53that Icould not say or form, was lost.”
Over the next six years, Cohen would
come and go from Hydra. Ihlen and Axel
moved into his home, Cohen becoming
the de facto parent to the boy.
“Marianne is perfect,” he wrote to his
friend Irving Layton. He would later say
of the domestic bliss the relationship
provided: “When there is food on the
table, when the candles are lit, when
you wash the dishes together and put
the child to bed together. That is order,
that is spiritual order, there is no other.”
But as Cohen’s biographer Sylvie
Simmons observed, “if Leonard
sometimes seemed to court domesticity,
he also ran from it”. “Poets do not make
great husbands,” Irving Layton’s wife, Aviva, notes in the film.
At first, says Broomfield, Cohen pursued Ihlen. “She was splitting
up with her first husband, whoIthink she was very much in love
with. Leonard offered solace, support and was very helpful with
her son. ButIthink the balance of power changed, and it became
very much her being in awe of Leonard.” Hydra wasaplace of
intense sexual manoeuvring, where no relationships remained
exclusive for long. “There were simply too many beautiful people
living there,” says Helle Goldman. “He was having his affairs; she
was having her affairs. He hadavoracious appetite for women.
But Marianne left her own trail of broken hearts.”
“I was hungry for experience as any young writer is, and every
young person,” Cohen told Marianne’s biographer Kari
Hesthamar in 2005. “I wanted
many women, many kinds of
experiences, many countries,
many climates, many love
affairs... I’d get tired of
something and then move on
to something else, never terribly
happy doing it, leaving one thing for the next because the thing
Ihad didn’t work, whether it was the woman or the poem or the
city or whatever it was–itwasn’t working. UntilIunderstood
that nothing works. But that took mealifetime: to understand
that nothing works and to accept that.” And Marianne,
Hesthamar writes, “made it easy for him to leave her and easy
for him to come back”.
In 1964, on Hydra, Cohen completed his second novel,
Beautiful Losers,written inafever, on the terrace in the blazing
sun, tripping on LSD. Drugs were commonplace–Cohen
cultivated marijuana on the roof of their home, which Ihlen
sprinkled in the meatballs she cooked. On completing the book,
he sufferedabreakdown. The reviews were uniformly hostile.
Tired of struggling to make it asawriter, Cohen set out to make
acareer in music. In 1966, he travelled to New York, where an
introduction to the folk singer Judy Collins led to her recording
his song,Suzanne.His first album,Songs of Leonard Cohen,was
released the following year to widespread acclaim. It includedSo
Long, Marianne–the song that would immortalise Ihlen.
In 1967, Ihlen followed Cohen to New York, living withafriend
on the Lower East Side. Cohen was living at the Chelsea Hotel,
infatuated with the glacial Warhol “superstar” Nico and sleeping
with Janis Joplin, about whom he wrote the songChelsea Hotel.
He kept Ihlen at arm’s length, telling her, “This isn’t your scene.”
Cohen would later admit that pursuing “became the most
important thing in my life”. Ihlen says in the film: “I wanted
to put him inacage, lock him up and swallow the key. All the
girls were panting for him. It hurt me so much. It destroyed me.”
At one point, she contemplated suicide. Cohen was drifting
further away, into the all-consuming orbit of his career. From
time to time, he would send money to support Ihlen and pay
Axel’s school fees. His absences from
Hydra grew longer. He began a
relationship with an artist named Suzanne
Elrod. She gave birth toason, Adam, and
adaughter, Lorca. One day, in 1972,
Elrod arrived at the house in Hydra where
Ihlen had been living with Cohen. She
asked when Ihlen intended to leave. When
Cohen heard about her visit, he offered
Ihlen another house, or suggested she stay
put, but she declined.By then 37, she made the decision to
return to Norway, and the life she’d been
running away from. She tookajob in the
personnel department ofacompany that
built offshore oil platforms, and in 1979
married Jan Stang, an engineer, becoming
stepmother to his three children. She took up painting and studied
Tibetan Buddhism, and later cooperated with Kari Hesthamar on
abiography of her life. “For the last 40 years,” she said, “I’ve still
been dreaming about Leonard. Even if he’s together with someone
else, and regardless of the setting, the dreams are positive for me.”If for Ihlen, Cohen was “the love of her life”, then for Cohen,
Ihlen came to representaperfect moment that could never be
recaptured, that would stay with him for the rest of his life. He
told Hesthamar ofaday when he and Ihlen were taking the ferry
from Athens to Hydra. “And we got up and gotataxi. And I’ve
never forgotten this. Nothing happened, just sitting in the back of
the taxi with Marianne, litacigarette and thinking: ‘I’m an adult,
I’m with this beautiful woman, we havealittle money in our
pocket.’ That feeling...Ithink I’ve tried to recreate it hundreds
of times unsuccessfully. Just that
feeling of being grown-up, with
somebody beautiful that you’re
happy to be beside, and all the
world is in front of you. Your
body is suntanned, and you’re
going to get onaboat...”Life on the island was an idyll, but one that cursed many who
lived it. When adults pursue their second childhood, it’s their
children who suffer. People drank too much, took too many drugs
and simply burned out. Marianne’s son Axel had ledachaotic
life, pushed from Hydra, to school, to his grandmother in Oslo,
back to Hydra. At 15, he took LSD and never properly recovered.
Later, he would enter an institution. Over the years, Ihlen would
tell Broomfield “how incredibly guilty she felt about Axel. It was
like across she was carrying for the latter part of her life.”“There were periods in her life when she was very depressed and
down,” Goldman says, “but she was extremely resilient.” In the
summer of 2016, Goldman learnt that Ihlen was dying of
leukaemia. From her bed, Ihlen textedaclose friend, Jan
Christian Mollestad, asking him to look after her son and her
husband, and to notify Cohen that she was dying. Cohen replied
by email two hours later. For all his songs and poetry, nothing in
his life became him more than the message he sent.“Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old
and our bodies are falling apart andIthink Iwill follow you very
soon. Know thatIamsoclose behind you that if you stretch out
your hand,Ithink you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve
always loved you for your beauty and for your wisdom, but I
don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all
about that. But now,Ijust want to wish youavery good journey.
Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”
Marianne died peacefully two days later. Cohen died in his sleep
alittle over three months afterwards, on7November.Alonger version of this article appeared in The Daily Telegraph.
©Mick Brown/Telegraph Media Group LtdThe last word3August 2019 THE WEEKIhlen: “covered withakind of gold dust”“If for Ihlen, Cohen was the love of her life, then
for Cohen, Ihlen came to representaperfect
moment that could never be recaptured”