CHAPTER 2 “The Titanic sails at dawn”: Bob Dylan, “Tempest”, and the Apocalyptic Imagination

“Tempest” is one of the longest songs Dylan has written. His point of departure is the Titanic disaster, but it soon becomes obvious that Titanic is a meta-phor, pointing to something much bigger than the 1912 disaster. “Tempest” is a rich song in the sense that it contains references to many different sources. My aim is to try to uncover some of these, in order to detect how this vast collage is used to create a new story that transcends the original one. It comes as no great surprise that apocalyptic themes literally come to the surface in the song. In what ways does Dylan express his apocalyptic imagination in “Tempest”, and how is this related to other songs in the Tempest album?