose". Richard F. Thomas sees this as a reference to a verse by the Latin poet Lucan who, before being forced to commit suicide by Nero, wrote: "The bright red river Rubicon flows from modest spring through the bottom of a valley, valleys, dividing Gaul from Italian lands". Thomas believes that the "redness" described in both lines is a poetic reference to the waters being bloodied by the civil war after the Rubicon had been crossed by Julius Caesar.[14]
The line "I painted my wagon - I abandoned all hope and I crossed the Rubicon" humorously juxtaposes a reference to Lerner and Loewe's 1951 western-musical Paint Your Wagon with an oft-quoted line from Dante's Inferno. Ann-Margaret Daniel asks who else but Dylan would yoke two such references together and calls the result "downright multitudinous".[15]
The song's penultimate line, "The killing frost is on the ground and the autumn leaves are gone", references the 1946 song "Autumn Leaves", which Dylan recorded for his 2015 album Shadows in the Night and which subsequently became his most frequently played cover song ever.[16]
References
- ^ "Bob Dylan Contradicts Himself: A Song-By-Song Breakdown Of The Ambitious 'Rough And Rowdy Ways'". glidemagazine.com. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "Rough and Rowdy Ways: the review | Untold Dylan". Retrieved April 7, 2021.
- ^ "Crossing the Rubicon | The Official Bob Dylan Site". www.bobdylan.com. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "Calder Classics — Timeless Bob Dylan: Inspired by the Classics". Calder Classics. Retrieved February 27, 2021.
- ^ Thomas, Richard F. (2017). Why Bob Dylan matters (First ed.). New York, NY. ISBN 978-0-06-268573-5. OCLC 972383831.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ M. A., Linguistics; B. A., Latin. "What Does the Expression 'Crossing the Rubicon' Mean?". ThoughtCo. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "My Own Version of You | The Official Bob Dylan Site". www.bobdylan.com. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "Key West (Philosopher Pirate) | The Official Bob Dylan Site". www.bobdylan.com. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "Richard Thomas, "And I Crossed the Rubic". mysite. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ Wilson, Carl (June 18, 2020). "Bob Dylan's New Album Is His Best in Many Years, Maybe Decades". Slate Magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ Willman, Chris (June 17, 2020). "Bob Dylan's 'Rough and Rowdy Ways': Album Review". Variety. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ Daniel, Anne Margaret. "The Verdict on Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan: A Record We Need Right Now". Hotpress. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "Bob Dylan's 20 Best Songs of the '10s and Beyond". Spectrum Culture. February 19, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
- ^ "Richard Thomas, "And I Crossed the Rubic". mysite. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ Daniel, Anne Margaret. "The Verdict on Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan: A Record We Need Right Now". Hotpress. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
- ^ "Autumn Leaves | The Official Bob Dylan Site". www.bobdylan.com. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
