By Valerie Sobel
Concentration camps. Death is looming. Separation of lovers. Naked bodies in queue for showers of gas poison. Only way out of the despair on this march to imminent death in the crematorium is to surrender to the thoughts of a loved one.
…not exactly the imagery I concocted in my head when I listened for the last 30+ years to the prolific love hymn by Leonard Cohen. But, boy oh boy, was I wrong…!
Known to the cultivated as one of the most relevant and evoking poets of the last 100 years, Jewish Canadian Leonard Cohen wooed us with the enormity and depth of his words, not only in his poetry, but in his music. Yet how little we actually knew and appreciated his gift while this giant was still alive. Most of us, Cohen fans and followers, thought we “got” him. Thought we got his most poignant Jewishness. Thought we got his reverence for humanity and cries of human struggles. Thought we got his religious symbolism and temperamental metaphorism. Yet, how, in the name of everything sacred, did I miss this?
As if hit by a tsunami this morning, I woke up to the meaning behind the lyrics in his epic song “Dance Me to the End of Love”. The very song we all decided to immortalize from the moment we heard the first few compelling bars of the profoundly Jewish violin. I didn’t tie the knots until today; guilty of intellectual laziness, as charged.
What did Leonard mean when he said “Dance me to the end of love?”
When he said, “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin” (emphasis on “burning” in reference to a very Jewish instrument)
When he said, “Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in” (…I have shivers!)
When he said, “Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove”
When he said “Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone, Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon”
When he said, “Dance me to the children who are asking to be born” (…more shivers)
When he said, “Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn” (“curtains”! only Cohen could so profoundly characterize wire fences and physical seperation as “curtains”)
When he said, “Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn, Dance me to the end of love”
…how clear it all is now.
In the words of the transcendent genius, himself:
“Dance Me To The End Of Love … it’s curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you, or the world hands you, and that’s why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,’ meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation.”
Sad that most of us were unable to parse through the meaning of what was meant when the giant was alive, no doubt we would have listened to this epic song very differently.
With his eloquence and grace, Leonard Cohen offers us the following defence and absolution from our ignorance:
“But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.”
Maestro Leonard Cohen, master of words, grand master of poetic artistry, author of countless poems, an unforgettable smoky baritone, composer, a rare creed of intellect – charged up to $500 per concert ticket before his death. What I wouldn’t do to pay $5,000 to hear him belt out “Dance Me to the End of Love” with a “Thousand Kisses Deep” as an encore, now.
@ David melech:
As was Yeshua: born a Jew/died a Jew.
As did Yeshua
All this just determines me that Cohen should have changed his name to O’Reilly or something like. He was nuts. Nothing for Jews to agonise over. Anyone that does is also nuts.
For me he was clearly a Meshumad. What difference if “you” find deep meaning in his words. If you can find it then you don’t need him to show it to you. And what good does it do you anyway….when you “find” it …. whoever you all are…A time waster.
Obviously believed the rubbish about Jew maneylenders and such dre.
Born a JEW died a JEW regardless of which roads he traveled in between
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
All of this is well & good. Cohen was interested in many religions and indeed in just about everything that makes our complicated and terminally f**ked up species tick. But he did not convert to Catholicism.
I’m not the only person who ever believed, rightly or wrongly, that Leonard Cohen was a Catholic. A man named John Etherington writes in Leonardcohenforum.com, writes “Leonard’s interest in the figure of Jesus has always intrigued me. I was brought up by two born-again baptist parents, and much of their belief was of the “believe in Jesus or burn” mentality. Despite this, I never turned against Christianity as I might have done, and it was refreshing to find Jesus in a new setting when I discovered Leonard’s work in 1968. Leonard was apparently brought up-part-Catholic bu his Irish-Catholic nanny. {bold lettering added by AD} Ira Nadel says that the church represented romance to Leonard
From memory, Jesus first appears in Leonard’s poem “For Wilf and His House”, which is the second poem in his first book of poetry “Let Us Compare Mythologies”. The fourth poem in the book is “Prayer For Messiah” which we see Leonard reciting in the “Ladies and Gentleman” movie. I have observed that Jesus is mentioned once in most of Leonard’s early albums. He’s there of course in “Suzanne” – the first song on “Songs of LC”. We find imagery that might be associated with Jesus on “Avalanche” – the first song on “Songs of Love and Hate”. Then we find him again in the second song “Last Years Man” (some women wait for Jesus, some women wait for Cain”), and in the opening words of the first song on “Live Songs” – “Passing Through” (“I Saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called calvary”), and also in the first song on “New Skin” – “Is This What You Wanted (“You were Jesus Christ my Lord, I was the money lender”).
I sense that Leonard identified with the suffering of Jesus in his early work, and also seemed to have some identification with him – especially when in “Please Don’t Pass Me By” he sings “I sing this for the freaks and the cripples, and the hunchback and the burned, and the burning and the maimed and the broken and the torn”.
Jesus isn’t mentioned in “Recent Songs” but the figure of the Virgin is there in “Lady of Solitude”. After this, Jesus features in “Jazz Police” when Leonard sings “Jesus taken serious by many, Jesus taken joyous by a few” (I’d forgotten this mention, until I looked it up in the Cohen concordance, to which there is a link on this site). Jesus gets his final mention in Leonard’s recorded work in the black humour of “The Future” (“Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima”). I’ve no conclusions to make, but thought I’d share these observations. ” There is a whole section of the forum devoted to Cohen’s complicated relationships to Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism.
@ evildoctor: Evil, I certainly make no claim to be a Leonard Cohen expert. But I did once read a poem by him that expressed faith in Jesus Christ. The same poem also contains a reference to “Our Lady,” a Catholic term for the Virgin Mary. And I read another poem by him which celebrated the life of a American Indian convert to Catholicism who had just been declared a “Beato” (or Blessed One, one step removed from sainthood) by the Catholic Church. If it walks like Catholicism and it talks like Catholicism. . .
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Born and died a Jew. Buried in a Jewish cemetery with his parents, etc. in Montreal. NEVER converted to Catholicism; was ordained a Buddhist monk and expressed an admiration of Christ. Judaism was foundational to Cohen as a poet and artist and a human being. A great poet whose words will resonate with many for a very long time. I suspect you are not of a literary bent or his work is beyond your comprehension. You evidently know jacksh*t about Cohen.
https://youtu.be/UDgzqoBnxcw
Leonard Cohen was a convert to Catholicism. He was a talented poet and songwriter, but not a great sage. This sycophancy to Cohen is uncalled for.
I loved him and his music. I am so glad I got to see/hear him in one of his final concerts. I did not know of the origin of this song, however, so thank you for writing/posting this.
I’m so happy I got to see/hear him in one of his final concerts. I loved him and his music. I had no idea of the origin of this song however.
@ Edgar G.:His music did not appeal to everyone but his lyrics were deep and meaningful and will certainly stand the test of time.
Well must say that I thought absolutely NOTHING of Leonard Cohen. heard him once was enough ro me. Scraggy and dirty looking. No interest at all in ravings composed amid the fumes of marijuana or worse. Could never understand what the attraction was. I always hated poetry anyway. So to me a non person.
Now I find he was a genius.
Well that’s life.