Subject of the Post: Born too late

Date Added: 08/10/98

Editor's Note: In response to a great debate about the exact words Dylan is singing

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood wrote:

I always thought the line was:

She was born in spring
But I was born TOO LATE
Blame it on
A simple Twist of Fate

In any case, since I've been meaning to bring this
up for some time: if she was born in spring and *I*
was born too late, then doesn't that make the narrator
younger than her?

I always thought Dylan meant: she was born in spring,
i.e., she was young as springtime -- and I was born
too early, i.e., too old.

Maybe it could've gone:

She was young as springtime,
I was born too early
Blame it on a simple twist
From my head with hair a-curly.


David Reid wrote in response:

What the lines sometimes suggest to me is that he feels that she was
born into some realisation about living before he was, maybe at a time
when she was young and in the spring of her life.  But for him this
realisation came later in life when in fact it was too late. Maybe his
spring turned too quickly into autumn. Or then again, perhaps,  like
those two man on the train platform, he is still waiting for his spring
to come smoking down the track and hoping that, this time, whatever
simple twist of fate accompanies this revelation, will not hit him like
a freight train is liable to do.

Subject of the Post: A Theme of Blood on the Tracks

Date Added: 08/10/98

Glynne Walley wrote:

It's always made perfect sense to me that she'd be older than him, but more
in a metaphorical, spiritual sense than a literal one.  Compare the line in
"Shelter From The Storm" that says "if I only could turn back the clock to
when God and her were born."  I've always heard this album as being about
one woman, or about Woman as an eternal principle, and the narrator's
position relative to this Woman.  Especially in Shelter this woman takes on
a godlike aura, existing since the Beginning in some spiritual sense and in
that sense plainly elder than the narrator, who is at best merely mortal.
Which would make the Simple Twist verse in question make perfect sense:  she
was born in spring, the beginning of all things, but I was born too late,
after that in the mortal age.  Compare also the previous lines: I once
believed she was my twin but I lost the ring.  I don't think he's talking
about a blood relationship here, but a spiritual one:  he thought she was
his soulmate, thus equal to him as well as sympathetic, but he lost whatever
it was that gave him grounds to believe
that, and now he realizes she's a being apart and above him, and he's all
alone.  This is the point where, for me, this album suddenly dives down to
the real depths of sadness.  Wow.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page