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Leonard Cohen was enslaved by Eros He elevated sex to the sublime life force of creation

Oh behave. Credit: Andrew Stawicki/Toronto Star via Getty


November 8, 2021   5 mins

Leonard Cohen died five years ago. I heard the news a day after Trump was elected. It made sense at the time. I wrote a poem and said Kaddish, the Jewish memorial prayer that he explored on his final album, and felt that strange sense of mourning for someone I didn’t know, but who had meant a lot to me over a lifetime. Like the death of a beloved community Rabbi in a big Synagogue.

I knew his voice, I’d heard his sermons over many years, but I didn’t know him. A bit like Jonathan Sacks. And I thought that death had brought comfort to him, that the proximity of death had elevated him, and when it came, he was blessed.

There were five Jewish singer-songwriters who clouded my consciousness when I was growing up. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow. (Marc Bolan didn’t really count.) Dylan was like an itinerant Protestant preacher from Minnesota, searching for a home he could never find. Tangled up in blue. Leonard, from Montreal, was the Catholic Priest burdened by original sin, and then adding a few more of his own. Ain’t no cure for love. Paul Simon ran the gospel choir, like a bridge over troubled water. Neil Diamond ran the summer camp. Sweet Caroline raised spirits round the fire. Barry Manilow was the only one who actually showed up at weddings and Bar-Mitzvahs and I can tell you, Copa Cabana and Could it be Magic were the only songs by this crew that my Mum really liked.

I thought that the five of them should get together and form a band called the Sanhedrin, but then again the only song that Cohen and Dylan recorded together, with Allen Ginsberg, was called ‘Don’t go home with your hard on’. Phil Spector was the producer. I let the idea go.

It was Dylan who towered over them all but then Cohen made a late bid for glory. The closer to death, the greater the work. The Future, released in 1992, bore the hallmark of prophesy and foreboding.

“It’s coming from the sorrow on the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin
that goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat.”

His voice, his songs, and even his music became stronger in his sixties and seventies, full of wisdom and compassion. ‘Anyhow’, ‘Come Healing’ and ‘Amen’ are unique and profound songs and ‘Lullaby’ is the only song I know that directly speaks to insomnia. “If your heart is torn, I don’t wonder why, if the night is long, here’s my lullaby.” It is beautiful.

They are all from the album Old Ideas that was released when he was 78. Bob Dylan could barely talk, Neil Diamond could barely walk but Leonard Cohen, the firstborn, was still throwing lightning bolts of prayer and repentance until his death. In ‘Steer your Way’ from his final album the perfect diction of his prophetic heart was still beating:

Steer your heart, precious heart, past the women that you bought
Year by year, month by month, day by day, thought by thought.  
They whisper still the ancient stones
The blunted mountains weep
As he died to make us holy
Let us die to make things cheap
And say the Mea Culpa, which you probably forgot
Year by Year, month by month, day by day, thought by thought.”

And yet we didn’t. The greatness of his work is his ease with the ancient stones, the dry bones and the mountain tops of the Bible. Abraham and King David live again. The Psalms frame and animate his writing; Hallelujah. Jesus is a constant presence from first to last. Whether he was a sailor, who walked upon the water, or the spirit who will re-animate love, the holy spirit hovers over his work:

“It’s coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
It’s coming from the silence on the dock of the bay
From the brave the bold the battered heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming, to the USA.”

No wonder the election of Donald Trump was the final nail in his coffin.

His decades-long devotion to Zen Buddhism was also part of the story. He spent years in a Buddhist monastery in California, learning from Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who, it turned out, molested and abused hundreds of women in his role as head of the order. He claimed that sexual contact with a Zen Master would help women attain “new levels of non-attachment”. Who’d have thought?

And for all the drawing on the Kabbalah, in which sexual union is the most sublime expression of divine love, there is no mention of faithfulness, of marriage, of the fidelity to a woman and to God that is the basis of that teaching. Throughout his work, eros is disconnected from devotion. It is an escape, a healing, a triumph; but it is not bound by covenant or love. 

“And like a blessing come from heaven
for something like a second
I was healed and my heart was at ease”.

The Sixties, when Leonard Cohen abandoned the idea of being a novelist and a poet and moved to New York to be a singer-songwriter, was a cauldron of sexual liberation and enslavement. The over-the-counter-culture intensified the commodification of sex, the dissolution of its relational essence accompanied by celebrity endorsement. The idea that sex was sacred was profaned. It was a time full of sex cults, and the emergence of Kabbalah as part of an occult sexology was part of that story. And Leonard Cohen, who initially saw himself as a prophet of a new religion, was one of the high priests of that movement.

“It’s coming from the women and the men
Ah baby we’ll be making love again
We’ll be going down so deep
that rivers gonna weep
And the mountains gonna shout Amen.
It’s coming like the tidal flood beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious, in amorous array
Democracy is coming, to the USA.”

It’s hard to load the dishwasher after that. It is the lack of relationality in regard to sex that is remarkable. He would have benefited from a conversation with Mary Harrington. Love and eros were divorced and it is notable that in his final recording, having elevated sex to the sublime life force of creation throughout his work, he writes: “I don’t want a lover, no, no, the wretched beast is tame.” The body and the soul could not find reconciliation.

There was more than a dose of the biblical prophet in Leonard, and more than a dose of the new age cultist. His defrauding by his manager and ex-lover make sense within this story. The ‘wretched beast’, ‘my crazy’, and his adventures on ‘Boogie Street’ could not be constrained by his merger of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. They could not be bound; they could not be consecrated and so ‘love itself, love itself was gone’.

He was like Noah, a great man of his time, but unlike Abraham, Moses, Jesus or Imam Hussein, he could not make the sacrifice required for redemption. He was enslaved by sex. There was no liberation there. And unlike King David, the Kingdom was merely his own.

In 1992, Cohen promised: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” The crack in the wall that creates a space for democracy and a cold and very broken hallelujah. In the end, however, the birth was betrayed and the marriage spent. He refused to be bound by his understanding, that the forgiveness of others is far more important that forgiving yourself. He had a messianic vocation but he could not fulfil it. He wanted it darker. And he blew out the flame.


Maurice Glasman is the founder of Blue Labour and director of the Common Good Foundation. He is a Labour life peer.


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Philip Moss
Philip Moss
3 years ago

One has to ask, how on earth did Dylan get the Nobel when there was Cohen?

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Reply to  Philip Moss

Always more popular with students, who aged and ended up on the Nobel decision committee, would be my guess.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Philip Moss

I couldn’t agree more.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Philip Moss

I have just remembered that when I read his biography by Sylvie Simmons, I learned that Dylan banged out his songs in minutes – Cohen often spent years crafting his songs.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago

I can believe that. My favourite Dylan effort of all time has to be the execrable Man Gave Names to All the Animals, which includes such gems of lyrical poetry as

He saw an animal leaving a muddy trail

Real dirty face and a curly tail

He wasn’t too small and he wasn’t too big

Ah, think I’ll call him a pig

The man is clearly a genius.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Comedy genius there I think. Dylan is quite funny. That song is obviously meant along the lines of a nursery rhyme

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago

Yes, but Beethoven wrote his music quite quickly and, I think, easily, whereas Schubert had to work hard. Most people would say Beethoven was the genius. Ease of composition doesn’t mean it’s of lesser value.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

I might go with that, but the proof of the pudding is the quality of the lyrics. One is a master, the other hmmmm, just Ok. Musically they are both good, but I still think Cohen has the edge.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
2 years ago
Reply to  Philip Moss

Dylan’s sleevenotes are more interesting than Cohen’s published poems.
Cohen didn’t write the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol ,or Chimes of Freedom

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
3 years ago

I agree with other commenters that Cohen stands head and shoulders above the others mentioned in the article.

For those of us not blessed with artistic talent, lives like his are endlessly fascinating. Not least because that milieu affords, it seems, many more possibilities for the pursuit of Eros’s charms. Grafting in the corporate salt mines isn’t without its possibilities but they seem to create more the tawdry and banal than poetry.

The article seems to centre him as a philanderer but “EverybodyKnows” would indicate he knew Eros’s arrow can skewer guts as effectively as hearts.

A fascinating and extraordinarily talented man.

Last edited 3 years ago by Martin Bollis
Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Not above Dylan

D Glover
D Glover
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Cohen had a blessed life. He made a lot of poetry and music. He lived on a beautiful, unspoiled Greek island. He made love to a lot of beautiful women. He made money, had it stolen, then came back and made more. He lived to be old.
Truly a life to envy.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
3 years ago

The man was a genius – a troubled one, but a genius nonetheless and in my opinion he was better than Dylan. He was at heart a loner. He battled to settle forever with one woman, but did have several long lasting relationships intermingled with unfaithfulness – this sounds like many of us, men and women. His creativity came from his inability to find happiness and conquer his dark thoughts on many issues and levels. This in turn resulted in him seeking loneliness and sadness. I certainly don’t believe though that he disliked women – he loved them in his way.
He was certainly a liberal – would he have been more astonished and alarmed by Trump or by the latest illiberal version of the Democrats? And what good would it have done to meet Mary Harrington? He met many influential and intelIigent women in his life. I found the introduction of these people quite jarring in this essay on Eros.

Last edited 3 years ago by Lesley van Reenen
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
2 years ago

Due to the reaction against the left and cultural marxism, a concerted effort on behalf of individuals such as Mary Harrington or Julie Bindel to promote sacrifice, common decency, and strict monogamy is underway, and any and all examples of libidinousness are being pulled in to ram the message home. Expect to see alot more of this.

Whether you agree with that or not is up to you.

Jane Watson
Jane Watson
2 years ago

Thanks for marking this anniversary. A wonderful, flawed, perceptive and honest writer and musician. Isn’t it more than likely that inner turmoil and the struggle against demons drives creativity? All truly great artists seem to be tormented. His later work is almost unbearably haunting. Must rank as one of the greatest Canadians.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Reply to  Jane Watson

There’s a thought. If not for Leonard Cohen, Canada’s greatest musical exports would have been Bryan Adams and Justin Bieber.
I mean really. Who that is called Bryan Adams decides to become famous while still being called Bryan Adams? What was wrong with Rat Scabies or something?

D Glover
D Glover
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Canada’s musical exports? Joni Mitchell in first place.

J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago
Reply to  D Glover

Truth! The woman’s a genius.

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I do wish people would refrain from using the word genius about any musician they like. There is no longer any word to denote a real genius because the word has been degraded so much. Joni Mitchell is a really, really, good singer-songwriter, but she’s not a genius. (And for those of you who objected to my saying that Leonard Cohen was musically mediocre, Joni Mitchell is definitely not mediocre.

D Glover
D Glover
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

As a lyricist, she’s in the same league as Dylan and Cohen. She has a gift for melody. Perhaps because of the strange guitar tunings she uses, she finds novel and unique harmonies. She was a far better guitarist than BD or LC, and with a far better voice.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Reply to  D Glover

Yet she’s massively, massively outsold by, er, Bryan Adams. He’s reckoned to have sold 100 million singles and albums worldwide, God knows how. JM about 5% of that as best as I can tell.
And he’s massively, massively outsold by, er, Justin Bieber.
She may be a distant fourth, somewhere behind Bryan, Justin and Leonard.

Last edited 2 years ago by Jon Redman
Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

I’ve read that ‘genius’ as a free standing phenomenon doesn’t really exist. Talent maybe. You start with talent – and crucially, motivation – then practice, practice, practice. Perhaps, in the arts, have some lucky breaks.

How did the UK go from performing poorly in athletics to being about the best in the world per capita? OK, maybe not an exact analogue with music, but you see the point.

Barry Stokes
Barry Stokes
2 years ago
Reply to  D Glover

Neil Young.

Gayle Rosenthal
Gayle Rosenthal
2 years ago

“No wonder the election of Donald Trump was the final nail in his coffin.”… Really ? Cohen loved Israel and fraternized with the soldiers. But he was naturally conflicted and confused. After all, he was a Jew. Trump was good for the ME and good for Israel. Trump pulled just a few Islamic nations out of the gutter of violence to be brothers in the Abraham Accords. I wish Cohen were here now to write one more song about the Abraham Accords.

Christopher Gelber
Christopher Gelber
2 years ago

A nice piece, slightly discoloured by the dumb and irrelevant line about Trump. I get that it’s meant humorously (ironically), but gee, the Great Man seems almost ubiquitous!

Jane Watson
Jane Watson
2 years ago

Great fun reading all the comments too. I always found Dylan pretentious (sorry) and often liked his songs better when someone else sang them. But, with LC, it’s his voice that mesmerises. I agree that pop is not in the same category as classical music (apples and oranges) but song is as ancient as man and touches some of us more than symphonies.

Don Lightband
Don Lightband
2 years ago

“He would have benefitted from a conversation with Mary Harrington”. YEAH RIGHT

Lloyd Byler
Lloyd Byler
2 years ago

Proving once again, that a song, a piece of art, is NEVER just a song, or a piece of art!

I, for one, cannot imagine, a person listening to only Amy Winehouse songs, an artist who never sang about happiness.. with depressive betrayal, sadness and regret mixed throughout all her music.. her sad departure says it all… (rip)

what say is the life trajectory of a young single woman who only listens to Amy, with the favorite song being ‘Back to Black’ ?
Living among a community of men who’s majority only live for that moment of instant gratification with a damsel; what can be the expected and projected reality of a melancholic young girl who’s only ‘thought projected’ artful life, is:
• He left no time to regret•
•Kept his d**k wet•
•With his same old safe bet•

?

I, for one, simply cannot comprehend such, even after encountering such a reality!

Last edited 2 years ago by Lloyd Byler
Jerry Jay Carroll
Jerry Jay Carroll
2 years ago

To make great art you must be a great narcissist.

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
3 years ago

I’ve posted a message before about this – why does Unherd publish articles about rock (actually, I should say popular) musicians? Rock/popular music is essentially ephemeral, part of popular culture, all of which is, frankly, not serious. Cohen may have been a good poet (I can’t judge), but he was a mediocre musician (definitely nowhere near being a genius). This article would be better placed in one of the more upmarket rock magazines, not in Unherd.

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Can you expand a bit on that phrase ‘not serious’? I can’t quickly think of any particular way in which what I would define as popular culture isn’t serious. Financially? Politically? Culturally? And IIRC, the plays of serious old playwright W Shakespeare were definitely popular culture – at the time.

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago

Yes, by ‘not serious’ I mean ‘not having anything really meaningful to say as regards the big existential questions’, such as death, old age, suffering, tragedy, beauty, betrayal, love (no not falling in or out of love, which is essentially selfish, but proper, going beyond oneself kind of love) etc. And yes, I take your point about the plays of Shakespeare being part of popular culture of the time. I can only remark that we have fallen a long way since then. And I don’t see anyone in today’s popular culture doing anything as profound as that. By continuing to talk about popular culture we’re confining ourselves to a small and, I argue, relatively trivial, world of experience. I think we can do better than that, and I’m complaining that Unherd doesn’t see that and raise its sights.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Obviously not germane to you, but Cohen to many was the voice of our consciousness and of our inner struggles. He pointed up our guilt but also made us feel that we were doing our best.

He was the symbol of an age, and if you want to understand the world as it is, listening to his songs and his humour would do you a lot more good than, for instance, reading the collected speeches of David Cameron.

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

What ever made you think I would ever read the collected speeches of David Cameron? He whose favourite music is the Kaiser Chiefs is it not?

Hilary Easton
Hilary Easton
2 years ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Collected speeches of David Cameron? Good grief!

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Millions bought his music and went to his concerts and read his books, generations can sing his songs (poems) – the lyrics of which captured his market as much as the tunes. This is a man who in his old age found that his manager had swindled him out of all of his money, so he went on a world tour when most people would have been retired – yet you call him mediocre.

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago

Ah Lesley, I didn’t call him mediocre as a person, but as a musician. And yes, of course, that was a massive betrayal he endured, and he had to go back on the road to claw some money back, which was impressive. Not quite as impressive as Franz Liszt, who organized a music tour of Europe just to raise money for the catastrophic floods that had devastated his home country. After which, he just kept on touring to give money away. (And music tours in those days were much more gruelling than they are now.) How many people know that about Liszt I wonder? I wouldn’t say he was a genius, but pretty close. The thing is, while we continue to go on about the contemporary popular music stars of recent years, we don’t know about the really excellent contemporary musicians and composers from the ‘classical’ tradition. Just to give one example – who amongst you has heard of, let alone heard the music of, Sofia Gubaidulina, who has been composing truly innovative music for 70 years? She who says that every piece of music must have a moment of transformation, in which the listener is taken into a spiritual world. Have a listen to this if you’re curious: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5W6kgjZkqmgRBM6plPRJ9Hs/sofia-gubaidulina-in-words-and-pictures You may not like her music because it will be different from what you’re used to, but stick with her until you get it. She’s worth it. Great music isn’t easy. As I say, this is just one example, and it’s why I get frustrated with Unherd’s fairly frequent articles on popular musicians, ignoring the relatively unherd music of the truly great. Some of them actual geniuses.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Which is why my comment opened with “Millions bought his music and went to his concerts and read his books, generations can sing his songs (poems) – the lyrics of which captured his market as much as the tunes.”

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago

Yes, I’m unimpressed by the fact that millions of people listen to etc his songs. Millions of people listen to all sorts of pap, as I’m sure you know (I’m not saying Cohen’s music is pap, just making a point).

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Cohen had a far more sophisticated audience.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Your general point about the triviality of pop music is correct, I think, but within the tut, there are two types of pop act that qualify as exceptions deserving of more esteem.
These are the act where everybody likes at least one of their songs. Pretty well everybody likes one Queen song, or one Elton John song, for example. I don’t own any of their LPs and never would but I quite like the odd single.
The other exception from the general rule of forgettability is the act that is still acquiring new fans years after disbanding. The Beatles, the Doors and the Stones all meet that description I would think. Ultravox and Oasis do not.
Leonard Cohen may be another, although personally, I have never made it to the end of any of his songs. I am always seized by an irresistible urge to be doing something, indeed anything else.

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

You haven’t even got to the end of Hallelujah? That is one of the great pop songs surely, along with Strawberry Fields, God Only Knows, and Perfect Day (that catch of pain at end of each refrain). Although I prefer Rufus Wainwright’s version of Hallelujah – his voice carries such weight of emotion. But even the great pop/rock songs are trivial compared with great classical music.

Last edited 2 years ago by Gary Hennessey
Roger le Clercq
Roger le Clercq
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

There is no one Cohen version of Hallelujah. He wrote so many “alternative” verses that some people could write a thesis about them. But personally I lean towards his Do ya pronounciation rather than the grating “Do you” as in certain cover versions. He was an influence on many thinking souls.

B Luck
B Luck
2 years ago

“Do you” to rhyme with “it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujooh”

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago
Reply to  B Luck

Why does poetry have to rhyme?

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago

Ah, that’s another reason I prefer Wainwright’s version – he sings “do you”, which I prefer to “do ya” just to get the rhyme.

Jimminy Timminy
Jimminy Timminy
1 year ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

To me it doesn’t sound forced. Cohen often pronounces ‘you’ as ‘yuh’ in his songs, I don’t know if that’s a Canadian thing or a Cohen thing.

Hilary Easton
Hilary Easton
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Regarding Leonard Cohen songs – I know exactly what you mean. I had friends who would listen to an entire album, apparently riveted, but I’m with you – out the door.

Hilary Easton
Hilary Easton
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

A valid point of view, but I would counter that, to many, popular culture is ephemeral but very meaningful, though that meaning may well be mainly ‘in the eye of the beholder’. It speaks to many as a simultaneous group and individual experience of growing up, loving, learning and realising impermanence. (Although personally I never connected with Cohen but I know a lot of contemporaries who did).

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago
Reply to  Hilary Easton

Yes, nicely put Hilary. My point though, is that Unherd regularly publishes pieces on rock/folk musicians, which I think should be left to rock/folk magazines to publish. I could in fact play the diversity card, and say that as a classical music lover, Unherd ignores people like me. But I won’t.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

He was a songwriter, not a virtuoso instrumentalist, or a classical composer, or a librettist. He is writing songs in a particular idiom.
If you don’t understand the basic art form you are referring to, the problem is probably with you.
Difficult to see how he’s not serious’, for the reasons described in the article. He’s deeply rooted in various religious traditions and his art has always been a great contemporary expression of that

Gary Hennessey
Gary Hennessey
2 years ago

Oh I do understand Cohen’s art form – I grew up listening to music of that era. Wonderful when you’re growing up, but, in my opinion, to be left behind when you do grow up.

Ferrusian Gambit
Ferrusian Gambit
2 years ago
Reply to  Gary Hennessey

Because 90-95% of humanity has no aesthetic sense so are under the delusion the simplistic dross of these vulgar, peripatetic music hall entertainers constitutes art. Thus people click the articles.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit