by Ira B. Nadel
NOTES
The following abbreviations have been used for frequently cited titles; initials followed by date indicates an interview.
Books
BaL Ballet of Lepers
BCQ Beauty at Close Quarters
BL Beautiful Losers
BM Book of Mercy
DLM Death of A Lady’s Man
ES The Energy of Slaves
FG The Favorite Game
FH Flowers for Hitler
FR The Final Revision of My Life in Art
LCM Let Us Compare Mythologies
PH Parasites of Heaven
SBE The Spice-Box of Earth
SM Stranger Music
SP Selected Poems, 1956–1968
Albums
BLC Best of Leonard Cohen
CL Cohen Live
DLSM Death of a Ladies’ Man
IYM I’m Your Man
LS Live Songs
NS New Skin for the Old Ceremony
RS Recent Songs
SFR Songs From A Room
SLC Songs of Leonard Cohen
SLH Songs of Love and Hate
TF The Future
TS Tower of Song
VP Various Positions
Archives and Sources
C Columbia University
McM McClelland & Stewart Archive, McMaster University
NYT New York Times
UT Leonard Cohen collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LCA Leonard Cohen Archive
Introduction
1 “tolerated”: LC 11/14/94
2 “part wolf and part angel”: Anjelica Huston, “Leonard Cohen,” Interview (November 1995) 90.
3 “the grocer of despair”: “Field Commander Cohen,” NS; also, Steve Lake, “The Grocer of Despair,” Münchner Stadt Zeitung 14 (1987) 28–29.
4 “poet laureate of pessimism”: Richard Guilliatt, “At Times his Life Has Been Dark,” Sunday Times (12 December 1993) 62.
5 “the prince of bummers”: Leon Wieseltier, “The Prince of Bummers,” New Yorker (26 July 1993) 41.
6 “music to slit your wrists by”: Nancy Southam, “A Flash of Genius,” Toronto Star (20 August 1988) 10.
7 “Thank God Sylvia Plath”: “Love Me, Love My Gun Barrel,” New Musical Express (23 February 1980) 24
8 “moody amorousness”: Elysa Gardner, “Leonard Cohen,” Rolling Stone (5 August 1993) 28.
9 “There is a confusion”: “Love Me, Love My Gun Barrel,” New Musical Express (23 February 1980) 24.
10 “In punishment”: On the Genealogy of Morals, tr. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (NY: Vintage Books, 1967) 67.
11 “A Zen Man”: Joshu Sasaki Roshi in Steve Sanfield, “The Inner Passage,” Zen and Hasidism, compiled by Harold Heifetz (Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978) 229.
12 “I am formal”: Leonard Cohen to Vince Scelsa, “Idiot’s Delight,” WXRK-FM (NYC) 6/13/93.
13 “I have to do a lot”: LC to VS 6/13/93.
14 “at the very center”: LC 4/20/95.
15 “just the Beacon”: LC 4/20/95
16 “the thing you place”: LC 4/20/95.
17 “Keeping things”: LC 4/20/95
18 “what I admire”: BCQ 349
19 “I like to include”: LC to Peter Gzowski, CBC Radio 11/18/92
20 “Each book”: The Gateway [University of Alberta] (2 December 1966) C4.
21 “has led me”: LC 5/10/94
22 “I want no attachments”: BCQ 354
23 “Far from flying”: BL 95–96
Chapter 1
1 “deprivation is the mother”: FG 26
2 “What was it like”: FG 24
3 “His father’s death”: FG 24
4 “what happens when”: FG 3
5 “I’ve been digging”: People 13 (14 January 1980) 55.
6 “nourished all the sleepers”: FG 68
7 “heroic landscapes”: FG 68.
8 “all the English reticence”: FG 21–22
9 “My son, Leonard”: EC 10/23/94
10 “Let him go on”: BCQ 29
11 “the persecuted brother”: FG 22
12 “He died ripe for”: BCQ 36
13 “most dreamy spiritual influence”: People 13 (14 January 1980) 56.
14 “had the flair”: RVZ 7/19/94
15 “past that happened somewhere else”: PG 124–5
16 “He’d read it again”: Michael Benazon, “Leonard Cohen of Montreal” [interview], Matrix 23 (Fall 1986) 52.
17 “He swam in it”: LC 12/29/94
18 “because I wanted”: Matrix 52
19 “Religion structured”: LC in Christian Fevret, “Comme un Guerrier, An Interview with Leonard Cohen,” Throat Culture #3 (1992) 22. (The interview originally appeared in the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles.)
20 “a fat man”: BCQ 31
21 “walked ahead”: BCQ 32
22 “part Catholic”: Mark Rowland, “Leonard Cohen’s Nervous Breakthrough,” Musician Magazine (July 1988) 106.
23 “Christianity”: Rowland, Musician Magazine 106.
24 “would continue the story”: BCQ 27
25 “there was repression”: LC in L.S. Dorman and C.L. Rawlins, Leonard Cohen, Prophet of the Heart (London: Omnibus, 1990) 27–28.
26 “huge .38”: FG 15
27 “I loved the magic”: BL 163
28 “the gun proved”: FG 16
29 “I didn’t feel”: “Comme un Guerrier” 22
30 “No one looks”: UT Notebook
31 “always left on one”: LC in Dorman 49
32 “my uncle Horace”: Matrix 51
33 “I knew how to address”: Matrix 51
34 “professionals in suffering”: LC in Dorman 362
35 “World famous orator”: Westmount High School Yearbook (1951) 23.
36 “swam in a Jewish world”: LC 12/29/94
37 “to go into a system”: Matrix 53
38 “he wanted to touch”: BCQ 214
39 “there [was] some tangent”: BCQ 57
40 “calling on his dead father”: BCQ 357
41 “a history of injustices”: BCQ 357
42 “a ferocious instrument”: BBC Radio 7/8/94
43 “I’m a lot better”: BBC Radio 7/8/94
44 “led me into the racket”: LC in Toronto Star (18 October 1986) G3.
45 “Through the Arch”: Lorca, Collected Poems, ed. Christopher Maurer (NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991) 681.
46 “Am I to blame”: Lorca, Collected Poems xxv.
47 “I was sitting down”: LC in Michael Harris,” Leonard Cohen: The Poet as Hero: 2,” Saturday Night (June 1969) 30.
48 “I wanted them”: LC in Susan Lumsden, “Leonard Cohen Wants the Unconditional Leadership of the World,” Weekend Magazine (12 September 1970) 25.
49 “It is my domain”: “Murray Park at 3 a.m.,” UT.
50 “in stone plazas”: “Murray Park,” UT.
51 “You [an early love] brought”: “Murray Park, UT.
52 “to think of themselves”: BCQ 87
53 “homemade songs of protest”: People’s Song Book (1948; NY: People’s Artists, 1956) 6.
54 “developed a curious notion”: “The Partisan,” Album Notes, BLC (1975).
55 “Through my interest”: LC, National Public Radio, 5/1/1985
56 “There were no cries for help”: LC in “Comme un Guerrier,” Throat Culture 37.
57 “especially beautiful thighs”: “Fragments of Prose, 1952–56,” UT
58 “She moved with”: “Prose, 1952–56,” UT
59 “A smothering sense”: “Prose, 1952–56,” UT
60 “has something to do with”: “Prose, 1952–56,” UT
61 “I have never loved”: “Prose, 1952–56” UT
62 “I have never thought”: “Prose, 1952–56” UT
63 “love generally”: “Prose, 1953–56,” UT
64 “life was purely”: LC, “Comme
un Guerrier,” Throat Culture 37.
65 “I nursed you”: Freda Guttman 8/11/94
66 “always feeling like”: Nancy Bacal 2/18/94
67 “He seemed”: FG 8/11/94
68 “contain and survive”: NB 2/18/94
Chapter 2
1 “If you did things right”: NB 2/18/94
2 “paying off old debts”: LC in Harris, “LC: The Poet as Hero: 2,” Saturday Night 27.
3 “limitless space”: NB 2/18/94
4 “ineffectual shower curtains”: LC, “Nomination Speech,” LCA.
5 “My colleague has promised you”: LC, “Address” (February 1956), UT.
6 “CIV/n: not a one-man job”: Pound in a letter cited by Louis Dudek in “Louis Dudek,” Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series 14 (1991): 132; also see Louis Dudek, “Black Mountain Contact, CIV/n Tish, A Memoir,” Sagetrieb 7 (Spring 1988) 42.
7 “a vital”: “Canadian Culture,” CIV/n, A Literary Magazine of the 50’s, ed. Aileen Collins (Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1983) 129.
8 “forced to write”: CIV/n: 129
9 “For Kulchur’s sake”: CIV/n: 129
10 “Last night”: IL in Elspeth Cameron, Irving Layton (Toronto: Stoddart, 1985) 204.
11 “standing for maximum awareness”: Ezra Pound to Louis Dudek in Dk/ Some Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. Louis Dudek (Montreal: DC Books, 1974) 102.
12 “Leonard N. Cohen”: CIV/n: 126.
13 “secret undulations”: CIV/n: 112.
14 “swarmed the shadows”: CIV/n: 112.
15 “savage integrity”: LC to Vin Scelsa, “Idiot’s Delight,” 6/13/93.
16 “voluntarily studying”: Phyllis Webb, “Tibetan Desire,” Take This Waltz, A Celebration of Leonard Cohen, ed. Michael Fournier and Ken Norris (St. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec: The Muses’ Company, 1994) 183.
17 “got battered about”: Webb, Take this Waltz: 184.
18 “That’s where my life”: LC in Matrix 54.
19 “the more restrained”: LC in Matrix 54.
20 “warm and wonderful”: LC in Sandra Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987) 288.
21 “What race will read”: Irving Layton, “Prologue to the Long Pea-Shooter,” CIV/n: 187.
22 “One can get tired”: Northrop Frye, “Letters in Canada: 1951,” University of Toronto Quarterly 21 (1952): 255.
23 “with a happy / screech”: LC, “For My Old Layton,” FH 37.
24 “I taught him”: LC in Dorman 57.
25 “always seemed to leave”: Don Owen, “Leonard Cohen: The Poet as Hero: 3,” Saturday Night (June 1969) 31.
26 “poised on a rope”: IL, “Foreword,” The Tightrope Dancer (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978) 9.
27 “in a car full of women”: Doug Jones in Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott 280.
28 “You have discovered”: McGill Yearbook (1955)
29 “I yearned to live”: LC in Paul Williams, “The Romantic in a Ragpicker’s Trade,” Crawdaddy (March 1975) 54.
30 “He knew”: BCQ 198
31 “slow and reluctant”: LD letter to author 7/20/93.
32 “the sentimental late-romantic”: LD letter to author 7/20/93.
33 “To Louis Dudek”: LD’s copy of LCM; cited with permission.
34 “Leonard always had”: LD in Dorman 55.
35 “I was fortunate to see him”: LD address, McGill Convocation “But Leonard”: LD address, McGill Convocation 6/16/92.
36 “He has won through”: LD, “Address,” McGill Convocation 6/16/92.
37 “I want to continue”: “Prose Fragments, 1952–1956”(27 December 1956) UT.
38 “I know all about”: “Prose Fragments” (27 December 1956) UT.
39 “strive for folk-song”: “Prose Fragments” (27 December 1956) UT.
40 “The moon dangling”: LCM 54.
41 “It’s been downhill”: LC in Michael Freeman, “Leonard Cohen,” Venue (Winter 1994) 58.
42 “Mostly what I was”: LC in Freeman, “Leonard Cohen,” Venue (Winter 1994) 59
43 “Breasts, in my mind”: Untitled [“I thought I’d seen a lot of things,”] “Prose Fragments, 1952–56,” [1] UT.
44 “Women who have popularity”: “Prose Fragments” [1] UT.
45 “Layton would at once”: “Prose Fragments” [2] UT.
46 “dark southern slope”: “Prose Fragments” [2] UT.
47 “And at that moment”: “Prose Fragments” [3] UT.
48 “I am change”: LC 10/24/95.
49 “Our song led us to the ovens”: LC 10/24/95.
50 “The nightmares”: PH 13.
51 “I merely step”: PH 13.
52 “In principle”: LC, Black Notebook (March 1967), TCA.
53 “which is famous”: LC, 1981 Luberon Journal, TCA.
54 “My personality”: LC in “Newsletter,” Leonard Cohen Information Service 1 (16 December 1984) 1.
Chapter 3
1 “passion without fiesh”: “Swings Jocko,” SBE 24.
2 “love with no climax”: “Swings Jocko,” SBE 24.
3 “I feel lonely”: Columbia Notebook (7 November 1956) UT.
4 “He was lying under”: John Walsh, “Research, you understand… Leonard Cohen,” Mojo (September 1994) 58.
5 “a certain kind of genius”: LC to Vince Scelsa, “Idiot’s Delight,” 6/13/93.
6 “really spinning”: LC to Vince Scelsa, “Idiot’s Delight,” 6/13/93.
7 “I was always only on the fringe”: Mojo (September 1994) 58.
8 “UNINTERRUPTED AND UNREVISED”: Jack Kerouac, “Introduction,” On The Road [Norwegian éd.], The Portable Kerouac, éd. Ann Charters (NY: Viking, 1995) 481.
9 “This magazine intends”: The Phoenix 1 (April 1957) [1].
10 “Riverside Church”: “Notebook, ca. 1956,” UT.
11 “durable, disciplined and athletic”: PG 137.
12 “old rules of light”: PG 171.
13 “the scene the heart”: PG 136.
14 “about her body and her beauty”: PG 140.
15 “I’d no sooner forget you”: White Notebook (September 1961), UT.
16 “Reader”: White Notebook (September 1961), UT.
17 “I would appreciate”: LC to Esther Cohen, 13 July 1961, UT.
18 “Your report”: EC to LC,? November 1961, UT.
19 “Let’s run away”: LC to Anne Sherman,? December 1961, UT.
20 “Don’t worry about me”: LC to Canada Council, 2 June 1961, UT.
21 “Must we find”: “Priests 1957,” SBE 78.
22 “Now Leonard Cohen”: IT to Desmond Pacey, 18 October 1958.
23 “What will become”: DP to IL, 29 October 1958.
24 “Layton, when we dance”: “Last Dance at the Four Penny,” SBE 71.
25 “Work, fine work”: “A Hundred Suits from Russia,” UT [3].
26 “one day”: “A Hundred Suits,” UT [3].
27 “One hundred”: “A Hundred Suits,” UT [4].
28 “My grandfather came”: A Ballet of Lepers, TS.ca. 1957, UT [1].
29 “Defeated he stood”: BAL, UT [59].
30 “each of us had”: BAL, UT [60].
31 “Flee from this place”: LC 5/12/94.
32 “I had a clock”: LC in Winfried Siemerling, “Interview,” Take This Waltz 168.
33 “How sad and beautiful”: BAL, UT [61].
34 “It happened”: BAL, UT [67].
35 “We are not mad”: BAL, UT [68].
36 “learn betrayal”: BAL, UT [74].
37 “to learn shame”: BAL, UT [74].
38 “probably felt”: IT in Cameron, Irving Layton 277.
39 “Don’t worry”: Vera Frenkel 3/2/95.
40 “torment on the bed”: VP 3/2/95.
41 “Leonard always needed”: VP 3/2/95.
42 “a red fire hydrant”: Al Purdy, Reaching for the Beaufort Sea (Maderia Park: Harbour Publishing, 1993) 221
.
43 “within a slight”: AP 222.
44 “sad Duke of Windsor”: IT to DP, 29 June 1957.
45 “we had lots”: IT to DP, 29 June 1957.
46 “on the threshold”: “Goodbye Old Rosengarten,” TS ca. 1958, UT [1].
47 “He’s currently”: IT to DP, 13 February 1958.
48 “but Cohen”: IT to DP, 13 February 1958.
49 “It was written”: LC tape 8 April 1958.
50 “I wonder”: LC tape 8 April 1958.
51 “Well, ah, this”: LC tape, 8 April 1958.
52 “the nightclub poets”: Morley Callaghan, “Holiday Weekend in Montreal,” Maclean’s (30 August 1958) 42.
53 “is a kind of”: MC 44
54 “a waiter placed”: MC 44.
55 “Whatever I have written”: Untitled, June 1958, UT [1].
56 “Edgar, I had no choice”: LC quoted by EC 10/23/94.
57 “not even capable”: TD, “Patterns of Recent Canadian Poetry” Culture 19 (December 1958) 412.
58 “obscure cosmological imagery”: TD Culture 412.
59 “as stupid as it is false”: IT to DP 26 January 1959.
60 “the Canadian poet”: IT in Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, Raymond Souster, Cerberus (Toronto: Contact Press, 1952) 45.
61 “the fires”: LC in IT to DP 8 June 1959.
62 “Klein chose to be”: LC, “Loneliness and History,” ed. Winfried Siemerling, Take This Waltz 147.
63 “a certain Hebraic sense”: LC Matrix 45.
64 “His fate”: LC Matrix 45.
65 “I was always more”: LC Matrix 45.
66 “Dear Mr. McClelland”: LC to Jack McClelland 5/5/59, UT.
67 “I think”: JMcCT 7/23/94.
68 “too slight”: Claire Pratt to LC, 7/15/59, UT.
69 “no other poet”: CP to LC, 7/15/59, UT.
70 “I have bought”: LC to CP j/21/1959, UT.
71 “Please understand”: LC to CP 7/21/59, UT.
72 “inner-directed adolescents”: LC to CP 7/21/59, UT.
73 “Thank you”: LC to CP 7/21/59, UT.
74 “Can’t take it anymore”: IL to DP 6/8/59. Written in June, Layton reports Cohen’s proposed decision to change jobs in September.
75 “to liberate spiritual energy”: LC, “Comme un Guerrier,” Throat Culture 58.
76 “thanks to drugs”: LC, “Comme un Guerrier,” Throat Culture 58.
77 “enough Anglo-Saxon dignity”: IL to DP 19 November 1959.
78 “An All-Season Haiku”: LC, TS, fall 1959, UT.