Recently heard from a good friend of mine who’s in the seminary that Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” is based on The Divine Comedy. He played the song for me, and was explaining things that it paralleled in the book. Such as “I can call you Betty…” referred to Beatrice, his guide.
Not The Inferno, the Comedy - the one in Purgatory and Heaven and whatnot. I’ve never read it, and was wondering if anyone out there who has could shed some light on the subject. Thanks.
Okay, so it might help if we had the lyrics in order to examine this : You can call me …
(quick note : The Divine Comedy refers to the entire work, which is composed of three sections Inferno, Purgatario, and Paradiso.)
It’s sort of an interesting thought, and there may be some evidence for it, but it seems almost as likely that Pink Floyd was really writing songs about Populism and William Jennings Bryan. Most likely there’s no intended connection (not saying there isn’t) but the connection seems a bit forced at times.
The strongest bit might be the Betty and Al names, but why would Dante Alighieri be known as ‘Al’? If there were stronger connections elsewhere in the song, it would make more sense, but this seems a weak starting point; the other analogies seem to stem from this one.
Anyway, looking at some rather tenuous other connections :
‘in the middle’ : Dante began his journey “in the middle of life” (at 35, I think.)
‘I want a shot at redemption’ : religious overtones, but doesn’t fit in all that well with Dante’s journey.
‘graveyard … dogs … Mr. Beerbelly, get these mutts away from me’ : possible reference to Cerberos, the 3-headed guardian of Hades, but getting it to Dante doesn’t work well. Who’s Mr. Beerbelly?
‘my role-model is gone’ : could be Virgil (Dante’s former tour guide, before Betty). But who’s the bat-faced girl?
‘maybe it’s the Third World’ : Of course, Paradise was the third stop on Dante’s tour, but the next line is
‘maybe it’s his first time around’ which references reincarnation, not a particularly Christian doctrine.
‘angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity’ : well, yes, angels are pretty clear, but putting them ‘in the architecture’ suggests frescoes or caryatids somehow, and not an image of heaven.
But where do cartoon graveyards, cattle in the marketplace, or Chevy Chase fit in to all of this?
One could almost as easily form the conjecture that the song’s about a man named Al who’s in love with Betty Rubble (cartoon, dogs = Dino, bonedigger/Beerbelly = Fred Flintstone)
However, we know the truth, and the Dante connection is clear because :
Paul Simon once performed with Bob Dylan. At the concert they sang “Tangled Up in Blue”, a song which does in fact reference Dante. q.e.d
panama jack
Anything is possible. . . I suppose.
However,
I find it difficult to believe that Simon would try to address the topics of the Divine Comedy in terms of 1930’s U.S. popular culture. I have never noticed any similarities–not that I get to be final arbiter.
(The Divine Comedy, BTW, is the complete set of three: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. It isn’t “the” Divine Comedy if you drop one of the sections.)
Beelzebub?
Chevy Chase’s career has been in Purgatory since Vacation.
From Paul Simon’s interview with Q Magazine:
Doesn’t sound very “Divine Comedy” inspired, or at least he’s not admitting it right off the bat.
tom- 1930’s popular culture? Educate me, please.
I have always linked the phrases referring to Betty Boop (popular in the 30’s) and these verses from the 1932 song, Brother, can you spare a dime?, to Simon’s song:
I could be entirely mistaken, of course, but I found the similarities of “complaint” in the songs suggestive of a link, especially in comparing these lines of Simon:
(And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that I have always heard either a mondegreen or an unpublished “Boop” after the first “Betty” when I have listened to the song.)