88. Oh, Sister

Ralf Sauter hears this song as literally incestuous, which I find intriguing, not least because Sauter is a careful, thoughtful, and insightful commentator on Dylan; and the album is, after all, named Desire, which (the notion) does not distinguish between its socially proper and socially improper, its permitted and forbidden, forms; and what’s more, the album sessions boast (among other curiosities) a very moving love song to a woman that the narator himself has already scorned and cast out of his heart, as well as an ode to a woman who probably doesn’t speak the language the narrator does—who says you need to be able to understand each other’s words, to be in love?—and so, well, why not incest too?

For my own part, and given my own leanings towards the transcendent, I can’t unhear the song’s archetypical overtones. I think of the Father in the song as God and of the brother and sister as brother and sister in the way all God’s children are said to be. In any case, the sense of family, of closeness, is one of the two central aspects of the song’s unusual seduction—as in, “How could you a treat a brother, your own brother, so callously?”—with the other being the threat of punishment! It’s a touchingly human seduction, in that sense, a seduction that doesn’t distinguish between what’s essentially good-hearted (“And is our purpose not the same on this earth / To love and follow his direction?”), what’s honest and vulnerable if with a note of nagging (“Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow”), what’s outright manipulative but disguised as concern (“Our father would not like the way that you act / And you must realize the danger”), and even thinly veiled threats which, if not for the vulnerability and weariness of the previous lines, I would imagine being delivered with a superior sort of frown (“You may not see me tomorrow”).

But the melodies in Oh, Sister are so beautiful, and the rhythm of it so soft and soothing, and the language so religious and poetic, that I find it hard to account sincere ill intent to the narrator. It’s difficult not to relate with the plea (or demand), “You should not treat me like a stranger,” or not to see the beauty and romance in the opening image of the narrator stealing into his love’s bedroom, as eager to be received with gladness as Van Morrison’s narrator in Sweet Thing off of Astral Weeks. Besides, it isn’t only carnal love that’s on his mind; he’s also thinking of the interaction of divinity with the human sphere, and of death, with which the song concludes its reflections. “Time is an ocean”—there seems to be so much of it—“but it ends at the shore”—because for all its apparent endlessness, there is an ending; we humans know that—“You may not see me tomorrow.” As Kśiądz Jan Twardowski phrased it, “Let us hurry to love people. They depart so quickly!”

The sister gives no answer. This isn’t Boots of Spanish Leather. All we are left with is the plea and the longing. But that’s already complicated enough.

Considering that Oh, Sister was never performed live after 1978, it’s impressive what a wealth of good versions Columbia has made officially available. There’s the set of 1975 performances from the Rolling Thunder Revue, in which you don’t get Emmylou Harris struggling to remember the words as Dylan presses mercilessly forward, but you do get even more supple vocals from Dylan. The 1976 arrangement, represented by the version on Hard Rain, isn’t sung as piercingly, but Dylan’s lead guitar breaks make up for that. And then there’s the completely revamped affair on 1978’s At Budokan, which grinds along relentlessy on one minor chord for (what amounts to) its entire run. The sinister, organ-fed groove lingers for over a minute after Dylan and his backing singers have got through the lyrics. Had Oh, Sister not made it onto Desire, its 1978 arrangement would have been a sure candidate for Street-Legal, where it would have fit right in alongside all the other demented love songs.