Re: leonard cohen

[Hayyim Feldman <hf...>]

Re L.Cohen's references to the holocaust:

A Thousand Kisses Deep (1998 version - first & last verses):

           You came to me this morning
           And you handled me like meat.
           Youd have to live alone to know
           How good that feels, how sweet.
           My mirror twin, my next of kin,
           Id know you in my sleep.
           And who but you would take me in
           A thousand kisses deep?

           And now you are the Angel Death
           And now the Paraclete;
           And now you are the Savior's Breath
           And now the Belsen heap.
           No turning from the threat of love,
           No transcendental leap -
           As witnessed here in time and blood
           A thousand kisses deep.


First We Take Manhattan (I'm Your Man, 1988 - 1st two verses & refrain) 

    They sentenced 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

    I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
    I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
    I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
    First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

    I'd really like to live beside you, baby
    I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
    But you see that line there moving through the station?
    I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those


And numerous poems in his 1964 book, Flowers For Hitler, summarized as
follows for The Leonard Cohen Files website by Professor Stephen Scobie:

    The first of Cohen's self-consciously
    "anti-art" gestures: an attempt, in his own
    words, to move "from the world of the
    golden-boy poet into the dung pile of the
    front-line writer."  Haunted by the image of the
    Nazi concentration camps, the book is
    deliberately ugly, tasteless, and confrontational,
    setting out to destroy the image of Cohen as a
    sweet romantic poet.  Instead, it celebrates the
    failed careers and destroyed minds of such
    "beautiful losers" as Alexander Trocchi,
    Kerensky, and even Queen Victoria. 


-Hayyim


On Tue, 17 Aug 1999, Martin Grossman wrote:

>Leonard says in an interview somewhere that the song is about the
>Holocaust -- and the persistence of love even under such unbearable
>circumstances. I'm paraphrasing rather badly, but this is the gist of it. 
>
>Marty Grossman
>
>MaxwellSt (at) aol(dot)com wrote:
>
>> We have twice been asked to play his song, "Dance Me To The End of
>> Love," as a bridal dance.  I believe that is because, although the
>> content is non-specific, the melody is a Russian derivative with a
>> Jewish nuance.  (Our Russian violinist thinks so, anyway).

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, robert wiener wrote:

>By the way, "The Captain" from Various Positions has the following
>Holocaust reference: 

>"Complain, complain, that's all you've done
>               Ever since we lost
>               If it's not the Crucifixion
>               Then it's the Holocaust."
>               "May Christ have mercy on your soul
>               For making such a joke
>               Amid these hearts that burn like coal
>               And the flesh that rose like smoke."
>
>There's also a Holocaust reference in "Death of a Ladies' Man".
>
>A Leonard Cohen conference included in a session On the Novel: a
>paper, Writing Around the Holocaust: Uncovering the Ethical Centre of
>Beautiful Losers, by Norman Ravvin.



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