The Times Saturday Review - UK (2020-11-14)

the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GR saturday review 9

thing and then move on... never terribly

happy doing it, leaving one thing for the

next because the thing I had didn’t work,

whether it was the woman or the poem or

the city. Until I understood that nothing

works... and to accept that. I have a sense

that I was privileged. The sunlight, the

woman, the child, the table, the work, the

gardenia, the order, the mutual respect

and honour that we gave to each other.

That’s what really matters. I know there

were all kinds of problems. We were kids,

and we lived in a period during which the

old forms were overthrown. We wanted to

overthrow [those] forms, but at the same

time maintain things that seemed to be

nourishing. Those relationships on Hydra

were all doomed. We didn’t know it at the

time, but they couldn’t withstand what life

imposed on us. Those relationships that

were formed idealistically or sexually or

romantically couldn’t survive

the challenges that ordinary

lives would confront

them with.

In a way, it was such

a graceful parting

that it wasn’t really

designed by us. The

parting was as

graceful as the

meeting. It had

stormy qualities of

young love, of

course — there were

arguments and fights

and jealousy and betray-

als, along with all the

other things of nourishment

and friendship.

In Montreal, we always thought we were

famous. In a sense, we were more famous

to ourselves then than afterwards. After-

wards, you begin to realise — what is your

fame compared to Muhammad Ali, to

Marlon Brando? When you were young in

Montreal, and nobody knew who you were

except the four other poets, then you really

felt that your fame had some weight.

There is an awful truth... we no longer

believe we are holy... This is the

confession without which we cannot begin

to raise our eyes: the absence of God in our

midst... Let us encourage young men to go

into the deserts of their heart and burn the

praise of perfection. Let us do it with

drugs, or whips, or sex, or blasphemy, or

fasting, but let men begin to feel the

perfection of the universe... We need our

dirty saints and our monstrous hermits.

Let us create a tradition for them, for they

light the world.

How I wrote Sisters of Mercy

I was... walking along one of the main

streets... It was bitter cold. I passed these

two girls [Barbara and Lorraine]. They

invited me to stand in the doorway with

them. Of course I did. Sometime later, we

found ourselves in my little hotel room...

and the three of us were gonna sleep

together. Of course, I had all kinds of erotic

fantasies of what the evening might bring

... I think we all jammed into this one small
couch... and it became clear that it wasn’t
the purpose of the evening at all. At one
point I found myself unable to sleep. I got
up and, by the moonlight, I wrote that
poem while these women were sleeping. It
was one of the few songs I ever wrote from
top to bottom without a line of revision. By
the time they woke up... I had this com-
pleted song to sing to them.

How I became a poet

I stumbled on a book of [Federico García

Lorca] in a second-hand bookstore... and

I found something in there that just reso-

nated in my own heart... the evo-

cation of a landscape that you

really felt at home in... It

was a universe that I

already inhabited, so I

claimed him as my

brother. Once I

knew that there was

this landscape that

he’d established, I

wanted to stay there

most of the time.

[Cohen reportedly

carried the Lorca

book with him every-

where, “until the book

began to lose its pages”.] I

read these lines. “I want to pass

through the arches of Elvira, to see

your thighs and begin weeping.” I began

my own search for those arches and those

tears. Another line: “the morning threw

fistfuls of ants at my face” — this was a uni-

verse I understood thoroughly and I began

to pursue it... follow it... live it. What can

I say about a name that... changed my way

of being and thinking in a radical way?...

I’ve never left that world.

Certainly one of the images I had of

myself came from reading Chinese poetry

at a very young age. There was a kind of

solitary figure in... poems by Li Bo and Tu

Fu. A monk sitting by a stream. There was

a notion of solitude, a notion of deep

appreciation for personal relationships,

friendships, not just love, not just sensual

or erotic or the love of a man or a woman,

but a deep longing to experience and to

describe friendship and loss and the conse-

quences of distance... Thirty years later, I

found myself in robes and a shaved head

sitting in a meditation hall. It just seemed

completely natural.

I do remember sitting down at a card

table on a sun porch one day when I decid-

ed to quit a job. I was working in a brass

foundry [the family’s Cuthbert operation]

and one morning I thought, “I just can’t

take this any more,” and went out to the

sun porch and started a poem. I had a mar-

vellous sense of mastery and power, and

freedom, and strength, when I was writing

this poem.

On family and heritage

I strongly felt that my family was conscious

of representing something important. For

example, my name, Cohen, means “rabbi”

[it actually means “priest”]. I had the im-

pression that my family took this literally,

that they felt that in a way they were rabbis

by heredity... They were conscious of

their own destinies and of their responsi-

bility to the community. They founded

synagogues, hospitals, and newspapers. I

felt like I had received a heritage that con-

cerned my own destiny in the world.

On his father’s death

I went upstairs and found a bow tie and cut

a wing of it and wrote something, some

kind of farewell to my father. And I buried

it in the backyard. Some attraction to a

ritual, a response to an impossible event.

On religion

I never saw [the church] as oppressive... I

didn’t have to feel antagonistic towards the

church like the young French intellectuals

I met. I only saw it as a continuation of the

Vicar of Christ. I saw it in its purest form.

I thought this was Christianity, the great

missionary arm of Judaism. I saw this as

absolutely within my tradition, nothing

foreign to me. I always loved the church.

There was something I always liked about

the whole enterprise.

On his Catholic music tastes growing up

Those rousing national hymns touched

me... I was completely hooked on this stuff

as a kid — the songs my mother sang, the

liturgy, the pop music. There was a certain

resonance when something was said in a

certain kind of way, it seemed to embrace

the cosmos. Not just my heart, but every

heart was involved, and loneliness was dis-

solved, and you felt like you were this

aching creature in the midst of the aching

cosmos and the ache was okay. Not only

was it okay, but it was the way that you

embraced the sun and the moon.

On his childhood and dog

He slept under my bed, followed me to

school, waited for me. He was my closest

friend. He died at age 13. He asked to go out

one winter night and we never saw him

again. It was very distressing. We put ads in

the newspaper. We only found him in the

springtime, when the snow melted, and

the smell came from under the neighbour’s

porch, where he’d gone to die.

JAMES BURKE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

poet’s path Leonard Cohen lived in the artists’ colony on Hydra between 1960 and 1967. Below: Cohen in 1966

She liked to drive fast, and I didn’t like to
drive that fast, but anyway, we got there.
That was a wonderful drive, although I
remember quarrelling a lot. I don’t know
whether it was about the driving or not, but
I do remember that quarrels arose. But
they were healed because we’d stop at
some little Italian café and have pasta and
a bottle of wine or some cheese and bread,
and we’d get over it.
She’d go back to Norway, I to Canada to
try to make some money. We were young,
and both of us interested in all kinds of
experience, so there was something fragile
about the relationship. I was hungry for
experience as any young writer is. I wanted
many women, many kinds of experiences,
many countries, many climates, many love
affairs. It was natural for me then to see life
as some kind of buffet where there was a
lot of different tastes. I’d get tired of some-

Adapted from

Leonard Cohen,

Untold Stories:

The Early Years

by Michael

Posner,

published by

Simon & Schuster

on November 26