Love Minus Zero/No Limit

I've thought for a while about the meaning of this song and I have made sense of it in my mind. The thing about a lot of love songs is that the subject of love is left ambiguous for the listener's interpretation. Here, love can be a person, object, symbol, or place. It can mean anything that holds some sort of eternal perfection. We can argue on and on about what Dylan really meant by love but we will never know for sure and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Basically in this song every two lines offers an idea and each verse has 4 of these pairs of lines. Except for the first and last (I'll get to the last verse later), it is obvious that he uses the first 3 pairs of lines or so to set up an image of how society is, and he uses the last pair of lines in a reversal showing how his love transcends that.

I'll do a breakdown of my own interpretations of each of the lines, based on everything I've read about it on this site and on wikipedia:

"My love she speaks like silence, Without ideals or violence, She doesn't have to say she's faithful, Yet she's true, like ice, like fire."

Here he is saying his love is something so fundamental (like ice, like fire), like truth itself. It is not an ideal, it is real. It doesn't need to speak to prove itself. It doesn't take sides since it is on both the sides of ice and fire, two conflicting forces.

"People carry roses, Make promises by the hours, My love she laughs like the flowers, Valentines can't buy her."

He says people do these unnecessary things to prove their love but in a reversal, his love doesn't have to be proven by any of that. Her laughter is as good a proof of faithfulness as flowers.

"In the dime stores and bus stations, People talk of situations, Read books, repeat quotations, Draw conclusions on the wall."

Dylan describes people in everyday life. They do things as if reciting quotations, not really understanding. Then they try to predict the future, drawing conclusions. "On the wall" as mentioned in wikipedia may be symbolism for ill omens as a reference to the Book of Daniel.

"Some speak of the future, My love she speaks softly, She knows there's no success like failure And that failure's no success at all."

In a reversal, his love isn't like that. His love knows old quotes like "There's no success like failure" but also knows the truth that "failure's no success at all", unlike those who just go around reciting quotations without understanding.

"The cloak and dagger dangles, Madams light the candles."

These two lines bring the image of ill omen. Cloak and dagger traditionally symbolizes contempt and looming violence. The lighting of candles symbolizes the coming of night and darkness.

"In ceremonies of the horsemen, Even the pawn must hold a grudge."

The horsemen, knights, are compared to pawns (chess pieces). He is saying a pawn (person of low class or little wealth) likely holds resentment towards the more valuable knight (high class or wealthy).

"Statues made of match sticks, Crumble into one another,"

The statues symbolize those social constructs and the ideas of wealth and class. They are self-destructive.

"My love winks, she does not bother, She knows too much to argue or to judge."

His love knows this. His love knows not hold any resentment or judge a person based on those mentioned social constructs.

"The bridge at midnight trembles, The country doctor rambles,"

I believe the bridge symbolizes a bridge between life and death, and it trembles because of people crossing it. The country doctor brings up the idea of mortality again.

"Bankers' nieces seek perfection, Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring."

Bankers' nieces refers to Henry James' novel "A Portrait of a Lady", where the niece is searching for something impossible to find. "Gifts that wise men bring" is a reference to the gifts wise men brought to Jesus' birth. In a world of death, that the previous two lines set up, the banker's niece is searching for a miraculous birth, something seemingly so impossible.

"The wind howls like a hammer, The night blows cold and rainy,"

He continues with some ominous imagery, and a clever simile.

"My love she's like some raven At my window with a broken wing."

And this is the ultimate reversal although it may not seem so at first. Like the banker's niece, trapped in a world of misery and mortality, this raven is injured and trapped in the harsh weather. Unlike the niece who seeks something impossible however, the raven is right by the window. Dylan is saying he can save the raven. This final reversal is also a reversal on another level. You can notice that the structure of the entire song is like the structure of a verse in the song. Rather than the idealistic view of love that he presented to us in the past 3 verses, this love is surprisingly delicate.

Of course, I'm not putting this here as fact. I think everyone probably has a slightly different interpretation. So, please tell me what you think. I'd love to discuss any points of disagreement or interest.