Leonard Cohen Hallelujah
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New Jerusalem Glowing: Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen in A
New Jerusalem Glowing Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen in a Kabbalistic Key Elliot R. Wolfson In Book of Mercy, published in 1984, the Montréal Jewish poet, Leonard Cohen addressed his master: Sit down, Master, on the rude chair of praises, and rule my nervous heart with your great decrees of freedom. Out of time you have taken me to do my daily task. Out of mist and dust you have fashioned me to know the numberless worlds between the crown and the kingdom. In utter defeat I came to you and you received me with a sweetness I had not dared to remember. Tonight I come to you again, soiled by strategies and trapped in the loneliness of my tiny domain. Establish your law in this walled place. Let nine men come to lift me into their prayer so that I may whisper with them: Blessed be the name of the glory of the kingdom forever and forever.1 In this prayer, the poet offers us a way to the heart of the matter that I will discuss in this study, however feebly, the songs and poems of Leonard Cohen in the key of the symbolism of kabbalah, the occult oral tradition of Judaism purported to be ancient, but historically detectable (largely through textual evidence) from the late Middle Ages. To those even somewhat familiar with 2 the background of the Canadian bard, the topic should not come as a surprise. 1 Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy, New York 1984, p. 16. 2 The original version of this study was delivered as a lecture at McGill University, October 18, 2001. -
Music for Guitar
So Long Marianne Leonard Cohen A Bm Come over to the window, my little darling D A Your letters they all say that you're beside me now I'd like to try to read your palm then why do I feel so alone G D I'm standing on a ledge and your fine spider web I used to think I was some sort of gypsy boy is fastening my ankle to a stone F#m E E4 E E7 before I let you take me home [Chorus] For now I need your hidden love A I'm cold as a new razor blade Now so long, Marianne, You left when I told you I was curious F#m I never said that I was brave It's time that we began E E4 E E7 [Chorus] to laugh and cry E E4 E E7 Oh, you are really such a pretty one and cry and laugh I see you've gone and changed your name again A A4 A And just when I climbed this whole mountainside about it all again to wash my eyelids in the rain [Chorus] Well you know that I love to live with you but you make me forget so very much Oh, your eyes, well, I forget your eyes I forget to pray for the angels your body's at home in every sea and then the angels forget to pray for us How come you gave away your news to everyone that you said was a secret to me [Chorus] We met when we were almost young deep in the green lilac park You held on to me like I was a crucifix as we went kneeling through the dark [Chorus] Stronger Kelly Clarkson Intro: Em C G D Em C G D Em C You heard that I was starting over with someone new You know the bed feels warmer Em C G D G D But told you I was moving on over you Sleeping here alone Em Em C You didn't think that I'd come back You know I dream in colour -
Leonard Cohen Friday Night, September 4, 2009 Rabbi Steve Cohen Congregation B’Nai Brith, Santa Barbara CA
1 Leonard Cohen Friday night, September 4, 2009 Rabbi Steve Cohen Congregation B’nai Brith, Santa Barbara CA It was sometime during my years in high school in the early 1970’s in Rochester New York that I first heard of Leonard Cohen, the singer and songwriter from Montreal. Of course I was interested, since he had the same last name as I did. That meant a number of things. First, on some level it meant that maybe we were distantly related. Secondly, it meant that he was Jewish. And third, that he wasn’t bothered by having a very Jewish last name; he didn’t change his name as most Jewish performers did even in those days. While his name interested me, though, what little I heard of his music really did not. His most famous song back in those days was Suzanne, which basically sounded deeply depressed…..and had lines like “Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water.” And I thought to myself, “what kind of Jew writes songs about Jesus?” I was similarly bothered by Paul Simon’s line “Well here’s to you Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know…..” But there was so much that I loved about Simon and Garfunkle that I could overlook that line. Leonard Cohen, though, just sounded depressed and kind of pretentious when he sang: “You’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.” So I didn’t really pay any attention to him. Then I went to Israel in 1979 as a rabbinic student and in a conversation with my cousin Benny….who is an Israeli about my age, raised in Tel Aviv….Benny asked me if I liked Leonard Cohen, and declared that in his opinion, Cohen was a navi, a prophet. -
Cohen Eucharist 2017
! Holy is your name, holy is your work,! April 23, 2017, 7.00pm!! ! holy are the days that return to you.! !!!!!! ! Prelude “Heart with no Companion”! Holy are the hands that are raised to you,! ! (from Various Positions)! !and the weeping that is wept to you.! I greet you from the other side ! Holy is the fire between your will and ours,! Of sorrow and despair ! in which we are refined.! With a love so vast and shattered ! ! It will reach you everywhere Holy is that which is unredeemed,! ! covered with your patience.! And I sing this for the captain ! ! Whose ship has not been built ! Holy are the souls ! For the mother in confusion ! lost in your un-naming.! Her cradle still unfilled! ! ! Holy, and shining with great light,! For the heart with no companion ! is every living thing,! For the soul without a king ! established in this world and covered with time,! For the prima ballerina ! until your name is praised forever.! Who cannot dance to anything! ! ! Holy is your name, holy is your work,! Through the days of shame that are coming ! holy are the days that return to you.! Through the nights of wild distress ! ! (from “Holy is Your Name,” Book of Tho' your promise count for nothing ! Mercy)! You must keep it nonetheless! ! ! Words of Welcome! You must keep it for the captain ! ! Whose ship has not been built ! Opening Song: “Born in Chains” (from Popular For the mother in confusion ! Problems)! Her cradle still unfilled! (please be seated)! ! For the heart with no companion ...! I was born in chains ! ! But I was taken out of Egypt ! I -
The Nature of Love in the Work of Leonard Cohen What Is Love
The Nature of Love in the Work of Leonard Cohen By Jiří Měsíc Published online: October 2018 http://www.jprstudies.org Abstract: This essay deals with the nature of love in the work of Leonard Cohen and its relation to Kabbalah, Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism, and the alchemical wedding coniunctio oppositorum. Love is seen as pulsating between agape, the unconditional love of G-d and humanity, and eros, the insatiable desire for bodily pleasures. In both senses, it has certain accompanying attributes, according to the singer, explained by the words “chain,” “bond,” “wound,” and “suffering.” The literary persona of Leonard Cohen is viewed as longing for divine love, exploring prayer, solitude, and carnal love as a means of spiritual nourishment leading to the purification of the soul. Moreover, his work is characterised by a liturgical language, which he uses in order to glorify the most profane features of our human nature and to highlight the potential of the body to serve as an instrument to reach the sacred. About the Author: Jiří Měsíc (*1985), holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. His main interest are the mystical branches of Abrahamic religions (Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, Sufism) and their echoes in popular literature and song, especially in the work of the contemporary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Besides this, he is a published poet and translator of John Pass, Ariana Reines and Gertrude Stein into Czech. Keywords: Christianity, Judaism, Kabbalah, Leonard Cohen, love, mysticism, religion, song, Sufism What is love according to Leonard Cohen? “It is in love that we are made; / In love we disappear,” Leonard Cohen sings after having been abandoned by the “Crown of Light, O Darkened One” with whom he experienced a momentary union (“Boogie Street”). -
Heidegger and Leonard Cohen: “You Want It Darker”
religions Article Heidegger and Leonard Cohen: “You Want It Darker” Babette Babich Department of Philosophy, Lincoln Center, Fordham University, New York, NY 10023, USA; [email protected] Abstract: This article seeks to ask the question of Leonard Cohen as a poet in terms of what Heidegger calls destitute or desperate times (dürftiger Zeit) in his Wozu Dichter (“What Are Poets For”)? This question requires reflection on voice and attunement, including music and eros along with nothing less Heideggerian than the thought of death, reading Leonard Cohen on what appears to be a relation to the religious—for us? for him? for the Christ? ”forsaken, almost human”—but also painfully reflexive: ”we kill the flame”; a poet in dark times as we face them, together and alone. Keywords: gnosticism; music; inauthenticity; male and female desire; deity 1. Insiders and Outsiders: Heidegger’s Attunement This essay raises the question of Leonard Cohen as a poet in ‘dark times’. To presage my conclusion, I, of course, frame my answer in the affirmative. However, at the same time, just to the extent that I draw the phrase from Martin Heidegger’s “What Are Poets For?” as he begins a lecture initially given on the 20th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke’s death, it is important to underscore that the phrase is borrowed from another poet who will be given pride of place, as Heidegger tells us with his very first line: “ ‘... and what are poets for in a destitute time?’ asks Hölderlin’s elegy ‘Bread and Wine’” (Heidegger 1971, p. 91). Here, I mean to pose this question as a question (the parsing is Heideggerian) along with a range of Citation: Babich, Babette. -
1 Per Aage Brandt and Ulf Cronquist Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen's Song in the Perspective of a Semio-Cognitive Poetics Abstract
Per Aage Brandt and Ulf Cronquist Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen's song in the perspective of a semio-cognitive poetics Abstract We briefly introduce the Aarhus school cognitive-semiotic blending (conceptual integration) model, which in contrast to the Fauconnier & Turner model builds on phenomenology, and apply it to the semiotic and semantic structure of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah, thereby showing how the singular value of the key word is built up through a process that blends erotic and religious content, and which places the music of the song in a decisive position. The musical and verbal auto-referential deixis is shown to play an important role in this process of meaning construction, typical of the way songs proceed. The analysis and its approach may thus be able to inspire research on the poetics of songs, especially in popular music, and the under-researched area of song lyrics more generally. Keywords: Semiotic blending; Hallelujah ; cognitive poetics; enunciation; song lyrics; deixis; auto-reference. O. What is a song? 1 Songs are just poems built into music, one might think. However, there are structural differences that have to be taken into account if we want an accurate description of both genres in modern culture.2 By enunciation , we mean the interpersonal act and relation between the personae in communication, as represented in language. 3 There is special contract between enunciator and enunciatee in songs. The enunciation of poetry is characteristically situated close to that which use the autobiographical voice of the poet, including the use of pronouns referring to existing persons 4; by contrast, the enunciation in songs, the melic enunciation, as opposed to most forms of poetic enunciation, includes role-playing strategies that make interpersonal references depend on the narrative situations signified, and situates melic semantics closer to drama and fiction. -
Dance Me Through the Panic Till I'm Gathered Safely In
“Dance Me Through the Panic Till I’m Gathered Safely In” — A Fan Remembers and Acknowledges Leonard Cohen’s Work and Genius * Sandra Buchanan Psychotherapist, Dunedin Abstract When Leonard Cohen died in November 2016, many people the world over felt very sad and indeed bereft, at the loss of such a great artist, poet and songwriter. It felt, in Auden’s (1958) words on Freud’s death, another example of: For every day they die among us, those who were doing us some good, who knew it was never enough but hoped to improve a little by living. (p. 68) The title of this paper comes from Leonard’s 1984 song “Dance Me to the End of Love”, and has often seemed a powerful description of what a mother provides for her baby and what we as therapists provide to our clients. We try to help them “dance through the panic” and ultimately to feel safely gathered in — firstly with us, within the therapeutic relationship, and in due course within themselves. We provide a “promise of home”, or at least some hope for our clients that they might be able to find that individual sense of self within themselves and connection to others, which feels like “home”. Whakarāpopotonga I te matenga o Leonard Cohen i te Whiringa-a-rangi 2016, pōuri kau ana te tini te mano huri noa i te ao mōteatea kau ana i te ngarohanga atu o te tohunga tito waiata, toikupu mahi toi nei. E ai ki tā Ōtene kī (1958) i te matenga o Whoritu: Buchanan, S. -
Sacred Space As Bridge for Duality ERH 5777 Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
A Holy or Broken New Year: Sacred Space as Bridge for Duality ERH 5777 Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the lord But you don't really care for music, do you Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composing hallelujah Hallelujah… Raise your hand if you’ve heard this song. If you like the song, and millions of people around world do, take a moment to think about why you do? My guess is there isn’t one simple reason. It’s probably not just the melody or the lyrics or the musician who sings it, its sanctity, its irreverence, the mashup of Biblical and secular imagery. It may be some combination of all of these. But the thing about a great song, like any powerful work of art, is how it moves us, how it makes us feel somehow elevated, even as it reveals to us the boundaries, the edges of its holiness. The techelet, the blue thread on the tallis is only powerful inasmuch as it’s the only blue thread, because its holiness stands in relationship with the white. Back when we lived in Chicago, Miriam and I used to go to a local coffee shop called Uncommon Ground, not to be confused with the Hampden shop Common Ground, which has good coffee, but, frustratingly, no wifi. Uncommon Ground is legendary in the Lakeview neighborhood. A hole-in-the-wall place just blocks from Wrigley Field which has since expanded to include a bar, art gallery and restaurant. -
Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen's Songs and Poems
Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems: Visions from the Tower of Song Edited by Peter Billingham Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems: Visions from the Tower of Song Edited by Peter Billingham This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Peter Billingham and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1686-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1686-1 This book is dedicated to the life, work and memory of Leonard Cohen (1934–2016). “All men shall be sailors then – until the sea shall free them”. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Peter Billingham An Introduction: “The only way to deal with the avalanche is to avoid the snow altogether” ................................................................... 1 Peter Billingham ‘Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows’: Conflict and Memory in Hamlet and ‘The Old Revolution’ ...................... 11 Simon Barker Crosses, Nails and Lonely Wooden Towers: The Leitmotif of ‘The Wounded Man’ in selected songs of Leonard Cohen .................... 27 Peter Billingham “I never discuss my Mistresses and Tailors”: A Short Abstract Film about the Life and Work of Leonard Cohen .......... 43 David Burden I’m (not) your man: Reading Leonard Cohen’s Lyrics without Leonard Cohen ...................... -
Leonard Cohen's Philosophy of Time Natalia Vesselova
“The Past is Perfect”: Leonard Cohen’s Philosophy of Time Natalia Vesselova Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in English Department of English Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa. © Natalia Vesselova, Ottawa, Canada, 2014. ii CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Glorious Beginning: Poetry 1956-1968 1. Let Us Compare Mythologies 21 2. The Spice-Box of Earth 61 3. Flowers for Hitler 105 4. Parasites of Heaven 148 5. Selected Poems 1956-1968 174 Chapter Two: Prose Left in the Past: Unpublished Works 1952-1960 192 Chapter Three: The Man and Time: Novels of the 1960s 1. The Favourite Game 250 2. Beautiful Losers 261 Chapter Four: Crises and Hopes: Poetry of the 1970s 1. The Energy of Slaves 279 2. Death of a Lady’s Man 311 Chapter Five: On the Road to Finding Peace: Poetry 1984-2006 1. Book of Mercy 331 2. Stranger Music 346 3. Book of Longing 363 Conclusion 385 Works Cited and Consulted 390 iii ABSTRACT This dissertation, “The Past is Perfect”: Leonard Cohen’s Philosophy of Time, analyzes the concept of time and aspects of temporality in Leonard Cohen’s poetry and prose, both published and unpublished. Through imagination and memory, Cohen continuously explores his past as a man, a member of a family, and a representative of a culture. The complex interconnection of individual and collective pasts constitutes the core of Cohen’s philosophy informed by his Jewish heritage, while its artistic expression is indebted to the literary past.