by Holt, Jason
The evidence for the bodily basis of emotions is impressive. Jesse Prinz makes the case in “Embodied Emotions” (pp. 45–47). First, for at least the basic emotions, namely anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, and joy, we see tight correlations with specific sorts of bodily changes. Second, likewise, evoking certain bodily changes can induce emotions, from forcing a smile to improve one’s mood, to adopting the “power stance” before a job interview to increase confidence. Third, the brain circuits involved in emotions are also involved in bodily regulation and self-maintenance. Fourth, reduced bodily awareness and feedback also results in diminished emotions.
It’s not surprising, then, that we characterize so many emotions using embodied metaphors. For instance, it’s common to characterize the intense sadness of a lost love in terms of a broken heart, the revelation of betrayal as a kick in the stomach, and the nervousness of a public speaking engagement as butterflies in the stomach. We see many such references to embodied metaphors in Cohen’s songs. Cohen frequently invokes the heart metaphor, perhaps the most common embodied metaphor. Expressing the emotional turmoil of love lost in his “In My Secret Life,” Cohen describes his heart as feeling like ice, both “crowded and cold.” In “The Land of Plenty,” Cohen intimates that the heart is a place with space and depth, such that many things may fit in its “caverns.” One’s heart—or “love”—might be pierced (“Field Commander Cohen”) or broken (“The Guests,” “The Window,” “Teachers,” and “Ballad of the Absent Mare”) or restless (“The Smokey Life”), or hardened with hatred (“Light as the Breeze”), or layered like an onion (“Wishing Window”). One’s heart may stand for the person (“Heart with No Companion” and “Humbled in Love”) or it might be something one searches through intimate emotional reflection (“Villanelle for Our Time”). It may even be something about which one can have expertise, about which one can teach (“Teachers”). In “I’m Your Man,” Cohen speaks of clawing at the heart of the object of his affection, as if he were a dog in heat.
Likewise, Cohen often draws comparisons with the state of the body more generally. In “Wishing Window,” we hear that dreams can be so emotionally powerful that stabs of appetite can wake one up. And who among us hasn’t been woken by the fears, pains, and appetites of our dreams to find ourselves in a cold sweat, hearts racing, and viscera in a knot? In “Bird on the Wire,” Cohen expresses regret for the emotional pain he has caused others, likening it to the bodily damage caused by an animal’s horns, vividly capturing the visceral nature of feelings of betrayal and regret. Similarly, in “Iodine” and “The Traitor,” Cohen draws a comparison between physical pain—of the sort caused by a hornet sting or by applying iodine to a wound—and emotional pain.
More generally, Cohen sometimes characterizes emotions in terms of trembling (“Last Year’s Man,” “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” and “Story of Isaac”) and describes himself as being inflamed (“Last Year’s Man”) or, alternatively, as having ice upon his soul (“The Butcher”). In like manner, Cohen sometimes describes lust in terms of hunger (“Memories,” “You Have Loved Enough,” and “Closing Time”) and aching (“Ain’t No Cure for Love”). In “Love Calls You by Your Name,” loneliness is said to be shouldered, emphasizing how loneliness takes a toll on—and is reflected in—the body. Similarly, in “Paper Thin Hotel,” the burden of jealousy is lifted from him when he recognizes that love is beyond his control. In “Avalanche,” Cohen characterizes love in affective terms as being more or less fierce. While we rarely if ever describe beliefs and other cognitive states as admitting degrees of intensity or fierceness, we do describe bodily actions and reactions in these terms. As one more example, consider that in “Tonight Will Be Fine” Cohen uses the metaphor of fasting to depict his falling out of love, where he becomes thin in comparison to the vastness of the woman’s love for him. As well, he notes the relation between facial expressions and emotions when reassured of his lover’s emotions by her eyes and her smile, in contrast to the sorrow in his lover’s “soft” eyes in “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.”
Emotional experience is a thoroughly embodied phenomenon, and this is reflected in the imagery employed by Cohen when expressing the complexities of love, jealousy, and betrayal. We are after all embodied creatures and it is from the perspective of our bodies that we engage the physical and social environments in which we find ourselves. Emotions are intimately connected with our wellbeing as living organisms. It’s not surprising, then, that we find the basis of the phenomenology of emotion in the states of our bodies. Again and again, the lyrics of Leonard Cohen reflect this basic fact of human existence.
Cognitive Theories
In contrast to body-based theories of emotion, cognitive or mind-based accounts view emotions as special sorts of judgment about things one values. Cognitivists will point to the fact that by themselves bodily disturbances don’t tell us what emotions are occurring. Take, for example, “Beatlemania.” Observed out of context, the tear-filled, twisted faces of these Beatles fans appear to express intense anguish and sadness. Far from this, however, these fans are ecstatic and filled with intense joy—the objects of their greatest affection are before them. These fans are not sad, says the cognitivist, precisely because they judge the Beatles to be wonderful and realize that finally, they are within their presence. (This example is discussed by John Deigh in “Primitive Emotions,” p. 24.) More generally, while certain sorts of facial expressions often track certain sorts of emotions, this connection is not guaranteed. As Cohen says in his “In My Secret Life,” he sometimes smiles when he’s angry.
Cognitivists also emphasize the fact that with changes in one’s judgments come changes in one’s emotions (Jenefer Robinson makes this point in “Emotion,” p. 28). If the ecstatic Beatles fans were to discover that the men on stage were, in fact, imposters, their overflowing joy would quickly turn, first to surprise, then to anger. Notice as well that emotions like jealousy, envy, guilt, and moral indignation often involve complex evaluations of situations and actions that only make sense in the context of judgment and conscious deliberation. Indeed, the fact that we so often argue about the appropriateness of an emotional response implies, it would seem, that we are evaluating the appropriateness of judgments, which can be, and often are, incorrect. We might argue whether or not my anger over a perceived slight is justified, but we wouldn’t argue over whether my back pain is justified. Feelings are feelings, the argument goes, while emotions are judgments, judgments which, given the facts, may be more or less appropriate.
Cognitivists are also usually interested in different sorts of emotions from those addressed by body-based theories. As Robert Solomon puts it, “I am interested in the meanings of life, not short-term neurological arousal” (“Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings,” p. 79). What Solomon is interested in are things like “life-long love” and emotions that endure and bring meaning to one’s overall existence. He is interested, “not in those brief ‘irruptive’ reactions or responses but in the long-term narratives of Othello, Iago . . . and those of my less drama-ridden but nevertheless very emotional friends” (pp. 78–79). For Solomon, then, emotions are “intelligent” and involve a person’s evaluation of his place in the world. Likewise, Martha Nussbaum, working from the Stoic tradition, conceives of emotions as judgments about things of value over which we lack full control. “The story of emotions,” she writes, “is the story of judgments about important things, judgments in which we acknowledge our neediness and incompleteness before elements that we do not fully control” (p. 184).
When considering an emotion like love, bodily reactions can scarcely be the entire story. When, in “Hallelujah,” Cohen denies that love is a victory march, he points to the conceptual complexity of love. Even those who consider themselves nonreligious will be familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 and its characterization of love. Love, we’re told, “is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud.” Whether or not one agrees with this biblical characterization of lo
ve, there is an important lesson here: the experience of the bodily reactions associated with love cannot be the complete story of love, for there are behavioral, social, and cognitive conditions that must be met in order for it to count as genuine love. In a similar vein, love is not just what one feels; it’s also something one can give—or fail to give—to another, as Cohen notes in “Suzanne.” And in “Chelsea Hotel #2” we see the importance of distinguishing infatuation from love, which are sometimes hard to distinguish merely in terms of feeling. Infatuation is of course a powerful and beautiful emotion. But it’s also fleeting, limited to a time and a place, to a moment in the narrative of one’s life. While Cohen remembers the sweetness of an infatuation, locating in at a specific time and place (the Chelsea Hotel in New York in the late sixties), it isn’t love; for one thing, he rarely thinks of her anymore.
In songs like “Why Don’t You Try” and “Humbled in Love,” we again see the complexities of love, of even the desire for a love that is lacking, and also the strictures of marriage or long-term commitment. Not all loves are lifelong yet the codification of love in a marriage is meant to be. Vows, as Cohen puts it, are difficult. Against the permanency of marriage stands the possibility of many emotionally satisfying infatuations. With the commitment of lifelong love—or at least, lifetime monogamy—a person forecloses on the future possibilities of infatuation. We see a similar tension between monogamy and freedom in “There Is a War,” “So Long, Marianne,” “Ballad of the Absent Mare,” and “I Tried to Leave You.” Such tensions are sometimes reflected in the possible asymmetries of love, that is, in cases where the strength of love between two lovers is not equal. In “Iodine,” for instance, compassion and pity can sting as much as iodine when one partner needs the other more than she needs him. Asymmetries in love can sometimes result in the loss of one’s identity to the other, as reflected in “Fingerprints.” Here Cohen seems to intimate that love can lead to emasculation and the loss of one’s fingerprints—one’s identity—to the other.
Likewise, jealousy appears to have a strong cognitive component. Whether or not a person feels jealousy will depend, at least in part, on how he thinks of himself and his relation to his partner. As Cohen suggests in “Sisters of Mercy,” if you don’t think of someone as a lover, thoughts about her intimate relations with another are unlikely to produce jealousy. Relatedly, in “Paper Thin Hotel,” Cohen expresses relief from the jealousy that might have been aroused by hearing his erstwhile lover making love to another. A burden was lifted from his soul. This relief seemingly resulted from Cohen’s—the song’s narrator’s—realization that love wasn’t under his control. In these cases, judgment and conscious reflection play an essential role. Emotions must be analyzed in this sense, and from such analyses, we learn about ourselves and the nature of human existence. In “Villanelle for Our Time” (with lyrics that sound Cohen-like from a poem by Frank Scott), Cohen indicates that we search our emotions, emotions that have been informed and influenced by pleasurable and painful experiences from which we may rise again to play some “greater part.” And as they can and must be reflected on, so they can be taught to others (“Teachers”).
Cognitivists, it should now be clear, emphasize the social nature of emotions. So for example, in The Rationality of Emotion Ronald de Sousa advances his notion of a “paradigm scenario,” a social context in which we each learn culturally appropriate expressions of emotion. But not only are emotions learned and reinforced socially, some only make sense within the context of complex social relationships. Think, for example, of the powerful sense of betrayal you might feel as a relationship unravels due to infidelity, and the sense of regret your partner might feel for causing such emotional pain in a former lover. These socially rich and complex emotions are represented in Cohen’s works like “Bird on the Wire,” “A Singer Must Die,” and “Leaving Green Sleeves.” Here we again see the complex interplay of a desire for freedom (from romantic attachment), the emotional pain it has wrought in others, and the regret that he is the cause of such pain. We perhaps see something similar in “Tower of Song” where Cohen expresses surprise and regret for the bridges burnt between himself and a lover and the river that has widened between them. The social and cognitive complexities of love, jealousy, regret, and ultimately forgiveness are also evident in love triangles. Consider Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” where these complexities intertwine, and through which the members of the triangle grow, learning about one another, and themselves. Rather than being brief perturbations, love and the emotional pain of love lost or betrayed may not even diminish over time, as noted in “Ain’t No Cure for Love.”
Emotion as a Process
Is a tear an intellectual thing? Yes and no. As is so often the case in philosophical disputes, the truth may lie somewhere in between. Rather than treating body-based and cognitive theories as competing and mutually exclusive theories of emotion, it may be better to approach them as complementary aspects of what is a very complex phenomenon. Jenefer Robinson (pp. 28–43), for example, argues that we should understand emotion as a process between bodily arousal on the one hand, and “cognitive appraisals” on the other. Such appraisals allow for complex emotions like lifelong love, jealousy, and regret, and allow us to interpret our bodily reactions in meaningful ways, ways that relate both to our physical and social environments. They also help make sense of the fact that our emotions track our judgments about people and situations. Bodily arousal, on the other hand, helps explain how we experience emotions, the feelings that so color our existence and motivate us to action. Body-based theories also allow us to explain groundless emotions like phobias, which resist rational modification through judgment; someone with a paralyzing fear of flying may accurately judge that flying is one of the safest modes of transportation, though the fear remains. Arguably, there is no simple mapping between emotions and judgments or bodily states; rather, emotions involve a complex exchange between body and mind, and a process account captures this.
Consider again the example of jealousy. Suppose you see your lover in what appears to be an intimate embrace with a stranger. You will likely have a very sudden emotional response. Perhaps you feel as if someone kicked you in the stomach. Your muscles tighten and your heart begins to race. Perhaps you even flush with anger or droop with sadness. Your attention now focusses on the object of your jealousy—the stranger. Your initial reaction, visceral and largely reflexive, represents the body-based theorist’s conception of emotions as pre-cognitive, hardwired bodily reactions. Yet even these initial responses are not free of cognitive content, for you must recognize your lover as your lover and conceive of her interaction with this stranger as intimate and as a potential threat to your relationship. But now suppose you notice that this stranger bears a likeness to your lover and then recall that her brother, whom you have never met, was to be in town this week. Quickly, your fear turns first to doubt, then to hope. After being introduced to your lover’s brother, your jealousy immediately dissipates, quickly giving way, perhaps, to a sense of guilt and embarrassment for having jumped to conclusions. I think that in this and similar cases we must recognize the rich and complex interaction between bodily reactions, the reflexes to which none of us are immune, and the more intellectual aspects of our emotional lives: belief, inference, and evaluation.
According to de Sousa (“Emotion,” pp. 61–75), such a compromise allows us to explain how language and narrative structure enrich the distinctive emotional lives of human beings. Our sophisticated cognitive architecture enables us to transform the more primitive emotional structures we share with other animals, bringing new depths and new dimensions. Perhaps some of our more complex emotions are quintessentially human. While dogs and horses surely have complex emotional lives, without the cognitive sophistication that perhaps comes only with human-like language, some emotions would seem to be beyond their ken. Take, for example, moral indignation at political injustices and the resulting cynical apathy towards politics and political l
eaders in the face of such injustice. Songs like Cohen’s “Anthem,” “On That Day,” and “Everybody Knows” capture the existential angst and powerlessness we feel when confronted with the realities of modern human society. Like it or not, the rich (usually) get richer, the poor poorer, our political leaders, our “captains,” often lie to us, and there are, indeed, “killers in high places.” Such realizations of the inequities and hypocrisies of life leave one feeling broken, which I interpret in both bodily and cognitive terms: the recognition of life’s unpleasant realities involves complex realizations that may leave us feeling empty inside. Cohen’s “The Land of Plenty” presents what is arguably a more hopeful or philosophical take on the sorts of problems endemic to modern society.
This sort of compromise between bodily and cognitive approaches to emotion is often well represented in poetry. To take just one example, consider this passage from the Greek poet Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (specifically, Robert F. Kennedy’s famous rendering of the passage, which appears as the epitaph on his tombstone):
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,