09 November 2024

Leonard Cohen: mystical roots of his music

Everyone in Australia knows I've always been a Leonard Cohen fan, and last year my best birthday present was the new book Leonard Cohen The Mystical Roots of Genius by Harry Freedman (Bloomsbury). Good choice, spouse.

Leonard's (1934–2016) maternal family were Lithuanian rabbis. His paternal grandfather left Poland for Ontario in 1869, where he too was a rabbi (as the surname Cohen often suggests) and founder of the Can­adian Jewish Times. In Montreal young Leonard attended Sunday school, learn­ing Hebrew and relig­ious sour­ces. And given he was born into a scholarly fam­ily, he hoped to become a poet, then a song writ­er and event­ually a comp­oser. But by 1963, he was clear in public about his different beliefs. Cohen imag­ined himself as part of an underground crypt-religion of poets.

Sadly Leonard’s father died when he was just 9; his mother suffer­ed from depressions and the lad too. His song Dan­ce Me to the End of Love has a line about burn­ing violins in the Nazi concen­t­­rat­ion camps, inspired by camp photos that he saw after dad died.

Who By Fire, sung by Cohen to soldiers
during the Sinai War 1972
Photo credit: Times of Israel

In time Cohen had published 2 volumes of poetry that had a limited audience, and one unusual novel. Cohen himself planned to “go into exile” from his faith, to think up other possibilities for spir­itual life like love and sex and drugs and song, not seen in any synagogue.

Leonard was also learned in Christianity, the other sp­irit­ual tradition that he used to make sense of the world eg the four Gospels of the New Testament appear­ed in his songs, as did scenes of Jesus be­ing baptised and crucified; the Spirit of God was a dove descending to earth.

In fact Cohen's music was scattered with allusions to Jewish, Christian and Zen trad­ition. But even then, his Christian and Zen Buddhist in­fl­uences appeared via the lens of Kabbalah myst­ic­ism. Freed­man traced every Kabb­al­istic source that stressed the mys­tic­al value of sex, and their infl­uen­ce on Cohen’s art.

Leonard Cohen The Mystical Roots of Genius 
by Harry Freedman, 2022
 
Freedman showed the spiritual journey that took Cohen through lovers and drugs. His knowledge of the Bible and rel­igion was deep: nearly every­thing he wrote touched on a relig­ious idea, even if the song itself was not rel­ig­ious. Freedman noted pop music had long explored the sh­ifting borders of sacred and profane devot­ion!

Cohen found how reconcile his lifelong obsess­ion with earthly and mystical love.. when he met the modern danc­er Suz­anne Verdal. She took Cohen to her flat in a poor waterfront warehouse. She served him jasmine tea and mandarin oranges from Chinatown, and they walked along the river past sailors’ Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. Cohen used their shared activities in his first huge song, Suzanne (1967); it became a unique pattern for lyrics that mov­ed between convers­at­ion with a lover or with God.

Hallelujah (1984) opened: 'Now I've heard there was a secret chord, that David played, and it pleased the Lord... the baffled king compos­ing Hal­­l­elujah'. As Cohen moved through the Old Testament, he sang of Samson having his hair cut by Delilah. Coh­en’s sex­ual im­agery best showed his belief in sex as a div­ine act­ivity: 'I remember when I moved in you, and the Holy Dove she was mov­ing too’. And note modern incantations that rival the Lord’s Pray­er. The centre­piece of Cohen’s album, The Future (1992), provided the key line “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.

How did Freedman know that Cohen spent 5 years writing Hallelujah, fil­l­ing booklets with 80 ver­ses, before he found the six that might best please the Lord, and his concert audience? And how did Free­d­man know Cohen identified him­self with King David, “the embodiment of our higher possib­il­ity” in synthesising the sensual and the divine. In part Cohen’s own life over the decades displayed this identity.

Freedman wrote that we also hear a powerful sense of mission accomp­lished. Late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks g­reed: 'Leonard Cohen taught us that even in the midst of darkness there is light, in the midst of hat­red there is love, with our dying breath we can still sing Hallelujah.'

Later in life, Cohen was engrossed in Zen Buddhism, living from 1990 in a Zen priory on Mt Baldy near Los Angeles. Learning from Master Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Cohen was ordained as a Zen monk in 1996. The Zen in Cohen’s art was the sil­ence and the ready willingness to question everything, perhaps leading to enlightenment.

Cohen trained as a Zen monk
Pinterest

Having forged his own spiritual path, Cohen en­joyed the irony that the album he released 45 years into his career, Old Ideas (2012), almost topped the charts. That final hallel­ujah was a dark joke by his Gods. Cohen died 2016, after his final album came out: You Want it Darker! From his classic Who by Fire, to his final challenge to the divinity, his spirituality inspir­ed him.

This great book looked deeply into the soul of the best singer and lyricist, to see how Cohen re­worked myths, prayers and legends. It gave us a better pereption of Cohen's soul. And thanks to Tim Adams for helping Freedman’s task. For a different review of Cohen's importance, read Beth Dwoskin's review of Cohen's concert for soldiers in the Sinai War.






26 comments:

  1. Thank you for this review, Hels. I also read Beth Dwoskins' review. Now I need to read the book!

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    1. jabblog
      I had read the Harry Freedman book and relistened to all my favourite Cohen music, but I didn't remember Cohen's participation in the Yom Kippur War (Oct 1973). Thus the Dwoskin review got me caught up with the reading.

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  2. It is good to read about his history and life. Looking into him now

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    1. roentare
      anyone who was born in the late 40s-late 1950s will probably remember that Leonard Cohen dominated their best years and Australia's Great Decade. What surprises me now is that I still remember most of his lyrics 60 years later :)

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  3. I love all his songs equally but I love Hallelujah most of all
    Forty years this year!!

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    1. Deb
      good choice. I had trouble selecting my favourite, but in the end I went for Suzanne.

      And you want to travel with her
      And you want to travel blind
      And you think you'll maybe trust her
      For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

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  4. I only know of the song Hallelujah, and loved him singing it.
    Good read about him Hels, thank you.

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    1. Margaret
      I am not surprised. In 2014 Rolling Stone asked its readers to name the best Leonard Cohen Songs EVER, and Hallelujah polled #1.

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  5. I used to listen to him a lot in the 70s but not so much after that. Thanks for the post which tells me so much more about him than I ever knew.

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    1. Fun60
      I suppose Cohen's great years waned a bit by the end of the 1970s. Most of us had stopped going to folk concerts, and were busier getting the children to do their homework and clean their rooms.

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  6. Thank you, dear Helen! It's interesting to learn about this talented man.

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    1. Irina
      Leonard Cohen's voice was not as rich as some other singers, but his own lyrics and music were full of mysticism and faith. My only issue was his use and misuse of dangerous drugs.

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  7. Boa tarde de sábado, com muita paz e saúde minha querida amiga. Parabéns pelo seu maravilhoso trabalho de pesquisa. Acho que aqui no Brasil, temos pessoas com esse sobre nome.

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    1. Luiz said...
      Luiz
      I hope young adults in Brasil heard all of Leonard Cohen's music during the mid 1960s and early 1980s, even if they didn't understand half the words. He was hugely popular internationally, travelling across UK, Europe, Greece, Israel, Australia and of course Canada and the US. But I can't remember if he toured South American countries.

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  8. Took me a while to remember who he was, knew the name couldn't place him at first but by the end I did of course seeing what he looked liked help me remember. I do like his music and the book sounds like it could be a good read

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    1. Jo-Anne
      the Freedman book is great if you are fascinated by religious influences and behaviours.
      Otherwise read "Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows" with the music, objects and papers from Cohen's archives. Aware from an early age that he would make a mark on this world, he mapped his creative evolution as a poet and songwriter.

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  9. I think So Long Marianne and Suzanne are my favourite Cohen songs although I also love Hallelujah and Bird on the Wire. I saw a documentary film about Cohen on a Greek island and that was not a good side with all the drugs and was about his love affair with Marianne.

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    1. Rachel
      Thank you...I had forgotten Bird On the Wire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGvwvxA83Cs
      Like a bird on the wire
      Like a drunk in a midnight choir
      I have tried in my way to be free
      Like a worm on a hook
      Like a knight from some old fashioned book
      I have saved all my ribbons for thee

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  10. Always single, Cohen had two children with his girlfriend Suzanne Elrod: Adam and Lorca. These two have been battling in Los Angeles Superior Court for a year or two to remove attorney Robert Kory, appointed by the musician before his death, as a trustee to the Leonard Cohen Family Trust. This trust controls tens of millions of dollars in royalties for Cohen’s music, poetry, novels, photos and journals.
    New York Post
    Dec. 12, 2022

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    1. Thank you! I knew the family accused Cohen's agent of forging documents in 2005, to take control of the singer's assets. This forced an ageing Cohen to continue his endless travelling concerts, in order to restore his financial stability. But I didn't realise who the agent was said to be.

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  11. Thank you for that detailed report on Cohen. His music was so different and I am sure many, many people grew up with it and wondered about their own spirituality.

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    1. thelma
      they were our best years, nod. And not just Leonard Cohen. I wept when Janis Joplin died in Los Angeles, imaging it to have been in the Chelsea Hotel.
      The Anti-Vietnam War Movement took up most of my energy when I wasn't listening to music.

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  12. My late partner , Paul, Hels left art school in the 1960s and went straight to Japan and was welcomed by an American female Zen monk, Ruth Fuller Sasaki where he studied for a year to became a monk. Gary Snyder was there as well. The 60s was a very creative period and the young went on adventures ;)

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    1. thelma
      what an extraordinary world we live in! Your brother went to Japan, to study to become a monk and to be welcomed by Sasaki!! That era was certainly a time of freedom, adventures and serious analysis of the meaning of life.
      My first adventure, in 1966, was when I had finished school, and wanted a gap year before starting uni - 7 months of studying and 5 months of working in Israel :)

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  13. I can't believe I missed a post on Leonard Cohen. He was an amazing musical artist.

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    1. Érika
      I am with you 100%, sister. I loved his words and music, back in the old days of emotion and hope in the 60s-80s. I still remember most of the words all these decades later.

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