Crossing The Rubicon

Introduction

On the interpretation I’ll be putting forward, the narrator is guilt ridden. We find out from his own thoughts that he raped a woman. And by way of the workings of his mind, we learn of his despair and need for redemption. We also become aware of numerous imperfections in his character, some of which would make redemption difficult to achieve. The narrator’s moral failings, combined with a desire for forgiveness, make him, as he perceives himself to be, a plausible representative of humanity generally.

One of the many ambiguities of the song concerns the refrain ‘I crossed the Rubicon’. I’ll argue that this can be interpreted as referring to two different events separated in time, yet we don’t have to decide between them because both are central to the song’s meaning.

There are ten sections (the most important being 1-6 and 10):

1. The addressee
2. Blood that flows
3. Redemption
4. Mona
5. Mona as both victim and redeemer
6. Crossing the Rubicon
7. Moral failings (in five sub-sections)
8. The worst time
9. The worst place
10. The narrator’s spiritual development

1. The addressee

It’s not immediately apparent who the narrator is addressing, nor whether it’s the same person throughout the song. When, in verses four and six for example, he makes three accusations or threats:

 ‘I’ll make your wife a widow – you’ll never see old age’, ¹

 ‘You defiled the most lovely flower in all of womanhood’

and

‘I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife and I’ll miss you when you’re gone’

it’s most likely that he’s addressing himself. He is the defiler of ‘the most lovely flower’. This is supported by his admitting to having:

 ‘… kissed the girls’

 (it’s left to us to add ‘and made them cry’) and his urging his hearer to:

 ‘… let me love’.

The phrase ‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone’, makes it unlikely he’d be addressing anyone else. It would seem out of place said to someone he was about to attack with a knife. If he’s addressing himself, however, it would represent self-pity.

That the narrator is threatening himself is also supported by indications that he believes death could be imminent. In verse four he mentions having paid his debts. And a line in verse five begins ‘If I survive’.

He would also seem to be addressing himself in verse seven when he says:

‘You won’t find any happiness here – no happiness or joy’

This is because the pessimism about finding happiness takes up an earlier reference to happiness which is clearly to his own:

‘Put my heart upon the hill where some happiness I’ll find’

2. Blood that flows

‘Rubicon’ literally means ‘Red River’. We’re told:

‘The Rubicon is the Red River, going gently as she flows
Redder than your ruby lips and the blood that flows from the rose’

It seems that by way of this association with blood, the river represents redemption. This is because in the New Testament the Holy Spirit is described as:

‘… the true blood of Christ which still is flowing …’ (Revelation 1:5) ²

The phrase ‘the blood that flows from the rose’ is enigmatic until in verse six we encounter the accusation:

 ‘You defiled the most lovely flower in all of womanhood’

The double occurrence of ‘flows’ in ‘gently as she flows’ and ‘blood that flows from the rose’ is taken up by the first syllable of ‘flower’ in ‘the most lovely flower’. This lets us know that it’s the blood from this ‘most lovely flower’ which is the aforementioned ‘blood that flows from the rose’. It’s this rose, this most lovely flower, that has been defiled – or deflowered.

Furthermore, the phrase ‘the most lovely flower’ associates the defiled woman with the redemption represented by the river and, relatedly, its gentleness. As will be demonstrated in more depth below, she is not just the narrator’s victim but potentially his redeemer.

3. Redemption

The word ‘redeem’ tends to be used in two contexts – a religious one, in which one is redeemed by Christ for one’s sins, and a commercial one, in which one buys back articles from a pawn broker. Both senses are present in the song.

It’s the religious one that the narrator is primarily concerned with. Early in the song he claims to see the world as wicked and by implication in need of redemption:

 ‘What are these dark days I see in this world so badly bent’,

but then immediately changes the focus to himself as potential redeemer:

 ‘How can I redeem the time – the time so idly spent’

It’s unclear whether he means it’s his own misspent time that he’d buy back if only he knew how, or the whole world. Were he in fact able to redeem the world, he’d be taking on a Christ-like role – a theme which will be developed.

The phrases ‘dark days’ and a ‘world so badly bent’ suggest, however, that it’s something worse than idleness that needs redeeming.

***

Absurdly, the narrator immediately goes on to change the subject from spiritual redemption to the other, commercial, sort of redemption:

‘I pawned my watch and I paid my debts …’

It’s absurd because superficially it seems he’s doing the trivial opposite of what he intended. Instead of redeeming the time, he’s ended up pawning his watch!

There’s a serious side to this, though. Paying his debts, in the sense of making up for his wrong doing, is what he needs to do to be redeemed. In ancient Rome debts had to be paid by the Ides, or fifteenth, of March. By crossing the Rubicon on the fourteenth, he’d be only just in time.

4. Mona

There is only one person mentioned by name in the song, Mona. What we find out about her from just one line in the final verse will be crucial to our understanding of how redemption is to be achieved.

The narrator asks:

‘Mona Baby, are you still in my mind …’

These few words tell us a number of things. First, to the extent that she’s the narrator’s addressee she’s imaginary; one doesn’t ask an actual person if they’re still in your mind. Secondly, the phrase ‘still in my mind’ suggests that he’s conjured her up before. Thirdly, both this, and the fact that he’s having a one-sided conversation with her in his head, suggest that any prior one-sided conversation would have been with her and so would also have been imaginary.

There are various such conversations, including one in verse six involving an accusation and a threat:

‘You defiled the most lovely flower in all of womanhood
…
I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife and I’ll miss you when you’re gone’

The nature of the accusation, rape, would suggest that this is Mona accusing the narrator, rather than the other way about. But since we’re assuming that what she says is made up by the narrator, the narrator must be accusing himself. In his mind the words come from Mona, but they’re his words. The accusation represents his acceptance that he’s done something wrong, and the addition of ‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone’ represents a desire that what he’s done hasn’t damned him. It’s what he’d like to hear from her.

If it is Mona he imagines speaking these words, this is one of several reasons for thinking she’s the person he abused.

5. Mona as both victim and redeemer

In the final verse Mona is not being made to speak words the narrator wants to hear. It’s her mere presence, albeit a fictional one, together with the exceptional loyalty towards him which this represents, which the narrator takes comfort from:

‘Couldn’t be anybody else but you who’s come with me this far’

There are other things in addition to loyalty that Mona represents in this verse, though. She can be identified with the Holy Spirit and, through the Holy Spirit, Christ. These provide further reasons for identifying her with the narrator’s victim. I’ll take each of these in turn.

There’s an indication that Mona and the Holy Spirit are one and the same since both exist within the narrator. He can:

‘… feel the Holy Spirit inside’

and Mona is:

‘ … still in my mind’.

And since the Holy Spirit is:

‘the true blood of Christ which still is flowing …’ (Revelation 1:5),

Mona can be identified with Christ.

Mona is again identified with Christ – and the ‘true blood of Christ which is still flowing’-  through the religious sounding phrase ‘I truly believe’:

 ‘Mona Baby, are you still in my mind – I truly believe that you are’

What she’s done to merit this identification with Christ is to have shown loyalty and compassion; to have:

‘… come with me this far’

Her loyalty, together with her representing Christ, suggests that she is instrumental to how the narrator might achieve redemption.

***

Mona is instrumental to the narrator’s possible redemption in that her loyalty amounts to forgiveness – the forgiveness of the narrator by his victim. For that to be so, she needs to be that victim.

That Mona and the narrator’s victim are identical becomes apparent when we realise that the latter too is identical with Christ. There are two ways in which she can be identified with Christ. First, since she is:

‘… the most lovely flower in all of womanhood’,

and as such can be identified with ‘the rose’ in:

‘… the blood that flows from the rose’.

This ‘blood that flows’ from her is Christ’s flowing blood. And secondly, it’s because ‘the rose’ with which ‘the most lovely flower’ is identical, can be taken as the risen – that is, the risen Christ.

Since the victim and Mona are both Christ, then Mona’s loyalty is the victim’s loyalty. In the latter’s case it amounts to forgiveness – and, because she is Christ, to Christ’s forgiveness. As such it is a step on the way to the narrator’s redemption.

To be redeemed, however, the narrator must presumably show that he’s worthy of this forgiveness. This is in doubt. In his appreciative comment:

‘Couldn’t be anybody else but you who’s come with me this far’,

the words ‘this far’ are telling. They imply that the attitude of forgiveness, might cease. That would be the case if the narrator were undeserving of it; if he failed to reform.

6. Crossing the Rubicon

Ever since Caesar took the decision to enter Rome and overthrow Pompey, ‘to cross the Rubicon’ has come to mean to take decisive action on which there is no going back. We can assume, then, that when the narrator uses the phrase, he’s referring to a decisive act of his own. This act seems to be two separate things, both his original crime and his later attempt at achieving redemption, just as the woman he abused is both victim and potential redeemer.

At the start of the song the narrator is looking back:

‘I crossed the Rubicon on the 14^th day of the most dangerous month of the year’

For Caesar it turned out that the most dangerous month was March, since he was assassinated on the Ides – the fifteenth – of March. By noting the date, the narrator seems aware that his action could be a precursor to his own demise – in his case spiritual rather than literal. If crossing the Rubicon were to be interpreted as his crime alone, then redemption would look to be impossible because there would be no going back. Hence the despairing cry of ‘Oh God!’ on the recorded version.

However, crossing the Rubicon doesn’t represent his crime alone. As a manifestation of the Holy Spirit it’s a symbol of redemption and the narrator’s crossing it a step on the road to his actual redemption.

7. Moral failings

The narrator has a number of moral weaknesses. I’ll mention five or six. Some of these make it far from certain that he’ll achieve redemption.

Failing to reform

The narrator seems likely to put his redemption at risk by carrying on in the same old way. This becomes apparent when he refers ambiguously to embracing his ‘love’, without making it clear whether or not this is his wife or his victim.

A further sign that he might not achieve redemption is his saying:

‘If I survive then let me love …’

– at least if its erotic love he has in mind. (Agape would be consistent with redemption.)

Likewise, when he advises himself to:

‘Take the high road – take the low, take the one you’re on’,

he seems content to do what he finds himself doing anyway – evil or not. The language is taken from the traditional Scottish song ‘Loch Lomond’ where the low road leads to a lover’s death. Accordingly, by being prepared to take the low road, the narrator is showing he’s prepared to continue with behaviour which will end up with his own spiritual or physical death. ³

Homophobia

A crime like rape would seem to have an obvious motive. However a pair of lines in verse seven suggests that the narrator’s motive is more complex:

‘You won’t find any happiness here – no happiness or joy
Go back to the gutter and try your luck – find you some nice young pretty boy’

The phrase ‘Go back to the gutter and try your luck’ is enough to get across the narrator’s scathing self-contempt once the horror of his crime has sunk in. This becomes even more scathing with:

‘… find you some nice young pretty boy’

The choice of the phrase ‘nice young pretty boy’ suggests a homophobic side to the narrator’s character – a suggestion reinforced by his earlier reference to:

 ‘… this world so badly bent’.

And since ‘Go back to the gutter’ suggests that an interest in boys is something he had in the past, the contempt implies it’s an interest he’s tried to suppress. For all we know, his motive for raping his victim was as an attempt to prove his heterosexuality to himself – although there’s no precise indication that this is the case. ⁴

Sexism and Misogyny

It’s consistent with his contempt for the idea of attraction to a ‘pretty boy’ that the narrator immediately changes the subject to men:

‘Tell me how many men I need and who I can count upon’

and what he takes to be manly qualities such as assertiveness. The phrase ‘Tell me’ is more assertive than the ‘find you’ of the previous line. And the idea of knowing who can be counted upon has a definiteness about it which ‘try your luck’ lacks. The verse ends:

‘I strapped my belt and buttoned my coat and I crossed the Rubicon’

Again the note is assertive.

Gender bias is again evident when he refers to freedom (presumably from sin) as being:

‘… within the reach of every man who lives’.

This is preceded by another assertive demand involving the same gender bias:

‘Show me one good man in sight …’

Ironically, given the nature of his crime, he seems to be ignoring the existence of women.

***

While the threat:

‘I’ll make your wife a widow’,

if directed at himself, is an indirect way of saying that he’s considering taking his own life, it can be seen as misogynistic in that he ignores the effect on his wife of being made a widow. His focus is entirely on himself.

The narrator also comes across as misogynistic in being both married and sexually profligate.

Self-deception

The narrator is guilty of self-deception. This is shown by his question:

‘What are these dark days I see in this world …’

If the days are ‘dark’, then – literally – he can’t be seeing them. One wonders if he’s focusing on evil in the world as a whole simply to distract himself from his own imperfections.

***

Something similar is going on when he demands:

‘Show me one good man in sight that the sun shines down upon’

for here the phrase ‘in sight’ is redundant.

There are two reasons for this. First, if one is shown something, it will automatically be in sight so ‘in sight’ doesn’t need saying.

Secondly, the inclusion of ‘in sight’ has the effect of changing the meaning of the request. The narrator, following Diogenes in his fruitless search for just one good man, is declaring that there are no good men in the world. Presumably, once again, it’s to make his own imperfections seem not so bad. However, it’s an obvious lie. But by including the phrase ‘in sight’, he can give the lie a semblance of truth. What he ends up saying is true, but absurdly insignificant – namely that there is no good man within the short radius of his vision.

***

A tendency to self-deception also becomes apparent when he directly contradicts his claim that there’s not one good man:

‘Others can be tolerant – others can be good’

Again he’s disingenuously saying what it suits him to say. As before, his aim in saying ‘others can be good’ is to make his own crime seem less bad. It’s just the strategy that’s different. Whereas before it was to claim that goodness is impossible, it’s now to imply that he doesn’t have the ability to be good in the way that others can.

‘Others can be tolerant’ is likewise disingenuous, although for a different reason. The claim seems intended not so much to excuse his crime but to place himself in a favourable moral light by condemning it. Other people might be able to tolerate criminality, he’s saying, but he has higher standards – which he clearly knows that he doesn’t. ⁵

Wishful thinking

The choice of language in a line from verse six tells us something about the narrator’s character:

‘I’ll cut you up with a crooked knife and I’ll miss you when you’re gone’

Here, he seems guilty of wishful thinking in that what’s said is unduly favourable to him. Although he’s threatening himself, a crooked knife wouldn’t normally be the implement of choice for cutting somebody up. Rather it’s as if he’s suggesting to himself that his crime needn’t warrant taking his own life. Hence, perhaps, the hopeful ‘If I survive …’ of verse five.

Similarly ‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone’, being an unlikely sentiment to be uttered immediately prior to killing someone, is more likely to be an expression of the narrator’s own hope that there’ll be something about him worth remembering. And as with the ‘crooked knife’, it might also indicate that he’s beginning to backslide on his intention to take his own life.

8. The worst time

Although the narrator is accused of crossing the Rubicon:

‘At the worst time at the worst place …’

this, it would seem is only half the story. It’s the view of his critics (or himself in critical mode), but one which he disparages:

 ‘… that’s all I seem to hear’

Since crossing the Rubicon can be taken as both his original crime and his later forgiveness, whether he actually crossed at the worst time and place will depend on which of the two we have in mind.

If what he means is the crime, then it’s true that he crossed at the worst time. Likewise getting up ‘early’ to cross the river can be seen as occurring ‘at the worst time’ if dawn is when his crime occurred. What is presumably a remembered warning:

‘Keep as far away as possible – it’s darkest ‘fore the dawn’

suggests that it might have been.

But it’s also true that he crossed at a time which wasn’t the worst if crossing the river is taken as a further step on the way to redemption. The narrator disparages his critics for not acknowledging this but instead seeming to harp on about his crime.

9.  The worst place

The criticism that he crossed:

‘… at the worst place’

can also be interpreted in two ways.

It would be the worst place in that he crossed a mere:

‘Three miles north of purgatory – one step from the great beyond’

It’s because his crossing – his crime – took him so close to purgatory that he might be deemed to have crossed at the worst place.

Nevertheless, by focusing on his moral failing the critics are ignoring his desire for forgiveness. If he’s redeemed, he’ll have avoided punishment in the afterlife by three miles, and death by ‘one step’. He’s thereby remained a small but significant distance from ‘the worst place’.

Just as the river represents both his crime and his potential redemption, so his crossing it both does and does not occur at the worst time and place

10. Narrator’s spiritual development

One would think from his numerous references to religious concepts that redemption would be uppermost in the narrator’s mind. This is most obviously the case, though, only towards the end of the song. In contrast, at the start, he abandons all hope suggesting, following Dante, that he deserves hell. ⁶

Gradually he becomes more ambivalent. For example, two inconsistencies are apparent in his having:

 ‘… prayed to the cross and kissed the girls …’

First, it seems extraordinary that he’s unaware that prayer and sexual licentiousness don’t go together.

A second inconsistency lies in his seeming to combine the previously expressed reverence for the cross with reverence for a pagan deity:

‘I got up early so I could greet the Goddess of the Dawn’

There’s still no commitment to Christian values at this stage.

As the song progresses, his attitude towards Christianity becomes more serious. Halfway through, when he asks for his heart to be put:

 ‘… upon the hill’

following his intended suicide, he’s at least seeming to associate  his death with Christ’s on Calvary.

He also assumes the role of Christ at the last supper:

‘I poured the cup and passed it along’

This seems to represent a desire that everyone should partake in his suffering so that the whole world – ‘the time’ – is redeemed. Thus what seemed absurd at the beginning of the song, his desire to redeem the world rather than just himself, now seems plausible in that he takes steps to ensure that the redemptive behaviour he instigates is taken up by others. As he puts it, redemption is:

‘…  within the reach of every man who lives’

The last two verses represent further development. In the final line of the song:

 ‘I lit the torch and I looked to the east and I crossed the Rubicon’

he’s looking to the east and hence in hope of seeing the rising sun, not now for guidance from the pagan Goddess of the Dawn –  but for ‘the light that freedom gives’. This, judging by the need for a torch, is still not visible. Nevertheless, in verse eight he does claim to see this light.

Verse eight is also important for showing the narrator becoming associated with Christ and redemption – ‘freedom’ from sin – by way of internalising the Holy Spirit. This first happens by way of feeling. In verse four, he says:

‘I feel the bones beneath my skin and they’re trembling with rage’

 And then, In verse eight, it’s feeling which makes the Holy Spirit known to him:

 ‘I feel the Holy Spirit inside and see the light that freedom gives’

It is as if by raging at his crime he is identifying with the Holy Spirit.

An association with Christ and the Holy Spirit occurs again in the final verse by way of Mona’s identification with Christ and the narrator’s identification with Mona.

Conclusion

The song is about redemption. The narrator wants to be redeemed following his rape of a woman. It doesn’t just concern the narrator’s own redemption, though. He’s aware that redemption is needed by, and is within the reach of, ‘every man who lives’. For his own part, though, that means he must live, and so has a reason to put aside the unwelcome idea of having to take his own life.

Among the narrator’s faults is wishful thinking. He wants it to be the case that he’s forgiven and he imagines his victim forgiving him. By way of the song’s river, blood and flower imagery, we’re able to identify his victim with Christ, and as such she represents the route to his redemption – the forgiveness he imagines her bestowing on him. To capitalise on this, he must reform but by the end of the song it’s not clear whether or not he has.

The uncertainty is due to the working of numerous ambiguities which are never resolved. We often don’t know whether what is being alluded to is the narrator’s crime or his redemption. Thus, crossing the Rubicon seems to represent both the act leading to his spiritual death and a step on the way to his possible redemption. The sun (as the Goddess of the Dawn) represents his initial pagan outlook. But it also represents his developing Christian one. Love, as in the narrator’s demand to be allowed to ‘love’, can be interpreted as erotic love or ‘agape’. And the ‘love’ he embraces could be his victim or wife.⁷ The road he takes could be the high road or the low road – the latter, but not the former, leading to spiritual death. The happiness he wants is to be obtained either from the hill (Calvary) or the gutter (more immorality). The key which is broken off could be to keep him in the company of his victim or away from temptation. For none of these pairs do we find out which one the narrator ultimately opts for.

The problem about whether he achieves redemption is further compounded by his having so many faults. These include homophobia, sexism, misogyny, self-deception and wishful thinking. Furthermore, the last line of the song refers to winter, associated with death. Nevertheless, that there’s hope is implied by the development of his Christian outlook, which is discernible through all the ambiguities, and by his believing he feels the Holy Spirit ‘inside’ – as well as the value he puts on his victim’s forgiveness. It’s also implied by his own role as redeemer in pouring the cup and passing it along.

Notes

1. The line is based on Homer, Iliad Book 6, line 414.
2. As in I contain Multitudes there may be a suggestion of life and death being inseparable. The ‘most lovely flower’ is alive as the river likewise is. In crossing the river, i.e. committing crime, the narrator goes against this representative of life. In verse eight he refers to redemption being ‘… within the reach of every man who lives’ which suggests that he now values life over death.
3. The reference is to the refrain: ‘You’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road / And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.’ ‘The narrator is a Jacobite soldier in England dying from battle injuries, and is addressing a fellow soldier who is unhurt and will return to Scotland. The ‘high road’ is the main road or highway which the survivor will use. The ‘low road’ refers to a folk belief that the souls of the dead, after burial, could travel instantaneously through the ground to their homelands. The dying man is saying that once he is dead and buried his soul will return to Scotland faster than his surviving comrade will march there, hence he says ”I’ll be in Scotland afore ye”. (Jonathan Gurney on Quora). There’s also an Irish version of the song is called ‘Red is the Rose’ – which phrase is possibly therefore the inspiration for Dylan’s ‘the blood that flows from the rose’.
4. Another possibility, which I won’t be considering, is that the addressee is a male lover. The gender is consistent both with there being a wife and the defiling of a woman. And being a lover is consistent both with the phrase ‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone’ and with an earlier reference to:

‘… your ruby lips …’.

The interpretation might also tie up with two apparent references to gay      relationships in the song. The criticism that he’s homophobic would still apply even if his contempt were not being directed at himself but, say, at a male lover.  According to the dylyricus website, Dylan has sung variations on the original lyrics, including:

‘Well, you foxy man, you’re the talk of the town
You’ve been suckin’ off all of the younger men
I trusted you once and that was more than enough
I’ll never trust another person again
I’ll rip your heart, cut your heart out with a crooked knife
And I’ll weep until it’s gone
I stood between heaven and earth, and I crossed the Rubicon’

5. The phrase ‘others can be tolerant’ would also fit with an interpretation of the song in which the narrator is threatening someone else for raping the woman. In that case it would be an excuse for his taking violent revenge. I’m not sure such an interpretation, though immediately more obvious, can be sustained, however.
6. ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ Dante Divine Comedy, Canto III, line 9.
7. The line is ‘I embraced my love, put down my head and I crossed the Rubicon’ In addition to the obvious interpretation, ‘put down my head’ might mean he didn’t take his head, i.e. he didn’t think before crossing river and ‘defiling’ the ‘most lovely flower’. This might suggest ‘my love’ is the abused woman. There’s an echo of My Own Version of You in which the narrator wants the head ‘put on straight’.