Thea Gilmore gör en vacker cover/tolkning av “I pity the poor immigrant” av Bob Dylan på Youtube. Texten är som vanligt bra men svåranalyserad. Texten finns härunder. Andras anlys finns nedanför.
I pity the poor immigrant
I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would’ve stayed home
Who uses all his power to do evil
But in the end is always left so alone
That man whom with his fingers cheats
And who lies with ev’ry breath
Who passionately hates his life
And likewise fears his death.
I pity the poor immigrant
Whose strength is spent in vain
Whose heaven is like Ironsides
Whose tears are like rain
Who eats but is not satisfied
Who hears but does not see
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me.
I pity the poor immigrant
Who tramples through the mud
Who fills his mouth with laughing
And who builds his town with blood
Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass
I pity the poor immigrant
When his gladness comes to pass.
För analys av texten kan du gå till följande pdf. där en debattör/recensent skriver följande:
“Re:\”I pity the poor immigrant\” – what does
Posted by 4th Time Around – 2007/06/28 01:09
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The interpretation offered by ‘Poor Howard’ in the old (May, 2003) ‘song oracle’ series at DylanPool is as plausible as
any I have come across:
Dylan’s line, “Whose heaven is like Ironsides” is an allusion to Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army. Cromwell’s soldiers
were known as “Ironsides”, both for their impassive, relentless fighting style and for the similarly impassive, relentless
dogmatism of their Puritan faith.
The original American immigrants who came over on the “Mayflower” and landed at Plymouth Rock were, of course,
Puritan refugees fleeing English religious persecution. They articulated a vision of America as a New Jerusalem, a “city
on a hill” whose example would serve as a beacon of moral certitude to all who sought to escape what they saw as the Gdless
libertines and despotic hierarchs of European civilization. And that vision has animated much of American history; it
still survives today as a streak of rigid moral superiority in the American character that other nations often interpret as
naive superciliousness or the arrogance of power.
And that same rigidity, that same sterile vision of the original Puritan colonists was echoed in the equally sterile vision of
later immigrants to America, who came here because the streets were paved with gold, only they weren’t, so they
devoted their lives to making money instead. As they were successfully building their fortunes, they and their
descendants also signed on to the Puritans’ myth of America as a “city on a hill”. Their burgeoning material prosperity
seemed a confirmation that indeed, America was truly as righteous as its ideals advertised; why else would G-d have
guided the “tired”, the “hungry”, the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to such a country and given them the
opportunity to live far, far better lives than they could have even dreamed were possible in the nations and circumstances
they had left behind.
And thus many Americans still don’t bother to concern themselves with learning about other peoples and cultures, so
solid is the rock of their belief that America’s dominance is historically inevitable because America is the most moral,
upright country ever conceived, its success rendering everything else on the planet irrelevant or obsolete, or at worst,
evil. Like the Puritans of old, America tends to see everything in the world in black and white; as George W. Bush so
often intones, “You’re either with us or against us.”
But that vision of an America that evangelizes its self-image as “a shining light unto the nations” by waving the starspangled
banner of moral and material superiority is not sustainable, because the liberal tolerance of diversity that is a
prerequisite for the continued stability of American’s pluralistic society will ultimately have to confront the Puritanical
xenophobia at the center of America’s founding myths.
Just as America is a nation of immigrants, American society is a syncretic fusion of immigrants’ ethnicities. America can
not indefinitely continue to accept into its social fabric people from all over the world, and depend on their energy and
drive to fuel its economic engine, while simultaneously disparaging the very cultures those immigrants bring to integrate
with its own.
“I Pity The Poor Immigrant” can be seen as Dylan’s warning to America that such a vision will ultimately encompass its
own self-destruction. If we can’t be more tolerant, more caring, more lunderstanding of those who differ from us, we
undercut in our actions the very moral superiority we claim in our speeches. We must learn to put ourselves in others’
shoes, for when we stand inside their shoes, we’ll know what a drag it is to see us.”
