What does Bob Dylan mean by ‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit’?
Among the totemic testaments to Bob Dylan’s artistic ambitions on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, there stands just one perfectly formed lyric. For all the game-changing wordplay on the record, from the rapid-fire proto-rap of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ to the statement of intent that is ‘Maggie’s Farm’, and the young Dylan’s personal manifesto ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, one song alone feels self-contained, whole and complete.
In four eight-line verses sculpted like a Grecian ode, ‘Love Minus Zero/No Limit’ effortlessly intersperses scenes from the countercultural hotspots of Greenwich Village with references to Wall Street. It blends biblical imagery with Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’. It builds a romantic ideal out of a lover aloof to being loved, with no amount of “flowers” enough to “buy” her affection. She’s the aspiration of all around her but is unaffected by an ambition to “success” herself, placed on a pedestal bound to “crumble” but seemingly indifferent to it.
Only in the song’s final line does Dylan’s muse design to expose her imperfections to those living below, venturing beyond the domain of mere abstraction. And it is the singer himself to whom she reveals her “broken wing”, placing him in a position of power over even the highest form of love. Like the Roman poet Ovid and his namesake Dylan Thomas before him, he self-consciously elevates himself, the artist, above the petty politics of romance, using the muse of love as leverage.
His song about love in its ideal, abstracted form went by the working title “Dime Store” after the bohemian haunt mentioned in its lyrics. But it needed a more imposing name befitting its divine protagonist. And so, it became the first Bob Dylan track with the word “love” in its title.
But why “Minus Zero” and “No Limit”?
In order to couch his idealisation of love in more philosophical terms and obscure the song’s meaning slightly, Dylan decided to present its title in the form of a mathematical equation. The “No Limit” part is obvious, describing a love without end in terms of magnitude or duration, akin to the jazz standard title ‘There Is No Greater Love’. It also doubles up as the equivalent of infinity, an endless number, in mathematical terms.
The “Minus Zero” part of the title is more interesting. It appears that Dylan has tried to create an equation in which “Love” divided by “Zero” amounts to infinity as a mathematical metaphor for the idea that love can be limitless, unquantifiable and unconditional only when shared with no one. He’s actually subverted the ideal of love as presented in his own song by suggesting that when love is presented as perfect and unending, it becomes a meaningless abstraction that is irrelevant to a real world made up of quantifiable people and things.
Except that, despite his brilliance as a poet and his ingenious conception of love as a numerical equation, Dylan was no mathematician. He appears to have botched the equation somewhat by subtracting “Zero” from “Love” and then dividing the resulting number by infinity instead of dividing “Love” by “Zero” to make infinity. Whether or not we choose to be pedantic about the maths, though, it’s a wonderfully profound and thoroughly Dylanesque idea for a song title.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.