Mysticism in Dylan and Tagore:

Shedding Light on Gitanjali and the Christian Trilogy

Abstract

 Both Dyan and Tagore are mystics, who presented deep devotion to Lord in their
lyrics. In three of his albums of early 80s namely “Slow Train Coming”, “Saved” and “Shot of
Love” popularly called as “Christian Trilogy”, Dylan has a number of spiritual gospel songs.
On the other hand, Gitanjali has the most appealing spiritual poem-cum-songs of Tagore’s,
carefully chosen by himself from among his poems and translated in English by himself and
edited by W.B Yeats. Their mysticism is clearly evident in many popular lyrics of theirs, many
of which are found in the mentioned compilations. The reason behind choosing these
compilations is that they represent the mystic thoughts to the greatest extent, compared to their
other works. The Christian Trilogy albums present the spontaneous expression of Dylan’s
metamorphosis as an Evangelic Christian from Judaism, whereas Gitanjali is the selection of
Tagore’s best lyrics and it brought him the Nobel Prize in 1913. Both of the poets received the
Prize for writing lyrics, which is the other reason why they are brought together here.