Bob Dylan, original name 

Robert Allen Zimmerman, American folksinger in the 1960s

who has recorded a large number of albums revolving around topics such as: the social
conditions of man, religion, politics and love, sold tens of millions of albums, wrote more
than 500 songs recorded by more than 2,000 artists, performed all over the world, and set the
standard for lyric writing. Besides his large production of albums, Dylan has published
experimental work like the prose poetry collection Tarantula (1971). He was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. He was also influenced by the early authors of the
Beat Generation, as well as by modernist poets.
"Visions of Johanna" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan on his 1966
album Blonde on Blonde. Several critics have acclaimed "Visions of Johanna" as one of
Dylan's highest achievements in writing, praising the allusiveness and subtlety of the
language. Rolling Stone included "Visions of Johanna" on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs
of All Time. In 1999, Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, listed it as
the greatest song lyric ever written. While writing the lyrics for ‘Visions of Johanna’, Dylan
was living with his future wife Sara at the famous Chelsea Hotel in New York. Some
accounts go as far as to say the song was written during the East Coast blackout that hit New
York and seven neighbouring states on November 9th, 1965. 
The main subject of the song, Johanna, has been debated over the years following its release,
with Dylan never fully clarifying whether the fictional character was based on any particular
real-world person. It is often suggested that Johanna was based on fellow singer-
songwriter Joan Baez, with whom Dylan had been in a relationship a year or so earlier. Baez
was a key collaborator during Dylan’s early rise to fame. Further evidence for the link to
Baez can be heard in the final verse with the mention of Madonna, “barefoot Madonna” had
also been a nickname for Joan Baez. As Dylan sings the final few lines of the song, he
appears upset that Johanna has now left him: “And Madonna, she still has not showed / We
see this empty cage now corrode / Where her cape of the stage once had flowed. In these
lines, Dylan explains that Madonna has gone and so now “the fiddler” takes “to the road”. It
could be derived that Dylan is the fiddler and he explains that now his relationship with Baez
is over, it’s time to move on. ‘Visions of Johanna’ could be a song that Dylan used to come to
terms with his emotions. Clearly, he still has some remnant lamentation as his “conscience
explodes,” and “these visions of Johanna are all that remain.”
Finally, we need to figure out who Louise is. This one is more difficult; if the character does
exist in Dylan’s real world, Louise could be Sara, or one of his other close friends at the time
of writing, who comes across as a representation of love, understanding and warmth –
perhaps a confidante for Dylan helping him overcome his demons. If Louise isn’t reflecting a
real person in Dylan’s life, then perhaps she is one of the blurred ‘Visions of Johanna’ or an
embodiment of his conscience. she can be taken to represent good sense, love, understanding
and kindness. For the first of these she is a source of sensible encouragement to the narrator
to  refuse to resort to (‘defy’) drugs (‘a handful of rain’) as a means of overcoming the horror
of being ‘stranded’ – unable to escape our lot. 
The fear of nothingness is explicitly tied to loving Louise. The night plays tricks on the
songwriter, forcing on him intrusive visions, visions of Johanna, where there’s nothing –
nothing to turn off, only Louise and her lover. If there’s nothing to turn off, there’s nothing
turned on either – and that includes Dylan, who is so unimpressed by his entwinement with
Louise that his focus is (comically) on a loft that’s far away and noises that are barely
audible. The use of “her lover”, which is in fact ‘me’, implies here a distancing of the singer’s
true self, conquered by visions of Johanna, from his current situation, caught up with Louise,
thereby reinforcing the impression of an oddly distracted lover.
The first verse of the song contains all the themes of the rest of the song. The opposition of
Dylan’s true and false selves. The opposition of Louise and Johanna – on one level, the dime-
a-dozen girl vs the non-existent soul mate; and on another, the earthly vs the pure, the ideal.
This last opposition, when inflected by the singer’s evident concern with songwriterly failure,
turns into a question of artistic mundanity vs pure creativity. If we see this aspect, we might
see the singer’s being entwined with Louise as him being engrossed in writing a mediocre
song.  the central contrast between Louise and Johanna similar to  the form of the song itself.
transcendence forbids clarity of form: Johanna must remain a vision.  The ghost of poetic
electricity, the creative spark if you will, haunts the singer as he considers Louise’s face, as
he is consumed by visions of Johanna’s perfect beauty.