67. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

This song’s lyrics probably have as many interpretations as there are people who take the time to ponder them. The mysteries of John Wesley Harding are much like the mysteries of Under the Red Sky: inexhaustible.

Jimi Hendrix, the story goes, covered All Along the Watchtower instead of his first instinct, I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, because the latter seemed too personal a song. How beautiful a reason that is not to cover something!

Clinton Heylin thinks I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine is partly autobiographical but moreso about Joe Hill, the tale being told “from the point of view of a member of the jury who ‘put him out to death’ and now sees the terrible error he has made.”

Jim Beviglia sees St. Augustine as “[roving] wildly in search of those souls who have already been damned in an effort to let them know that theirs is not a lost cause … a fascinating act of empathy, especially considering that the people in these ‘quarters’ are certainly not returning the favor.” For Jim, the narrator is “representative of anyone who gets wrapped up in his or her own concerns, indirectly damning the rest of the world to a lonely death in the process” (see, then, I Pity the Poor Immigrant).

Without Masked and Anonymous to guide me, I have little to say about the lyrics myself. I’ve always allowed myself to soak in the images and the emotions instead of musing on what the story adds up to. It’s very easy to soak in the emotions, for I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, the slowest and stateliest song on the album, is bathing in them. Even the words have plenty: misery, a voice without restraint, a sad complaint, anger, loneliness, terror, tears. All in a song with a barely-there (yet powerful) vocal melody and a pace intensely contrasted with the title character’s urgency. Christopher Ricks says, about the first half of the second verse, the pairing of restraint and complaint, “In Dylan’s evocation, the very rhyme acts—as rhyme often does—as a restraint, as a way of constraining emotions.”

The evocative final verse depicts a scene familiar to any of us who walk the earth: the narrator waking from a vivid dream with emotions that take their time to depart. “Oh, I awoke in anger / So alone and terrified / I put my fingers against the glass / And bowed my head and cried.” The precision in these lines, and the care with which Dylan sings them, allow the song to climb over all the fences and defenses my heart puts up against foreign influence.

With the wasteland desolation of the dream-scenery, the sudden violence, the blankness of the view outside the window, and the moral weight, there’s no doubt that I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine belongs on John Wesley Harding (and, perhaps, went a long way towards informing the rest of the material; tracks 3, 4, and 5 of Side A were recorded first).

The album was recorded in autumn, and probably written then too (see Clinton Heylin), and it sure sounds autumnal, in spirit and sound and tone. Its most autumnal song is—well, I think it’s a tie, with I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine suited to those quiet windless days when you want to walk slowly “through the leaves falling from the trees,” and The Wicked Messenger for when the air is so crisp you want to be out the door running.

Live as a duet with Joan Baez in the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue—autumn again—the song is interesting but something of a mess. I'm curious about its scattered later renditions, especially from 2005 and 2011, with Dylan the age I imagine the song’s St. Augustine being and no longer the young man who “put him out to death.”

The spare template of the album (for which, thank you, Robbie Robertson) means that John Wesley Harding songs are a gold mine for sensitive artists who want to try to interpret them. I’ve written about Angels of Light lifting I Pity the Poor Immigrant up to the paintbrush winds, and Jimi Hendrix and Patti Smith turning Drifter’s Escape into their respective visions of hard rock. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, likewise, has two phenomenal covers by artists I love.

Eric Clapton, on I Still Do, gives the song his characteristic smoothing down. It may be 2016 but his voice hasn’t aged much and his arranger’s touch remains impeccably light. You’d think, listening to Eric's cover for the first time, that such an easygoing rendition, however pleasant to listen to, would take away the original’s edge. But then the backing vocals come in, and the song (rather like I Pity the Poor Immigrant in 1976) begins to take on the contours of a hoe-down.

What impresses me most about Clapton & Crew's hoe-down approach is that the backing singers join Eric on the words “so alone and terrified.” They sound sharp, concentrated, and as Bob Weir would say, “just exactly perfect.” So yes, what you hear is a gang of happy, skilled, and on-key musicians singing the words “so alone and terrified” together. That’s one hell of a precipice to push a listener up against, especially after Eric has lulled you into that easy, comfortable feeling you get from hearing his wonderful, familiar voice and wonderful, familiar guitar solo. As Brian Howe writes of the way Cohen’s voice and words work with and against the arrangements on the excellent (but understated, so give it time) album Dear Heather, Clapton’s I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine is “smoothness with an edge; a razor wrapped in silk.”

The other cover is closer to the spirit of the original, sans the lull created by the dignified procession of Bob, Charlie, and Kenny through the John Wesley Harding arrangement. Vic Chesnutt doesn’t give himself any safety net, he just dives in and falls. The cover is a live performance from the Drunk era, and Vic sings weakly, ghost-like, and his band’s accompaniment is gentle. So far so similar, but inbetween verses Vic plays long, unhurried acoustic guitar solos as desperate and frightful as St. Augustine himself, “tearing through these quarters in the utmost misery.” Leave it to Vic to seem as soft as falling snow, while digging a hole in the surface of the world so deep that it opens unto dread void.