Farewell, Angelina: Dylan’s goodbye to love, peace and hope?

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, 1963 March on Washington. Photo courtesy U.S. Information Agency, Public Domain

Rebecca Pattni explores a haunting song’s reflection on endings

Growing up in a world overflowing with political unrest, climate anxiety and the constant noise of social media, uncertainty is inescapable and has become part of my everyday life. As a young woman of 19, I’m drawn to songs that don’t offer clear answers but instead sit in emotional grey areas; music that pulls you in and helps you reflect. Bob Dylan’s Farewell, Angelina is one of those songs. It is surreal, beautiful and unsettling and still feels powerfully relevant today.

Farewell, Angelina is an airy, transient yet painfully beautiful ballad written by Bob Dylan for his album The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991. It’s a haunting song exploring themes of leaving, uncertainty, and the passage of time, and is often connected to his relationship with Joan Baez.

Dylan and Baez had a tumultuous relationship in which they went from ‘onstage collaborators to romantic partners’. Joan Baez also famously covered Dylan’s song, in which she captures the essence of the song’s fleeting nature. So, Baez’s cover adds a dimension of loss to the already heartbreaking ballad. I feel that her cover of the song is a perplexing romantic gesture to Bob, in which she is reflecting on their relationship.

FarOut magazine tells us that Dylan ‘was sorry to ever see [his] relationship ever end’. It is clear to see that Farewell, Angelina is a complex song with an even more complex dynamic behind it, seeming like a letter written but never sent. The placement of the comma in the title of the song infers that goodbye is never a possibility, there is always more to be said to Angelina.

This song implies that the relationship between Baez and Dylan had no conclusive ending, since their lives remained intertwined through their shared profession. Both have been said to address one another in their music years after their romance ended, reinforcing the eternal yearning and longing present in Farewell, Angelina.

Check out Bob Dylan’s original 1965 studio version of Farewell, Angelina ↓

FarOut magazine describes it as a ‘surreal standalone’ ballad, a fitting description given the indescribable and uncapturable feeling of longing in the song. The mystery surrounding the identity of Angelina adds another layer to its mystical quality. Angelina could be you or I. Dylan may be addressing the audience asking us to listen to him. Or she could be an imagined figure who Dylan speaks to in times of trouble.

The etymology of the name Angelina reveals that it is derived from Greek and means ‘messenger of God’. People theorise that Dylan is bidding farewell to all ties with divinity and God. Perhaps because he has lost a love which provided him with the feeling of heaven and divinity. Or, the current political state of the world could be a reason for his abandonment of hope and faith, causing him to say goodbye to any connection he has with God or peace.

Brought up in a Jewish household, Dylan converted to Christianity in the late 1970s. In my opinion, this reference to Angelina is not Biblical. I feel it is a way of letting go and saying goodbye to peace or hope. Despite the clear and apparent beauty of the song, there is an unmistakable feeling of hopelessness. This is conveyed in the flexible ABCB rhyme scheme of the song, a common feature of folk music which gives a swing to it. This swing and constant return to the alternating rhyme in the BCB part of the song gives it a cyclical structure. For example, the first stanza contains this returning sense of a goodbye and a departure.

Farewell, Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpets play slow
But farewell, Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must go

The repeated phrase Farewell, Angelina anchors the song’s theme of inevitable change and departure. Each verse ends with a reference to the sky, personified in ways that evoke emotional unrest. Skies usually suggest stability or a distant limit, but in the song they are described as falling, trembling, on fire, changing colour, embarrassed, erupting. These mirror the speaker’s inner state. It is as if the shifting sky becomes a reason, or an excuse to leave Angelina. The break feels necessary, the sky erupting like a relationship at its limit, perhaps echoing Dylan and Baez’s own fallout.

Timothée Chalamet stars in A Complete Unknown, a biopic about Bob Dylan ↓

Alternatively, the sky’s turmoil could suggest the speaker’s sense that they can no longer sustain a relationship while the world falls apart. Political undertones surface here, as if the speaker is telling Angelina they must leave to serve a greater cause. Dylan was writing during the 60s, a time of upheaval and fear. This period saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the looming threat of nuclear destruction.

Timothée Chalamet’s starring role in ‘A Complete Unknown’, Bob Dylan’s biopic, provides a telling insight into Dylan and Baez’s relationship. Dylan appears a solitary character, one who valued pursuing music above all. This is particularly poignant in the scene in which Baez kicked Dylan out of her hotel room because he was too engrossed in song writing to acknowledge her presence.

There is no doubt that this fear and helplessness felt by millions of people has been cleverly and insightfully captured by Dylan’s ballad. Lines like: But farewell, Angelina / The sky is on fire / And I must go and But farewell, Angelina / The sky is falling / I’ll see you in a while evoke a powerful sense of urgency and disorientation. The increase in severity of the state of the sky throughout the song could symbolise the waves of closeness Dylan and Baez experienced in their romance.

Ultimately, Farewell, Angelina is the kind of rare and transcendentally moving song which requires a talent that appears once in a lifetime. Dylan’s remarkable song writing abilities combined with Baez’s uniquely captivating voice is the formula for a masterpiece and I truly believe that Farewell, Angelina is exactly that.