Re: queries -- philosopher song; celia dropkin

[Hayyim Feldman <hf...>]

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, ganzl azoi freyl wrote:

>   first, i'm wondering whether anyone (or a combination of people) has
>lyrics (yidish and english translation) for the various versions of the
>'philosopher' song ("hey, philosopher, come sit at the rebbe's
>table...").
>   at the bund centennial concert, adrienne cooper performed 3 versions:
>khasidic, zionist/socialist, and bundist.  does anyone have words for
>these?
>or for any other incarnations?

If you're still looking, Theodore Bikel's "Jewish Folk Songs" album insert
has Yiddish and English lyrics for the ch'sidishe version.  Let me know if
you don't have access to that and if I have a chance I'll type them out
for you.  I didn't know there were leftist/haskalah versions; I'm
interested in seeing those.

-Hayyim

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What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human
possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it
has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy
results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A
saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed
long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for
himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a
man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his
glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress
of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its
particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the
world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from
flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph
needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and
finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human
beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among
us such men, such balancing monsters of love. 

  - Leonard Cohen, _Beautiful Losers_ (1966) 
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