The musician Leonard Cohen said only comes “every 300 years”
In cultural considerations, Leonard Cohen has been cast as a messiah. Declared by Joni Mitchell to be a “holy man on the FM radio”, Cohen is often spoken, written, and sung of as a godly muse when in reality, he was a disciple like the rest.
The role of spirituality and godliness in Cohen’s work is enormous. It seemed to him that music came from on high, writing in ‘Hallelujah’ about “a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord”, and packing the rest of his work with religious imagery or writing songs as prayers.
Born into an orthodox Jewish family and then moving through several different schools of thought, from a brief stint in Scientology to a good while spent up on a mountain in a Buddhist monastery, there was a sense that Cohen was always seeking enlightenment in some form or another.
“No, it’s not poetry, it’s prayer, prayer, psalms,” he said of his work, and that belief that art is tethered to something bigger than simply human ability extended into his feelings towards other artists too.
Just as people look at Cohen as a holy artistic beacon, he turned to someone else with the same awestruck gaze. As one of his peers when he landed in the Greenwich Village folk scene, Cohen would look to Bob Dylan and see the same messiah shaped figure history sees him as.
“Bob Dylan is a figure that arises every 300/400 years who represents and embodies all the finest aspirations of the human heart,” Cohen once said in an interview, which is no light praise. He didn’t just see Dylan as a rarity, but saw him as the ultimate pinnacle example of what it means to be a musician, adding, “He is unparalleled in the world of music and will remain a torch for all singers & all hearts for many generations to come.”
It’s proof that the lineage of greatness continues. To Dylan himself, he worshipped at the altar of Woody Guthrie, seeing him as “the true voice of the American spirit”. In Cohen’s eyes, Dylan took up that mantel, stating, “I don’t think there is as beautiful a spirit that has arisen in America for many generations, and I doubt if as beautiful a spirit will arise for many generations.”
Passing the torch from hero to hero, Cohen admired and worshipped Dylan in the same way that Dylan marvelled at Guthrie and in the same way that so many admire Cohen himself, looking up to him as a true idol. But for the Canadian artist, he never really seemed to consider that.
Instead, he was content with just doing his work and feeling lucky to be alive at the moment he was with these other talents around him, as he added, “We are privileged to be in the company of one of the greatest hearts that have spoken of the heart in America for a long, long time.”
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