Therefore, it appears that the Academy’s choices, so of course – the Swedish newspaper svenska Dagbladet

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez Photo: David Magnus/REX/IBL

Murarna between the is called popular culture and high culture is not torn. In all cases not to the extent I imagined. Or, more accurately, these two extremes need to constantly new plans and right now it was extremely long ago, we talked about how they should be treated. The nobel prize in literature was awarded to the song – and dansmannen Bob Dylan is a great opportunity for such a discussion. It has, as hardly anyone has been able to evade, already set up and running. And no – not really I also, of course, know exactly how to deal with it.

at the same time as Bob Dylan, twenty years ago, published its last – or one should perhaps for the sake say latest – undeniable masterful text ("Not dark yet" on the album "Time out of mind"), we were many that had the fully up to scream that it was high time to take popular culture seriously. Today it is an obsolete mantra that most sounds silly. For we got, as we desired. Or?

Here we sit, with the Eurovision song contest, the family Kardashian, Max Martin and Paradise Hotel, and they are all – depending on who you ask – on the deepest gravity. Nicely so. In a way. The gap between the traditionally fine in the edge – "the documented important art" – and the ugly – "trivial nonsense, but which, in the hands of the right samtidstolkare says a lot about our time" – has never been more depth. One may be modern, smart, or both, but the second one is formed and academic kravmärkt.

As it falls, barely visible to the human eye, between the finest and the ugliest seats are, well, the finkulturella popular culture. Bob Dylan is a great example of it.

Two authors that repeated times have been mentioned as Nobelpriskandidater, Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood, have in their latest respective novels chosen to flaunt and play with their enormous literary historiekunskaper with lots of small references to, in particular, Shakespeare. Remarks of the critic are always very frisky this for then the hen is also excelling.

Then the critic educated, nice and intelligent, and knows as much about pop music and its lyrics are, however, mere glasses.

Somewhere in the middle is Bob Dylan: just between the finest research in the tweedkavaj and nidbilden of a myopic adult gentleman with a Jolt Cola in front of the setlists on the computer in mommy’s basement.

But since the beginning of the 1990s, Bob Dylan increasingly done exactly as McEwan or Atwood and borrowed and referred to the ancient american music in its most original forms: folk songs, blues, bluegrass and showtunes from the time before there were machines to record them with. Someone who spends four years in dusty archives for a thesis on, say, Joseph Conrad may fine hats and come together with reverence. Nobel prize or not: the image of the dylanologen remains an unhealthy freak with too much free time.

When I the news of the Nobel prize in literature, sat and read a selection of Bob Dylan-the texts – without any music or voice accompaniment – so, I reacted both surprisingly quickly and often on how I can be so many of them by heart, how I periodically quote them and also how many perfected their own short stories, he has written music. The more I read and throws me between the phases in Dylan’s still-going life’s work appears to be the Academy’s choice that is so obvious.

Bob Dylan’s the only possible problem is that he is a concept, almost a cartoon character, one of the last century’s greatest, and then fifty years back the most cherished artists. And possibly means this award therefore absolutely nothing to him. But, for me, means it’s probably more than I want to admit: I am, deep down, genuinely happy to poplyriken of a leading senders are in addition to traditional poetry. That is exactly where the well-chosen parts of it should be. Philip Larkin and the Nas belong under each letter in exactly the same shelf.

‘ I tried to be the Fred Astaire of words", once wrote a british composer and lyricist who had also read his Dylan more than carefully. And in the wording – which had really been Bob Dylan’s custom – fit really all you need to know. I had wanted to use the expression "word and the fatman" here in the very last row, but I think it is stolen the parable in the previous paragraph will be more than enough. So many wanted to be the language’s Fred Astaire. But no one has Bob Dylan been able to seemingly without effort, letting their words, their languages, just slide over the metaforernas dance floor all the way into eternity.