In his second song since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan lists a catalogue of influences, including Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, Beethoven, and Chopin. The title of the song is taken from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, in which the poet, having finally acknowledged that his self is the sum total of all that has influenced it, writes:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Self-contradiction is also a theme in Dylan’s song, whose narrator declares, “I’m a man of contradictions, I’m a man of many moods.” For both poet and songwriter, incoherence seems to be inevitable – those who came before are so numerous, and so diverse, that consistency can only come at the cost of inauthenticity.…