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Authors: Jason Holt

Tags: #Philosophy, #Essays, #Music, #Individual Composer & Musician, #Poetry, #Canadian

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BOOK: Leonard Cohen and Philosophy
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Democracy Is Coming

Yet this is not to say that any of this is easy. Resignation is serious business, something that we strive for throughout our lives. We inevitably have ambiguous feelings about giving up on the old absolutes, the beliefs that have anchored us and given guidance throughout the ages. Cohen’s song “The Future” is both a hilarious and a frightening reminder of this dilemma. Either we cling to ideologies that often result in (spiritual and physical) war and destruction or we fall into the dark seas of relativism where there are no absolutes and anything goes. The narrator of “The Future” is sickened by this modern age, plaintively crying out for Christ or Hiroshima, Stalin or Saint Paul, true good and evil, right and wrong, anything but this age of mediocrity and in-betweens.

This specter of relativism is among the most common objections to existentialist philosophy. Both Camus and Sartre blackened many a page attempting to exorcize it, arguing that existentialism is a kind of humanism, a belief that goodness is not dependent on the old gods but rather the solicitude of human beings. “‘Everything is permitted’ does not mean nothing is forbidden” (p. 67) Camus says, hoping to put to rest the fear so profoundly expressed by Dostoyevsky in
The Brothers Karamazov
that a world without God is a world without meaning;
any
meaning, human or otherwise.

Cohen’s album
The Future
is a profound discussion of this issue, a dialectic, a back and forth where the horrifying chaos of “The Future” (where things become so unhinged that even white men start dancing) finds its resolution in the hopefulness of “Democracy.” There is sorrow in the streets indeed, and some people (the homeless and the gay, to name a few) are ostracized and forgotten, a fact that runs like an ugly scar over the sickening smile of the American dream. Yet from this chaos, rising out of its ashes like a Phoenix, comes hope for truth and community, which is what this mythical concept “democracy” symbolizes for us. We may not understand the Sermon on the Mount, and we shouldn’t even pretend to, because it’s an invitation to a mystery, an invitation to a resignation where we let go of our prejudices and fears and abandon the entrenched beliefs that create inequality and hate. To embrace the absurd is to be neither left nor right. It is to recognize that the true greatness of a nation comes not from the might of its military or its political power but rather from a society that is open to all and where people embrace each other in their suffering.

Even though there are many existentialist themes in “Democracy,” the song also points to a problematic element found in many of the existentialist writers, Camus included, namely that they often seem to be advocating a kind of individualism where we must seek meaning and truth apart from our fellow human beings, lone, tortured, Sisyphean heroes that we are. Even though Camus admirably went to great lengths to give an account of the social nature of the
absurd hero, he never quite overcame this irritatingly macho tendency towards glorifying the lone wolf, the man apart (and I mean
man
).

Cohen, in songs such as “Democracy” and “Anthem” and especially in his famous “Hallelujah,” seems to be hinting at a communion which extends beyond the cocky meaning-making grittiness of Camus. If love is “the only engine of survival,” as Cohen says (“The Future”), then Kierkegaard, with his dark honesty and profound meditation on love, will help illustrate why Cohen’s poetry and song are uplifting even in their sadness.

The Hallelujah of Resignation

Søren Kierkegaard wrote his dark ruminations on God and human despair a good century before Camus faced the absurd. This melancholy Dane is generally considered the founding father of existentialism and his primary philosophical motivation was to critique what he saw as the spiritless and mechanical nature of the modern world, especially what he saw as the modern obsession with systematic thinking, of trying to devise some economic system, philosophy, or science that provides The Answer. Kierkegaard believed that the messy business of being human was much too complex to be contained within any system and thus suggested that we start our philosophizing with the subjective lived experience of the “poor existing individuals.” Even though fancy systems can be pretty great they really aren’t that much help on Boogie Street.

In one of his most famous works,
Fear and Trembling
, written under the pseudonym “Johannes de Silentio,” Kierkegaard touches on many of the same issues we previously discussed from Camus’s essay on Sisyphus. Yet Kierkegaard’s absurd hero is not a figure from Greek mythology but rather the Old Testament figure Abraham, the father of faith, who was asked by God to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah. (Cohen’s “Story of Isaac” explores the familiar story in an uncharacteristic way, from the son’s perspective.) As Bob Dylan pointed out in his song “Highway
61,” Abraham’s initial answer to god was probably: “Man, you must be putting me on.” But after that, being the
mensch
that he was, Abraham said “Yes” to God’s command, proving his absolute faith and dedication.

Now, this decision obviously seems absolutely nuts, especially if the story is taken literally (which tends to be a terrible way of reading religious mythology in general). Some people have read Kierkegaard to be advocating for some kind of “divine command ethics,” which basically means that whatever God says is good truly
is
good, no matter how evil it may seem. Kierkegaard actually makes a great deal of fun of this view in
Fear and Trembling
, meaning that such a literal interpretation is probably more than a little off base.

The story of Abraham is ultimately a symbolic one, and what it symbolizes is faith as love. Abraham doesn’t have any rational knowledge of God’s purpose, but he does know something about
who
God is
.
God had promised Abraham that he would bear a son and that this son would become the father of the nations. Abraham has absolute trust in God because he knows that his God is a God of love. His trust is so absolute that he believes that even if he were to sacrifice Isaac, God would not break his promise.

Which, of course, doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. But that’s exactly the point, says Kierkegaard, the lover of the absurd. When Abraham says “yes” to God he moves beyond what Kierkegaard calls “the ethical” realm into “the religious.” The ethical realm represents what can be rationally understood, our duties and responsibilities as determined by our position in life and our commitments. The religious, on the other hand, represents that which lies beyond the realm of the reasonable. It is to believe in the impossible, to sail beyond the harbors of what is normal and safe and to enter into the uncharted waters of risk and possibility. To live a “religious” life does not primarily mean going to certain kinds of services or saying certain kinds of prayers (Kierkegaard is one of the great critics of superficial religiousness). It means, rather, to be a certain kind of person, to say to hell with what is safe and comfortable. When
someone says “I love you” we can’t ask for some kind of scientific proof or philosophical theory that will prove their love to us. All we can do is take the plunge.

So resignation for Kierkegaard is not just about letting go of The Answer but also about letting go of yourself, which is what Cohen’s beautiful “Hallelujah” encapsulates so well. The version made famous by John Cale and the late Jeff Buckley emphasizes the bitter in this bittersweet song, ending as it does with the notion that all our Hallelujahs are as cold as they are broken. In Cohen’s original version from
Various Positions
the cynical view of these later versions, that love is only a game of one-upmanship, a matter of who shoots first, is overcome in a moment of faith where the ego is transcended and we realize that it really doesn’t matter if our Hallelujahs are holy or broken, sacred or profane, as long as we sing them with all our might, for then every word will be ablaze with light and love. Even if it does all go wrong, if all our best-laid plans come to nothing, it’s still worth risking it all, to take the leap into the unknown, to live a life that’s not obsessed with safety or comfort but rather with generosity and love. If we live in this way we can stand, broken but proud, naked but unashamed, before the Lord of Song.

The human self is a constant work in process, Kierkegaard wrote in
The Sickness unto Death
(pp. 13–22). The path towards overcoming despair has not so much to do with gritting our teeth like Sisyphus and making our peace with the absurd but rather with constantly transcending ourselves, with letting go of our obsessions and our ego, and with committing ourselves to other people and to God (whatever we mean by that beautiful, mysterious word). In
Book of Mercy
Cohen writes: “Let me raise the brokenness to you, to the world where the breaking is for love” (psalm 49). We may never be perfect but that is exactly why we’re capable of such great love, a love as great as God’s. Suffering begets compassion, and compassion begets love. But this is only true as long as we resign ourselves to our brokenness and embrace it as the thread that binds us to our fellow human beings who also suffer. We’re all citizens of Boogie Street.
Without that resignation we can neither offer love nor accept it. As Cohen puts it again in
Book of Mercy
: “Why do you welcome me? asks the bitter heart. Why do you comfort me? asks the heart that is not broken enough” (psalm 40).

The term “joyful sorrow,” which originated in ancient Christian mysticism, perfectly encapsulates the beauty of Cohen’s art. There is, indeed, a great deal of darkness in the broken night. Yet Cohen reminds us that in that darkness there is light, in the sorrow there is joy. Cohen’s songs are uplifting
because
they are dark, unlike the cornucopia of sugary pop songs that assail us from the airwaves and which do nothing but exacerbate our despair with their forced “happiness” (if anyone is the grand master of melancholia it’s Justin Bieber, God bless him). The existentialism in Cohen’s art is the hopeful reassurance that our sadness is an essential part of what makes us human and that it is deeply intertwined with our joy. The fact that we’re not perfect, that we are shy and anxious and confused and suffering, is what makes us capable of love, which, as the poet W.H. Auden pointed out, is what being happy truly means. Or, as Leonard Cohen put it, “that’s how the light gets in.”

3

Why Cohen’s Our Man

W
IELAND
S
CHWANEBECK

O
ver the course of his career as a singer and songwriter (not to mention poet, philosopher, ladies’ man, and bearer of the gift of a golden voice), not only has Leonard Cohen been on a quest to spread wisdom and precious melancholia to the sounds of his guitar, and (lately) to outperform Bob Dylan as the most diligent touring artist in the world, but also he seems to have embarked on a personal mission to dedicate a song to every female first name there is. Yet don’t let all those Heathers, Suzannes, Mariannes, and Nancys fool you: the number of women he name-checks is no match for the variety of masculinities in his work, even though men are not as frequently evoked in name or shape. Already in 1970, Cohen’s fellow countryman Michael Ondaatje (in
Leonard Cohen
) was one of the first to draw attention to the abundance of different masculinities in Cohen—better known as a poet than a singer back then—including “the magician, the wit, the aesthete, the wounded man”; Cohen’s women, on the other hand, tended to be “dangerously similar” (p. 13). This observation holds just as true for the impressive song catalogue Cohen has assembled over the decades, in which femininity always appears in similar embodiments: angels of compassion, sisters of mercy, and ladies of solitude.

By looking at the masculinities evoked in Cohen’s songs (and his very own versatile performance as a singer and
songwriter), we can better assess the quality of his writing and his insight into human nature, for Leonard Cohen has a lot to say about gender relations and the dubious nature of traditional gender images. So let’s apply some Johnny Walker wisdom and find out just how many different masculinities Cohen’s songs and stage performances offer, why there is no contradiction between his stable image as a wise and witty singer-songwriter and the idea of embodying different masculinities, and how he continues to inspire both men and women to “become naked in their different ways” for him (“Because Of”)—okay, so we may not really get to the bottom of the last one. There is only so much that philosophy can do.

What I will talk about is not Cohen the man but rather the “lyrical self,” a concept that literary scholars use in order to avoid confusion between the historical person who wrote the poem (the author) and the voice that is speaking in the poem. The lyrical self is a handy tool to use to avoid upsetting Mrs. Shakespeare, for instance, because otherwise we’d be speculating about how many of her husband’s 154 sonnets were dedicated to others he may have had a crush on. It is linked to the concept of the persona in the performing arts, a term originally applied to ancient Greek theater masks which—through their exaggerated features (a sad face, a laughing face)—helped the audience members distinguish between characters. In the modern age, we sometimes talk about a persona adopted by an actor who is nothing like the characters he plays on stage or on screen, but who tends to play similar roles, resulting in his audience’s inability to distinguish between the real person and the type of character he plays. The same thing can happen to tenants in the Tower of Song, of course.

So for the time being, let’s just assume that the following remarks don’t directly concern Leonard Cohen himself, but rather the fictitious man who comes alive in the music and lyrics that are written and performed by the actual Leonard Cohen. The former makes frequent appearances in the latter’s verse—not only in spirit but also in name, be it as
“L. Cohen,” the signer of the dreariest holiday card ever (“Famous Blue Raincoat”) or as “Leonard,” the self-deprecating, lazy bastard that lives in his suit (“Going Home”).

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