Cohen's Lucky Night is a translation of San Juan de la Cruz' poem, Dark Night (of the soul).
(San Juan is also known as
Saint John of the Cross)
Interestingly...
San Juan had Jewish grandparents who were forced to convert to Catholicism at pain of death during the Spanish Inquisition and I suggest his passion for Solomon's Songs was influenced by his family's love of that poetry.
It goes like this: Moses' story of Adam and Eve influenced Solomon's "Songs", Solomon influenced Cruz' "Oh Living flame of love", "The Spiritual Canticle" and "Dark Night of the Soul", Cruz' poetry influenced Cohen's "The Lucky Night" and many other songs of Leonard's also. So they are all connected in a long line of traditional poetry.
"Cruz' poem "The Spiritual Canticle" is one of Cruz' interpretations of Solomon's Songs. Cruz picks up on Solomon's metaphors for describing the Spiritual journey to Union.
"The Lucky Night!!!" is Cohen's understanding of Cruz' perspective on that Spiritual Union, and I suggest that Leonard Cohen is celebrating their mutual good fortune, an experience of Divine Union/transcendence. "The Lucky Night!!!!!" poem suggests that transcendent souls are each a Lily in the valley, lost among divinity, as the mountains of separation are no longer present; and they are each and all;
"Lost among the Lilies" (Cruz' last line of The Dark Night of the Soul))
"We spread and drown as lilies do, forever and forever" (Cohen's last line of "The Lucky Night!!!" poem above.)
...and like Solomon and his girl, they leap the mountains of separation with doe/ hart-like agility, and the mountains crumble and dissolve and the "blessed mountains weep" in spiritual Union.
In "The Darker Album", Leonard also tells us that he is "Traveling light" with one or two "like we used to do".
I suggest these "one or two" may well be Solomon and Cruz.
Leonard was very grateful that Cruz helped him understand Solomon's Divine poetic wisdom. That is one of the messages in this poem. Leonard loved the Spanish for several good reasons and Cruz is perhaps the major one."
And Leonard's unique contribution, for me at least, is that he took the mystic union thread all the way back to Moses' genesis story of Eve and Adam.
Poetically, Eve becomes Adam's soul...falling from grace;
Solomon has that soul searching out her lover, as does Cruz, as does Leonard Cohen.
But Leonard Cohen finds the common thread running all the way back to poetical Eve.
The 5th verse of his "Lucky Night!" poem explains the connection and is his moment of true genius, for this poet, me.
That is a wonderful achievement...Leonard was indeed "the little Jew who wrote the Bible" in a poetic sense.
He was "one with" the secret meanings; what our Australian Arunta First Nations People have, for 60,000 years called "The Song Lines of eternity"...or "Dreamtime".
"I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don't really care for music, do you..."
https://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewt ... 10&t=38376
Mat James