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IN the midst of the First World War, an English poet in uniform imagined encountering a German equivalent. They are both dead, and Wilfred Owen imagines the adversary he had slain saying to him:
“Whatever hope is yours,/ Was my life also; I went hunting wild/ After the wildest beauty in the world,/Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,/ But mocks the steady running of the hour,/ And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.”
These verses could perhaps serve as an appropriate epitaph for another poet, a Canadian based in the United States who passed away on the eve of the American presidential election, leaving behind a final will and testament prophetically titled You Want It Darker.
Cohen’s life was a quest for the Truth, with a capital T.
There is no question mark at the end. It’s a statement of fact. It’s more than likely that the poet in question, Leonard Cohen, did not quite have a Donald Trump presidency in mind when he came up with that phrase. But the association is hard to disregard.
Cohen was not ostensibly a political poet, but his eloquent commentaries on the human condition frequently addressed ‘Popular Problems’ (as the title of his penultimate album, released two years ago on his 80th birthday, indicated), and although he didn’t consider himself capable of providing definitive answers, he excelled in asking the right questions.
In more than one sense, Cohen’s entire life was a quest for the Truth, with a capital T, and if it eluded him, perhaps it’s because in fact there is no such thing — the meaning of life, ultimately, is not written in the stars. It’s what you make of it. Whether he ever clearly realised that is uncertain, but Cohen deserves our gratitude for leaving behind a body of work that encourages us to ponder philosophical conundrums.
Born in Quebec in 1934, to immigrants from Eastern Europe, Cohen never resiled from his Jewish faith, yet his spiritual quest led him to investigate Zen Buddhism (he spent several years as a monk), Hinduism (he kept a low profile in Mumbai for many a month during the 1990s), and Sufi Islam. Whether or not it was all futile, he appears to have shed his depression somewhere along the way.
Cohen was a published poet and novelist for at least a decade before he recorded his first album, having signed on to Columbia at the behest of John Hammond, the talent scout who had ‘discovered’ the likes of Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan, and went on to embrace Bruce Springsteen. A year or so before Songs of Leonard Cohen (a subdued album on which the shy singer, accompanying himself on the guitar, included indelible songs such as ‘Suzanne’; ‘So Long’, ‘Marianne’; ‘Sisters of Mercy’; and ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’) was released in 1967, the poet-songwriter had been put in touch with Judy Collins.
Collins became the first of innumerable artists to cover his songs, a tradition that arguably reached its apogee with the recording of ‘Hallelujah’ by the inimitable and tragically short-lived Jeff Buckley (who, incidentally, proclaimed Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as his biggest hero). It is ironic, in retrospect, that Various Positions, the 1984 album that contained ‘Hallelujah’, was initially considered worthy of a Canada-only release by Columbia.
Cohen’s comeback in 1988, I’m Your Man, kicked off with ‘First We Take Manhattan’ — which he described later as “a terrorist song”. It begins unforgettably with the declaration:
“They sentence me to twenty years of boredom/ For trying to change the system from within/ I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them/ First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”
Apart from the title track, it also contained ‘Take This Waltz’, co-credited to the gay Spanish poet and victim of fascism Federico Garcia Lorca (after whom Cohen named his daughter) and ‘Tower of Song’, which features the self-deprecatory verse, “I was born like this, I had no choice/I was born with the gift of a golden voice.”
Four years later, he gave us The Future: “Give me back the Berlin Wall,” he declares in the title track, “Give me Stalin and St Paul/ I’ve seen the future, brother/ It is murder”. There’s more hope in ‘Democracy’:
“It’s coming through a hole in the air/ Through those nights in Tiananmen Square…/ From the wars against disorder/ From the sirens night and day/ From the fires of the homeless/ From the ashes of the gay/ Democracy is coming to the USA.”
To which one could only add, amen.
Cohen was forced back on to the concert stage in the 21st century after being robbed by his manager, and thousands of people across the world are grateful, because his extended concerts were remarkable in every way. He left us on Nov 7 going gently into the good night, yet raging against the dying of the light. What he described as his credo should serve us well as the Trump times loom: “There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”
Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2016
