52 The last word
THE WEEK3August 2019One day in March 1960,
walking in the East End of
London,ayoung Canadian
poet named Leonard Cohen
got caught inatorrential
rainstorm. Cohen, who was
25, stepped intoabank to
shelter from the rain and
noticed that the cashier was
sportingaglowing suntan.
He told Cohen he had
recently come from Greece,
where the weather at this
time of year was perfect.
The next day, Cohen bought
aticket.On asunny day in April he
set foot for the first time on
the tiny island of Hydra.
Withinafew days he had
met ayoung Norwegian
woman named Marianne
Ihlen, who would become the
love of his life. The inspiration for several of Cohen’s songs –
from the beautifulSo Long, MarianneandHey, That’s No Way
to Say Goodbye,toBird on the Wire–she is pictured on the back
of his 1969 albumSongs FromaRoom,seated atadesk in the
home they shared on Hydra.When, in 2016, the 81-year-old Ihlen lay on her deathbed, Cohen
wroteafarewell letter to his erstwhile lover, it was reported
around the world. Three months
later, Cohen, too, was dead.
Now comesanew documentary,
Marianne&Leonard: Words
of Love,directed by Nick
Broomfield, which presents
aglowingly elegiac portrait of
aromance and friendship. At its heart is Ihlen,awoman
who seemed to enrapture everyone who knew her–including
Broomfield himself, who in 1968, asayoung student travelling in
Greece, hadabrief affair with her on Hydra, and who remained
in touch with her until her death.Marianne&Leonardis,
Broomfield says, “the most personal film I’ve ever made”.Born intoaconservative, middle-class Norwegian family, Ihlen
had come to Hydra two years before Cohen, after shocking her
family by running away withanovelist named Axel Jensen. In
1958, they married, and Jensen boughtahouse on the island. The
marriage was short-lived. In January 1960, Ihlen travelled to Oslo
to give birth toason, also named Axel, returning to Hydraafew
months later to be told by her husband that he was in love with
an American painter, Patricia Amlin. Shortly afterwards, Amlin
was badly injured inacar accident. Jensen was so incapacitated
by shock that Ihlen was obliged to step in and tend to Amlin in
hospital in Athens until she returned to the US.This was the situation that greeted Leonard Cohen when he
arrived on Hydra. At that time, the island wasaredoubt for an
émigré community of bohemians, artists and lotus eaters. Henry
Miller had once lived there, extolling it as “a promised land”that made him lose “all sense
of earthly direction”. Other
visitors included Jackie
Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis
and Maria Callas. Cohen
was taken under the wing
of the elders of the bohemian
community, the Australian
writers George Johnston
and his wife Charmian Clift,
later buyingasmall house of
his own with an inheritance
from his grandmother.One day, Cohen was sitting
in acafé withagroup when
he noticed Ihlen, standing in
the doorway ofagrocery
store. “Would you like to
join us?” he asked. “We’re
sitting outside.” “I remember
my eyes met his eyes,” she
says in the film. “I felt it
throughout my whole body.
It was incredible.” Cohen told her over and over she was the
most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, but she never believed him.
“I always thought my face was too round, soIalways walked
looking down.” Ihlen remembered. She thought he was
“beautiful. But he never thought it. We both had that problem.
We’d both look in the mirror before going out, and wonder who
we were today. How strange we could be.”Over the summer and autumn
of 1960, the affair intensified.
Cohen wrote, sang lullabies
to her baby son; they swam,
basked in the sun and talked
and drank late into the night.
“It was as if everyone was
young and beautiful and full of talent–covered withakind of
gold dust,” Cohen would later write. “Everybody had special and
unique qualities. This is, of course, the feeling of youth, but in this
glorious setting of Hydra, all these qualities were magnified. To
me, everyone looked glorious.”Ihlen described herself as “his Greek muse”, but seemingly had no
ambitions for herself. “She was someone who was searching for
her identity,” says Helle Goldman, who lived on Hydra until she
was seven and returned for the summers through her youth, and
who knew Ihlen and young Axel. “Hydra was full of people who
thought they were brilliant,” Goldman says. “You could reinvent
yourself completely; you could say anything and be anybody. ‘I’m
awriter’, ‘I’m an artist’, ‘I’mapoet’. Marianne was none of those
things. She wasaproduct of 1940s and 1950s Norway, and this
general culture of self-effacement: ‘Don’t stick out, don’t make
yourself too different, be like everybody else, and just be nice.’”Cohen was struggling to write his first novel,The Favourite
Game.Marianne brought food and drink, placingafresh
gardenia on his desk each day. “I used to sit on the stairs while
she slept,” he later wrote. “They overlooked her sleeping. I
watched herayear, by moonlight or kerosene... and nothingSo long, Marianne: Leonard Cohen’s56-year love story“Marianne is perfect”: Ihlen, Axel and Cohen in Hydra in 1960Marianne Ihlen was the inspiration behind many of Leonard Cohen’s songs, his muse and lifetime love. Asanew documentary by
Nick Broomfield brings their lives to the big screen, Mick Brown reports on their poignant story“At the time, Hydra wasaredoubt for an émigré
community of bohemians, artists and lotus
eaters. Henry Miller called it ‘a promised land’”