Leonard Cohen

Leonard Norman Cohen, CC (born September 21, 1934 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter. His musical career has largely overshadowed his prior work as a poet and novelist, although he has continued to publish poetry sporadically after his breakthrough in the music industry.

Themes

Recurring themes in Cohen's work include love and sex, religion, psychological depression, and music itself. He has also engaged with certain political themes, though sometimes ambiguously so.

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Love and sex are common enough themes in popular music; Cohen's background as a novelist and poet brings an uncommon sensibility to these themes. "Suzanne," probably the first Cohen song to gain broad attention, mixes a wistful type of love song with a religious meditation, themes that are also mixed in "Joan of Arc." "Famous Blue Raincoat" is from the point of view of a man whose marriage has been broken (in exactly what degree is ambiguous in the song) by his wife's infidelity with his close friend, and is written in the form of a letter to that friend, to whom he writes, "I guess that I miss you/ I guess I forgive you … Know your enemy is sleeping/ And his woman is free", while "Everybody Knows" deals with the harsh reality of AIDS: "… the naked man and woman/ Are just a shining artifact of the past." "Sisters of Mercy" evokes of genuine love (agape more than eros) found in a hotel room encounter with two Edmonton women, whereas "Chelsea Hotel #2" treats his Janis Joplin one-night stand rather unsentimentally, and the title of "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-On" speaks for itself.

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Cohen comes from a Jewish background, most obviously reflected in his song "Story of Isaac" and in "Who by Fire," whose words and melody echo the Unesaneh Tokef, an 11th century liturgical poem recited on Rosh Hashanah. Broader Judeo-Christian themes are sounded throughout the album Various Positions: "Hallelujah", which has music as a secondary theme, begins by evoking the biblical king David composing a song that "pleased the Lord"; "Coming Back to you" and "If It Be Your Will" are clearly addressed to a Judeo-Christian God. In his early career as a novelist, Beautiful Losers grappled with the mysticism of the Catholic/Iroquois Tekakwitha. Cohen has also been involved with Buddhism at least since the 1970s and in 1996 he was ordained a Buddhist monk. However, he still considers himself also a Jew: "I'm not looking for a new religion. I'm quite happy with the old one, with Judaism." http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1305765,00.html

Related Topics:
Jewish - Story of Isaac - Rosh Hashanah - Judeo-Christian - David - Buddhism

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Having suffered from psychological depression during much of his life (although less so as he has aged), Cohen has written much (especially in his early work) about depression and suicide. The wife of the protagonist of Beautiful Losers commits a gory suicide; "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" is about a suicide; suicide is mentioned in the darkly comic "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong"; "Dress Rehearsal Rag" is about a last-minute decision not to kill oneself; a general atmosphere of depression pervades such songs as "Please Don't Pass Me By" and "Tonight Will Be Fine." A reviewer once remarked tongue-in-cheek that Cohen's albums should be sold with razor blades.

Related Topics:
Psychological depression - Depression - Suicide

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Besides the aforementioned "Hallelujah", music itself is also the subject of "Tower of Song", "A Singer Must Die", and "Jazz Police".

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While politics often show up as a theme in his work, he does not seem to be expounding one particular political view. He clearly has a predilection for the underdog, the "beautiful loser," whether the WWII French resister of Anna Marly and Hy Zaret's The Partisan (which he covered) or the royalist of his own "The Old Revolution." Cohen's approach to war and the world's aggression developed during his first albums, coming to its zenith with New Skin for the Old Ceremony, his most "militant" album.

Related Topics:
French resister - Anna Marly - Hy Zaret

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"First We Take Manhattan" speaks in the angry voice of someone regaining power long denied; "Democracy" is a calmer version of the same. Several Cohen songs speak of abortion, always either as something distasteful or even atrocious. "Diamonds in the Mine" bleakly declaims, "The only man of energy/ Yes the revolution's pride/ He trained a hundred women/ Just to kill an unborn child." In "The Future", he sings sarcastically "Destroy another fetus now/ We don't like children anyhow." In "Stories of the Street" Cohen speaks of "The age of lust is giving birth/ And both the parents ask/ The nurse to tell them fairy tales/ from both sides of the glass."

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This may suggest a uniformly bleak and serious body of work, but in fact Cohen's songs are often verbally playful and even cheerful. Some of his songs, such as "Ballad of the Absent Mare" and "Hallelujah" are simply beautiful, and "Democracy" looks at a future as hopeful as that of "The Future" is bleak. In "Tower of Song", the famously raw-voiced Cohen sings ironically that he was "… born with the gift/ Of a golden voice"; the generally dark "Is This What You Wanted?" nonetheless contains playful lines "You were the whore and the Beast of Babylon/ I was Rin Tin Tin"; in concert, he often plays around with his lyrics (for example, "If you want a doctor/ I'll examine every inch of you" from "I'm Your Man" will become "If you want a Jewish doctor …"); he will introduce one song by using a phrase from another song or poem (for example, introducing "Leaving Green Sleeves" by paraphrasing his own "Queen Victoria": "This is a song for those who are not nourished by modern love").

Related Topics:
Ironically - The whore - Beast of Babylon - Rin Tin Tin

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Cohen has also covered such love songs as Irving Berlin's "Always" or the more obscure soul number "Be for Real" (originally sung by Marlena Shaw), presumably chosen in part for their unlikely juxtaposition to his own work.

Related Topics:
Irving Berlin - Marlena Shaw

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