Abstract
Looking at Leonard Cohen’s life story and song lyrics in terms of fragment and ruin, three traumas stand out: the death of his father when Cohen was nine, coping with depression, and the aftermath of the Holocaust. The concepts of the psychic crypt and the phantom effect delineated by Abraham and Torok highlight links between Cohen’s life and lyrics, between intergenerational trauma and text. The second section of the essay deals briefly with Cohen as a belated Romantic and the neglected parallels between his use of images and visual, particularly collage, art. The final sections treat the condition of the heart theme in Cohen’s lyrics in spiritual terms and in relation to social issues tracing out the implications of Cohen’s contrast between “Babylon” and “Boogie Street.”
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Notes
- 1.
Biographies by Ira B. Nadel (1996), reprinted with an Afterword (2007), and Sylvie Simmons (2012) were written with Cohen’s permission and the cooperation of people important his life. The biography by L. S. Dorman and C. L. Rawlins (1990) is still valuable and Liel Leibovitz (2014) has lively summaries of key moments in Cohen’s career. There are many unreprinted interviews. I am grateful to the staff of the Thomas Fischer Rare Book Room, University of Toronto, for permission and kind assistance while consulting the Leonard Cohen Archive, and to the Cohen estate and the Wylie Agency for permission to quote from Cohen’s lyrics and poetry.
- 2.
Esther Rashkin (1992) explicates the differences between Abraham and Torok’s theory and other schools of psychoanalysis.
- 3.
Interview with Billy Walker (Burger 2014, 26).
- 4.
“Everybody Knows,” I’m Your Man. London: Sony/ATV UK, 1988. Hereafter Cohen’s songs will be cited in the text by title and release date. There is a key at the end of the References.
- 5.
“I said this can’t be me / Must be my double,” “I Can’t Forget” 1988; there is a symposium on “Raincoat” in Scobie (2000, 100–117).
- 6.
Notebook, Box 8A, Leonard Cohen Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Ms of “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” (New York: Sony USA, 1967). Permission to access and quote given by Robert Kory, trustee of the Leonard Cohen Estate.
- 7.
For a discussion of the “un-assimilability” of the memory of the Holocaust “in the absence of ruins,” see Chapter 13.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Relaxed was displayed at the Centre Pompidou and on a catalogue cover in 1982 when Cohen was often in Paris.
- 12.
References
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Adorno, Theodor. 1998. Education After Auschwitz. In Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press.
Ariel, David. 2006. Kabbalah: The Mystic Quest in Judaism. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
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Burger, Jeff (ed.). 2014. Interviews with Billy Walker, Paul Zollo, Arthur Kurzweil, and Brett Graiger. Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen 26: 261–291; 369–393; 386–392. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
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Cohen, Leonard. 1967. Draft Verses of “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” in Mss Notebook, Box 8A, Leonard Cohen Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.
Cohen, Leonard. 2006. The Book of Longing. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
Dorman, Loranne S., and Clive L. Rawlins. 1990. Leonard Cohen: Prophet of the Heart. New York: Omnibus Press.
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Nadel, Ira B. 1996. Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen. New York: Random House.
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Leonard Cohen Recordings Cited by Date of Issue
Songs of Leonard Cohen. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 1967.
Songs from a Room. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 1969.
Songs of Love and Hate. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 1971.
New Skin for the Old Ceremony. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 1974.
Various Positions. London: Sony/ATV UK, 1984.
I’m Your Man. London: Sony/ATV UK, 1988.
The Future. London: Sony/ATV UK, 1992.
Cohen Live. London: Sony/ATV UK, 1994.
Ten New Songs. London: Sony/ATV UK, 2001.
Dear Heather. New York: Old Ideas LLC, 2004.
Old Ideas. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 2012.
Popular Problems. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 2014.
You Want It Darker. New York: Sony/ATV USA, 2016.
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Spear, J.L. (2019). The Fractured World of Leonard Cohen. In: Mitsi, E., Despotopoulou, A., Dimakopoulou, S., Aretoulakis, E. (eds) Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26905-0_11
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