Not that you could in any way compare Dylan with James Joyce (who put so many allusions in Ulysses that it is truly unimaginable how much one man could be familiar with so many phrases in language, and passages in so many books).
Anyway, this is what Joyce wrote: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" opens on the tower of the watch. Joyce's Ulysses opens in a watch tower. Dylan's song, when taken in it's logical order in with the third stanza actually is the first, also opens on a watch tower (it is aslo the only song on the recording that begins with it's title). The original biblical reference was obviously known by all three, but that knowledge is probably coincidental, a mere simple twist of fate.
Not that you could in any way compare Dylan with James Joyce (who put so many allusions in Ulysses that it is truly unimaginable how much one man could be familiar with so many phrases in language, and passages in so many books).
Anyway, this is what Joyce wrote: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" opens on the tower of the watch. Joyce's Ulysses opens in a watch tower. Dylan's song, when taken in it's logical order in with the third stanza actually is the first, also opens on a watch tower (it is aslo the only song on the recording that begins with it's title). The original biblical reference was obviously known by all three, but that knowledge is probably coincidental, a mere simple twist of fate.