Book of Mercy #27-28

[lazariuk]

ps. Nothing important? Tell me you're not serious!!!!

well I guess nothing IS important.

[lazariuk]

well I guess nothing IS important.

This is just to have some fun

When I try to tell myself that I know nothing the question comes to me
well what do you know about nothing?

well that it usually determines what the something will be

example?

well to have an enclosed space of nothing it requires four points of relationship. The minimun way to enclose space is with four sides and four vertices. Without those four you cannot have space enclosed. You cannot have any kind of system - any kind of anything.

you know who I am
you stared at the floor
I am the one
who loves changing
from nothing to four.

P.S. I actually thought about that when I saw the cover of this book with it's two triangles. If you were to take the two triangles and open them at the vertices and unite them - you would have a structure with four sides and four vertices and six relationships.
But it is ok to leave them as two triangles as it serves to remind us that unity is plural - at minimun two.

Not that it couldn"t remind us if they were joined because when they are joined they divide the universe into two - all that is inside and all that is outside - both are bounded by four sides and four vertices and six relationships. Since it is impossible to see the outside one maybe it is best to leave them as two.

[Manna]

The universe also has four dimensions - length, width, height and time. These dimensions are necessary to describe an object in motion.

(Of course, maybe you've heard of physicists who have been calling every parameter that comes to mind a new "dimension," but pay no mind to those goofballs behind the curtains.)

Say, Jackie, think you & I are ready for 28 yet?

[lazariuk]

(Of course, maybe you've heard of physicists who have been calling every parameter that comes to mind a new "dimension," but pay no mind to those goofballs behind the curtains.)

Say, Jackie, think you & I are ready for 28 yet?

I still haven't quite made enough sense in my mind of why this book is divided in two but telling me to pay no mind to those goofballs behind the curtain I think is going to help. I do pay them some mind. I think they can be helped by Leonard and poetry.

If they would have noticed that in one of his books he included with each poem a picture of a razor blade it might have made them consider Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor)
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity"

The reason that they started adding all those extra dimensions is because they were trying to find a way to understand as one what can only be two. It is called "String Theory" The attempt to make what can only be understood as two - one.

Recently I saw Leonard refer to his

long arduous irrelevant useless spiritual investigation

. I thought that is almost exactly how some are describing what has happened in physics over the last 30 years, expect a little more like :

long arduous irrelevant useless expensive scientific investigation

In the last thirty years it was almost impossible to get into theoretical particle physics unless you were a string theorist.
At the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study every single new permanant position was given to a string theorist including the director.. Same with the Kavli Institute. Eight of nine MacArther fellowships awarded to particle physicists have gone to string theorists,
At Berkley, Stanford, Caltech, Harvard, Mit, Prinston 20 out of 22 tenured professors in particle physics made their reputation in string theory.

And string theory has yet to produce one single accurate prediction or in any way be proved. There hasn't even been an experiment designed yet to prove it.
They are all the goofballs behind the curtain.
I saw the cover of a book recently that discussed this and thought "Gee how appropiate", it was called Not Even Wrong. reminds me of something that Leonard said about even his sins don't reach the grade.
i am currently reading a book from one of those who, like Leonard, seems to be finding a way back to Boogie Street. He was one of Canada's top string theorists but is trying to mend his ways. I might write him a letter and suggest some poems.
I think that Leonard divided the book in two for the simple reason that that is how things are. Profound eh?

[Joe Way]

Hi Jack,

I’m not sure why BoM was divided at 27-but perhaps you are on to something with the alphabet, but I would guess that it would have more to do with the Hebrew alphabet which I don’t know about. The whole issue of the posession of the Holy Lands is both heartbreaking and fascinating, but I’m not sure it is at the heart of this work. I agree that it factors in, but I suspect that it is a more personal journey and exile that we witness here.

Hi Doron,

I was not familiar with this particular Emily Dickinson poem and was also quite struck with its similarities to Auden’s poem-both great in their own way. I’m not sure how much I’ve quoted from Northrop Frye in the past, and though, some of it is not as pertinent to the immediate verse that we are reading, I think that it gives us some additional structure to hang our hats on so to speak.

Frye devotes a chapter each to these stages of the Axis Mundi: Mountain, Garden, Cave & Furnace. Of course, they are all universal, but that is the point. In his Words With Power, he quotes a Kabbalistic source:

Set the word at its origin and put the Maker in his place

So counsels the Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formations), a pioneering work of Jewish Kabbalism that takes the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, along with the numbers they also stood for, to be the formative principles of the cosmos.

There are two creation myths in Genesis, distinguished by the names they use for God. The first extends from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3. Although it stands first, it is the later of the two accounts; it uses the word Elohim for God, is probably post-exilic, and is known as the Priestly account (P). The second, which begins at Genesis 2:4, is called the Jahwist account (J), as it refers to God as Jahweh Elohim (in the AV one may distinguish the “God” of the first chapter from the “Lord God” of the second).

The first account is the acount of creation whereby God breathes the cosmos into existence by saying words. The second acount is the “garden” account in which the sexual response engenders the world into existence.

In this verse (#28), the mention of fantasy & fiction juxtoposed with the secrets of the heart seem to remind the reader of those aspects of Zen that train the observer to look not for new objects but for the same objects with renewed intensity. While the narrator abides here in hell, it is the imaginative hell of tragedy, irony and satire-that seems to say that all is not fully seen until it is almost hallucinatory.

Frye gives us a table:

Heaven, in the sense of the place of the presence of God, usually symbolized by the physical heaven or sky.

The earthly paradise, the natural and original home of man, represented in the Biblical story by the Garden of Eden, which has disappeared as a place but is to a degree recoverable as a state of mind.

The physical environment we are born in, theologically a fallen world of alienation.

The demonic world of death and hell and sin below nature.



To put it another way:

Cosmic Level Time Space

Heaven Time as total “Now” Space as total “Here” or real
or real presence

Unfallen World Time as exuberance Space as home or natural
or inner energy (Music place.
dance, play).

Fallen World Time as “then” (linear and cyclical) Space as “there” (objective
environment).

Demonic World Time as pure duration Space as alienation
and power of annihilation

I’m not sure if this is at all helpful, but it gives me a better reference to many of the concepts that we are dealing with here in this poem.

Joe

[lazariuk]

I’m not sure why BoM was divided at 27-but perhaps you are on to something with the alphabet, but I would guess that it would have more to do with the Hebrew alphabet which I don’t know about.

There are the obvious things like he put it out in his 50th year and there are 50 sections. In numerolgy the hebrew word for Cohen is given the number 27

One of the main priestly duties for Cohen in scripture was to be the one to bless the children of Israel at the appointed time with the words
The Lord Bless you and keep you
The Lord Make his face shine upon you and give you life
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace
and then God gives the blessing at Numbers 6 - 27

an added fun fact was that his first album was released on Dec 27. 1967

[mat james]

27 = 3x3x3. Divinity intensified.
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/TheOliveBra ... end10.html

[DBCohen]

Joe,

I’m afraid you lost me in that bottom part of your last posting.

As for the structure of the book: perhaps we are trying to read too much into it. My current impression is that there is no great difference between the two parts in matters of contents, but I recommended that we will consider this further as we go along because it has been my experience this past year that the close study of each chapter brings up new insights, and we may come up with some new understanding of this matter in the end. As I’ve said earlier, I tend to believe that LC divided the book after #26 rather than after #25 simply in order not to create a symmetrical construction – either under the influence of Zen aesthetics, or just because true cases of symmetry are rare in our everyday experience (although, after writing this, I remembered his mentioning of “golden symmetry” in #1, but there it seems to refer to an ideal, not to reality [Mat might disagree with me here and argue that the ideal is more real than reality]). I also don’t think it is his habit to put secret codes into his writing, if only for the reason that he always tends to rewrite and change everything – including the lyrics of his songs – and these changes would ruin any premeditated codes. It is indeed fun to play with speculations of what may lie behind the number of each section, but I doubt that he’d ever meant his readers to search for such meanings. It may be a good idea to focus on the contents of the book, rather than on the more marginal considerations. So in that spirit, let me add a few more observations on the contents of #28.

...let me study your ways which are just beyond the hope of evil – This line may contain a crucial point. He seems to say here that “good” (God and his ways, mercy) is absolute, but “evil” is relative. Evil may strive to become equal with good, but it has no chance. This is basically a very optimistic way of looking at existence. How does this stand in relation to what we know of LC’s view of this world? Is he more of an optimist than a pessimist? Or is he just expressing his hope, rather than his conviction, that good will triumph over evil? What do you think?

...whose mercy is to be the secret of longing – This may be a coincidence, but this verse includes the names of LC’s two last original books: BoM and BoL (in between there was only the collection Stranger Music). In any case, both these words are important in his vocabulary and may be said to stand on both extremes of a spectrum: longing on the one extreme, mercy on the other. In between we find “secret”, a word which seems to be a key word in this prayer (it appears five times in different variations: secrecy, secrets, secret). I’ve asked Mat earlier for his opinion concerning one of its occurrences (p. 6 above), and I think we both agree that the narrator here views secrecy negatively. He goes on to say: Let every heart declare its secret, let every song disclose your love, let us bring to you the sorrows of our freedom. LC always seemed to me as a somewhat secretive person, but now I think this impression has been wrong: in fact, he always declares everything out in the open, but he does it in his own unique style, which is sometimes difficult to understand, and that may create the impression of secrecy. As for the last part of the sentence I’ve just quoted, I believe Joe had already pointed out its importance.

...you … who have broken down your world to gather hearts – Here he may allude to a very important Kabbalistic idea, which I’ve mentioned earlier, in our discussion of #1, and I’ll repeat here some of what I wrote there. This idea was devolped in the Lurianic Kabbalah of the 16th century, and it speaks of tsimtsum (contraction), shvira (breaking) and tikkun (mending). According to this very complicated perception, the infinite God had to contract himself in order to leave a space for the world to be created. The creation involved a catastrophe: the breaking of some of the vessels containing the divine light, and the fall and imprisonment of many sparks of this light inside of gross matter. Man has a role in helping restore these sparks of light to their original place through his religious obligations. The redemption of all the sparks will lead to the restoring of the original order. Here LC seems to say that the breaking occurred in order to bring mercy into the world, even into hell (as in the first verse of the prayer), and to gather hearts. This may not agree exactly with the original Kabbalistic idea, but he always liked to play around with ideas and use them for his own purpose.

Thinking back on #1 I was also reminded of the angels appearing there and mentioned recently in the discussion of #27 (and that’s one indication, out of many, many more, to the continuity between the two parts of the book). One more point: “gate” is another key word in #28, as observed earlier, and I was just reminded that LC’s family’s synagogue in Montreal, which he has mentioned in interviews as a place of considerable influence in his childhood, is called Shaar Hashamayim, or “Heaven’s Gate” – after the verse in Genesis 28:17, discussed here not long ago.

Arouse my heart again with the limitless breath you breath into me, arouse the secret from obscurity. – I feel that this last mentioning of “secret” in this prayer alludes to a profound meaning not discussed yet. “Secret” may yet prove to be a secret after all.

[mat james]

DB,
I am engrossed in your adventurous re-direction of energy.

Is he more of an optimist than a pessimist? Or is he just expressing his hope, rather than his conviction, that good will triumph over evil? What do you think?

DB Cohen
If you mean that knowledge will triumph over ignorance, then maybe we have a chance to win this little game;
But good over evil leaves me numb.

“Secret” may yet prove to be a secret after all.

DB, I like the way you are thinking. Who knows?

The "secret ladder" beckons me on.

Matj

[Joe Way]

Jack,
I agree that LC does use symbolic numbering and yes, I am aware that his age of 50 years when it was published was significant. I thought that BoL would be released in his 70th year, but I think he was actually 71. I was serious about the possible significance of the Hebrew alphabet since numbers are associated with Kabbalism.

Doron,

I am sorry about the end of my post-it wouldn't line up to make sense and I was too tired to try and format it properly. I will try again here to post it as a table. I realize that this is not central to this verse, but I believe it is central to the overall structure of the narration. Frye believes that this is the underlying structure of the movement of the Bible, mythology & much literature. I would like to refer to it in the future in relation to certain passages, but will try not to belabor it. I agree that we need to stick to the text as written.

Here goes:

Cosmic Level. Time . Space.
Heaven. Time as total “now” or real present. Space as total “here” or real presence
Unfallen World. Time as exuberance or inner energy (music, dance, play). Space as home or “natural place."
Fallen world of experience. Time as “then” (linear and cyclical). Space as “there” (objective environment.
Demonic World. Time as pure duration and power of annihilation. Space as alienation.

Joe

P. S. It didn't work again, but hope you can make it out. It is supposed to be 3 columns-Cosmic Level (Heaven, Unfallen World, Fallen world of experience & Demonic World) and their relation (separately to time & space) which in turn corresponds to "Mountain, Garden, Cave & Furnace."

[lazariuk]

I also don’t think it is his habit to put secret codes into his writing, if only for the reason that he always tends to rewrite and change everything – including the lyrics of his songs – and these changes would ruin any premeditated codes.

That is exactly what Field Commander Cohen does do. Not as a habit and not all over the place. It doesn't really matter if he changes stuff around. Stuff does get moved around. You can move all over the place in a kiss and it still remains a kiss. You can move a broom all over the place and use it for all sorts of things and it still remains a broom.

When I came across one such sercet code it made me laugh so very hard. I did think "How can you make jokes at a time like this?" Then I realized the fact that he was making a joke suggested that things were going to get easier and I thought that circumstances had allowed him to be very kind.

[mat james]

You can move all over the place in a kiss and it still remains a kiss.

Jack L.
That is poetry Jack!
You should be posting lines like that in the Poetry section of this forum; not here.

Matj

[lazariuk]

You can move all over the place in a kiss and it still remains a kiss.

Jack L.
That is poetry Jack!
You should be posting lines like that in the Poetry section of this forum; not here.

Thanks Mat for the temporal attestation. My point exactly.
Just because you don't think it is the place for something, doesn't mean that something is not there.

[lazariuk]

Say, Jackie, think you & I are ready for 28 yet?

I gave some thought to your question today at the crack of dawn or the
break of day or something like that and came to the conclusion
that I don't have a fucking clue if you and I are ready for 28 yet.

What I do know, for some reasons that I would be willing to explain,
is what I would like to be doing with you in regards to "Book of
Mercy". I would like to begin again. Go back to the start. It was a
start that both you and I missed.

What guided me to think that is numerous reasons:
you showed an exceptional interest in what might be between Part One
and Part Two. The fact that there is nothing visible there doesn't
stop me from wondering about what is there. Something has to be.

There are many reasons to think that something stopped and then
started again. In the book before this one Leonard is speaking of his
death. When he says "Fuck the 26 letters of my cowardice" he says
some other stuff that makes it sound like. "Look I said all that I can
say, I think that it is the greatest thing and filled with genius.
It's all that I have: here it is. It's all over. The book is dead."
He stopped and later he started again. What got him going? What
switch was opened, what lever was pulled? what spark was enough to
rekindle?
I think there has to be something to these numbers. His offering went
as far as 26 but then there were 27 angels. One angel more.
In Scripture the words that were to be the blessing spoken by a Cohen
end at verse 26 but it is at verse 27 that the stuff of the blessing
was to happen..
BoM 26 seems to just end with him sitting still and letting, what
might be his spirit, go. Maybe it was a sending out his angel as a
messenger to get a response.
BoM 27 is entirely different.

Doran made the suggestion that as we go along that we can keep that
break in mind and that maybe by the end it will be clear. I thought
if that is true of the end, then why not at the beginning? Maybe it
is in the beginning we should be looking to see if he had anything to
say about how he stopped, why he stopped, where he stopped, when he
stopped.

I gave that a little test. What would be a reasonable thing to do
after you have said all that you had to say? I imagine if you are
saying something to another then you would stop talking and start
listening to see what they had to say in response. It's the polite
thing to do. The beginning of the book starts with the words "I
stopped to listen"

In answer to your question I invite you to join me in going back to
the beginning. we can do it in private if you wish, we can do it in
another thread here or we can do it in the newsgroup.

There is something else that Doran said that caught my attention. He
pointed out that as we go along we seem to learn things that make
previous things make a little more sense. I coupled that with the
interest you showed about sending out the dancer for as many times as
it takes and it reminded me about how much I like starting over. This
isn't an assignment that we must complete by a certain time. I think
I would be interested in starting this over for as many times as it
takes to just get a good beginning. It's just a book, we can do that.
Why would we need to finish things before we start over? How do we
know we will be able to? Is that what people think can happen with our
planet?

[~greg]

about the 26/27 division: ....
~~
The first poem does suggest a connection between the number of poems,
and the number of years in Cohen's life at the time -

Once again I am a singer in the lower choirs,
born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high,
and no higher.

But it would ludicrous and utterly insane (although not impossible,
for people accustomed to chewing the mental gum,) to attempt
to connect each particular numbered poem to the specific
events of that particular year in Cohen's life.

However, the big number 50 was related to his age.
And therefore the big division, 26/27, had to be too.

It couldn't be anything else.

And the thing is, it really isn't hard to see what the specific connection had to be ...
~~

Cohen turned 26 in 1960.

He turned 27 in 1961.

On Septemeber 27, 1960, six days after his twenty-sixth birthday,
Cohen bought a house in Hydra for $1500.00 ...
This was a "big deal" in the words of one of his friends...
Cohen later said that it was the smartest decision he ever made.
...
Various Positions, pg 84, - Ira Nadel

Cohen began The Favorite Game in 1960.
The first draft was rejected in December 1960.
(It was finally published in 1963.)

His second book of poetry, The Spice Box of Earth, was published in 1961.

Cohen was in Cuba when "The Bay of Pigs" event occured, in 1961.

Cohen met Marianne Jensen in 1960.
( http://www.richardgoodallgallery.com/co ... 53&image=0 )


But his getting the Hydra place when he was 26 - 27,
was undoubtedly the most important thing.
And it really is the most natural dividing point of his life.

It is now impossible to imagine Cohen without Hydra.
Without getting that Hydra anchor, when he was 26-27,
Cohen might very well have wound up in the infamous "27 Club"
(Jesus, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, (later...Kurt Cobain...))

~~~

p.s.
To the obsessively attentive among you,
the above argument may still suggest that
25/26 would have been a more natural division.
However, Cohen was already 50 when he wrote the book,
and he was beginning to show the signs of his age.
In particular, the dementia due to his life style
of heavy drug use and myriad other self-abuses.
And he simply over counted when he made the 26/27 division.
A natural mistake, for someone in his condition.
And, if you like the guy at all, you will never mention it again.