Book of Mercy #29-40

[mat james]

Ah!!...the feminine perspective
Wonderful stuff Cate. Your ideas /interpretation make beautiful sense to me.

This is the advantage of using symbols in poetry/writing, as Leonard does; they evoke many perspectives.
Who can say what was originally intended by the author ? sometimes not even that author.
What you see is what you see; and, I love your view.

Matj

[Joe Way]

Cate,
Please let me echo Mat-you have given us an extremely insightful analysis-you've added to my enjoyment of the poem. I hope that you continue to give us your thoughts.

Thank you,

Joe

[Cate]

Thank you Mat and Joe, your both very kind.
Your right Mat, the fact that people see different things in the same piece of work makes it all the more interesting.

Cate

[imaginary friend]

Hello Cate,

You've taken their breath away. Mine too. Probably Jack's too, if they hadn't banished him.

IF

[mat james]

Cate surmises,

“Well this of course is where all life begins the delta – again I think he’s speaking of the physical and the metaphysical at the same time.”

If you like this way of writing (and Leonard follows a long tradition here ) you would enjoy “Songs of Solomon” in the “Old Testament” and you would also love the poetry of San Juan de la Cruz, particularly his “Dark Night of the Soul” and his “Spiritual Canticle” (links below)
( http://www.ecatholic2000.com/stjohn/drknt3.shtml )
( http://www.ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/canticle.iv.html )

…I think making love to god and making love to the woman are one and the same.
…Back to the beginning – the white light moment bringing man closer to god and the man seems pretty pleased with this close encounter with his maker.”

This combo permeates his work and the other's above.

and the man seems pretty pleased

Not as pleased as her!

inform my homelessness,

Now that you have explained the meaning of this line Cate, I will keep it in my bag of tricks

Ah! The fresh sea breeze...

Matj

[~greg]

Zorba, of course is a fictional character

Yeah, I know Zorba's 'only' fictional,

see
http://www.historical-museum.gr/kazantz ... sym10.html
for a photo of Yiorgis (= Giorgis, George) Zorbas.

(see also,
http://www.historical-museum.gr/kazantz ... asym4.html
for a photo of Kazantzakis' father,
who had "many of the attributes and qualities he {Kazantzakis}
saw inhering in the traditional Greek peasant." )

That's me! Alexis Zorba.
I have other names if you are interested.
(-from the movie)

The hero of the novel, Alexis Zorbas, is loosely based on a real
workman, George Zorbas, with whom Kazantzakis in 1915, like the
narrator of the novel, had opened a lignite mine (although the real
mine had been not in Crete but in the Peloponnese). Into this
character Kazantzakis has crammed many of the attributes and
qualities he saw inhering in the traditional Greek peasant. The
primitive practices, and something of the raw brutality, of traditional
Cretan life are also highlighted in the novel. It should be
mentioned that the folkloric element in this novel is more obviously
distorted by the author's intellectual preoccupations than happens
in any other Greek novel of this period, although the tendency is
endemic to fiction of this type. But Kazantzakis in this novel also
takes up the common search for tradition in unexpectedly subtle
ways. The tale of the workman Zorbas, the narrator tells us in a
preface omitted from the English translation, is to be a kind of saint's
life in the popular tradition (synaxarion). Such tales, often entitled
The Life and Times of..., had throughout the middle ages and
beyond been the principal form of prose narrative in Greek. A
synaxanon was in part the life story of a remarkable man
or woman; it was also an exemplar of the good life, and at the same
time represented an important strand of popular, traditional narrative
in the Greek-speaking world. To present his novel, through its
title and some elements of its form, as a modern synaxarion is at once
to claim the status of a modern, secular saint for its hero, Zorbas,
and at the same time to reclaim for the purpose a Greek narrative
tradition much older than that of the modern novel.

The novel's appeal to tradition does not even end there. It has not,
so far as I know, been noticed that its opening words: "I first met him
in Piraeus. I had gone down to the harbour..." are a close echo of the
famous opening sentence of Plato's Republic: "I went down yesterday
to Piraeus." Once this resemblance has been spotted, it becomes
clear why Kazantzakis dropped his original title for the book,
The Syntaxarion of Zorbas, in favour of a title which kept the saint's life
formula (Life and Times) but now included the word politeia,
{ Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_ ... 28novel%29
Πολιτεία = politeia }
which in Plato's Republic is the term used to describe the ideal state.
Plato had introduced his philosophical dialogue, as he often did, with a
realistic narrative of daily life. In precisely the same way, Kazantzakis
echoes Plato's words in order to introduce a narrative, the whole
novel, which is also intended as a modern equivalent of the Platonic
dialogue. Thus warned, we should not be too surprised at the
interminable discussions of ultimate things between Zorbas and
his "Boss" who tells the story. The novel is, as well as a modern
saint's life, also a modern Platonic dialogue. And like many of the
dialogues of Plato, it ends without either side conclusively winning
the argument. In this way, in The Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas,
Kazantzakis succeeds in weaving together elements of the literary,
philosophical, religious, and popular traditions of the Greek language
since ancient times. Read like this Zorbas becomes more
formally and technically accomplished, and even more experimental,
than most critics have allowed it to be who have seen only
a conventionally "realist" novel which doesn't however manage to be
very "realistic". Although the strategy of reclaiming past Greek tradition
is common to most fiction written at this time, and is deeply
rooted in the intellectual anxieties of the 1930s, it must be acknowledged
that Kazantzakis' method of pursuing it is highly individual.
Finally, it may be timely to recall that in Zorbas the search for
tradition, characteristic of the late 1930s and early 1940s, approximates
more closely than in any other work of fiction to the synthesis
of the past pursued by Palamas in the early years of the century.

-source
An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature By Roderick Beaton
http://books.google.com/books?id=uAH7_U ... #PPA177,M1

[~greg]

I am always happy to hear that women are still having orgasms.
That they aren't just a "shining artifact of the past".

~~

tremble before the furnace of light in which you are formed
and to which you return

I am certain you are right, Cate. 'Furnace' is from Blake.
It means something like (God's, poet's, woman's) place of creativity.
Womb. Brain. Etc.

~~

I once tried to interpret "The Old Revolution" that way.
("Into this furnace I ask you now to venture".)
But I couldn't close the deal.

And now I'm going to try again.

But this is still very impressionistic. (ie, sloppy.)
So this shouldn't be taken too seriously. At least not in this form.

~~~~~~~~~

On the album Songs From A Room,
The Old Revolution comes right after Seems So Long Ago, Nancy
and right before The Butcher. And considering the line

In the House of Honesty her father was on trial

in Nancy, and the lines

Listen to me, child, I am what I am
and you, you are my only son.

(which may appear to be God talking to Jesus) and the lines

do not leave me now,
I'm broken down from a recent fall.
Blood upon my body and ice upon my soul,
lead on, my son, it is your world.

(which may appear to be Jesus talking to His sons,-ie everybody after him,) in Butcher

-- lead me to think that maybe The Old Revolution might also be about father-son relationships,
more than anything else.

These songs do happen to predate Cohen's own kids. But they were written after
his relationships with Marianne, and her husband Axel Jensen, and the child Axel.

Cohen was very impressed by that trinity.
And he was to become, perhaps, even more conscious and sensitive
to his role as ersatz father in it, than he would have been as genetic father.
He must have seen himself in little Axel, in terms of having an absent father.

So I want to try to interpret The Old Revolution in those terms.
But first I have to quote some of what Cohen has said about those
relationships in an interview.

(I have added some markup, to help get my point across.
But, again, this is all very impressionistic. Don't expect perfection.)

- source: http://www.nrk.no/programmer/radio/radi ... 32400.html


Maranne in a holy trinity
- Do you remember the first time you saw Marianne (So Long, Marianne)?
Leonard Cohen:
- I remember seeing Marianne several times before she saw me, and I saw her
with Axel and with the baby, with Axel senior and the baby, the ”barn” – and thinking
”what a beautiful holy trinity they are”, and it fit in perfectly with any other beautiful
vision available, to see the three of them come sailing down the port. You know,
they were all blond and beautiful and sun-tanned (laughter). I saw Marianne
several times before she saw me, but I do remember bumping into her at ”Catsicus”
it was the grocery store.

A glorious beauty
- What do you remember from the situation?
Leonard Cohen:
- I don’t remember it (laughter). She (Marianne) still has a mind (laughter).
To me everything is blur.
- What was it with Marianne that you saw?
Leonard Cohen:
- Oh, Marianne was terrific, and of course one never, at that age, you know,
one is mostly interested in beauty. And she had beauty in abundance, you know,
I think that’s mostly what one saw, what anyone would have seen with Marianne,
this glorious beauty, and then you know, she was an old-fashioned girl, and I kind of
come from an old-fashioned background myself, so, the things that I took for granted
with Marianne, and she perhaps took with me, a certain kind of courtesy and behaviour
and ritual and order, which became very scarce as I got older, I didn’t find it with such
abundance in other women. But Marianne had some wonderful family qualities,
and the home that she made was very very beautiful, very old fashioned.
- I don’t know how things go now with the young, but that house was very orderly
and there was always a gardenia on my desk where I’d work, you know.
There was such a sense of order and generosity, that she had, that she still has.
...
...

A fragile relationship
- How was it to get a child, all of a sudden?
Leonard Cohen:
- It also seemed alright, it seemed natural, you know, it seemed okay, you know.
I was able to put him to sleep often, when Marianne couldn’t.
- How do you remember little Axel?
Leonard Cohen:
-He was very bright, very alive, you know. He was a very normal kid.
Our relationship was not… secure. She’d go back to Norway, I to Canada
to try to make some money, and we were young, and both of us interested
in all kinds of experience, so there was something fragile about the relationship,
so it eventually broke, from various conflicts and strains.
- I don’t remember much of it, there is something very sweet about memory,
and I have very little of it, but none of it is painful, although it was very painful at the time,
but I don't remember the incidents. I just have a sense of the way I was working,
I kind of see my notebooks and almost anything else, so I’m not a very good reporter,
my recollections are not very accurate.
- I honestly do not recall very much about the past.
And those early days at Hydra are very much the past.

Would take a novel
- It’s an important period of your life..?
Leonard Cohen:
- It’s important in the sense that it sponsored a lot of directions I would go on about.
But to write about Marianne and Hydra would take, it would take a novel,
and it would take a kind of examination that I don’t have the skill to make.
As you get older you begin to understand where your strengths lie.
You could write a novel, but it wouldn’t be a good one. You know, I could fake one.
But I don’t have the skill to do it, as some writers do, as Axel did, bring to life
in an interesting and illuminating way what our existence was, who Marianne was,
what was the nature of our relationship, how did the child fit in to the whole thing.
- To me it comes down to like a table, and a woman and a man and a child,
and I know I was there, but much else I really do not know. And there is a sense
of deep respect I have for the situation and all the people in it.
That’s mostly what I recognize. I have no sense of regret, I have no sense
that I did something wrong or she did something wrong or I did something right,
or she did something right. I place no exterior values. The only thing that rises
in my heart, if I can locate anything, is respect. And honour. That something
happened there that was worthy of deep respect and gratitude. [/color][/b]
At the specifics. Marianne has a much better memory than I do.
...
...
The relationship couldn't survive
- It’s just a sense that I was privileged; the sunlight, the woman, the child,
the table, the work, the gardenia, the order, the mutual respect and honour
that we gave to each other – that’s really what matters. I know there were
all kinds of problems, we were kids, we were kids trying to… – the period
was a period where the old forms were overthrown. And we were people
that didn’t want to follow the forms, we wanted to overthrow the forms
that had been given to us, but at the same time maintain things
that seemed to be nourishing.
- Those relationships at that time were all doomed, we didn’t know it
at the time that they were doomed, but they couldn’t somehow survive
from what life imposed on us. Those relationships that were formed
idealistically or sexually or romantically couldn’t survive the challenges
that ordinary lives would confront them with. So none of those relationships
survived, except in the sense that we honour them, and we recognize
the nourishment of those experiences. Outside of that I don’t remember incidents
or specifics. I don’t happen to remember the specifics.

The distance grew
- Would you like a little more coffee?
Leonard Cohen:
- Yes please
- I don’t remember how we split up, somehow we just moved and we just separated.
The periods of separations became longer and longer, and then somehow it collapsed.
Kind of weightlessly, like ashes falling, you know. There was no confrontation,
there was no discussion, in fact I don’t remember how it happened. She was in Oslo,
I was in New York struggling to make a living, and she was, I suppose, struggling
to find some sort of situation, to take care of the child, and the distances grew
and grew until we were leading different lives.

And now, line by line ---

THE OLD REVOLUTION - LC

An oxymoron. The ancients were already talking about
the rebellious youth. (H.G.Wells may have coined the term
"free love". And Bertrand Russell advocated it. In any case
the idea was certainly not original with the 1960s.)

In the interview Cohen said "we were kids, we were kids trying to
…–the period was a period where the old forms were overthrown.
And we were people that didn’t want to follow the forms, we wanted
to overthrow the forms that had been given to us, but at the same
time maintain things that seemed to be nourishing."

I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.

prison = marriage (pretended in Cohen-Marianne's case)
chain = traditions ( their "old-fashioned backgrounds" )

Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows,

rainbows = "sunlight, the woman, the child, the table, the work,
the gardenia, the order, the mutual respect and honour."

all the brave young men

= the child

they're waiting now to see a signal

= some passage or other in Cohen's writing in which the child
might later find an explaination for things.
(Cf Obama's "Dreams from my Father")

which some killer

= Cohen

will be lighting for pay.

= Cohen accusing himself of writing more for pay,
than to help the child.

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.

= Cohen is trying to explain his situation to the child
as honestly as he can. He is asking the child to try
to see and appreciate the value of his life in the
furnace of creativity. Which is Cohen's primary excuse
to him for not playing the role of an ordinary father.

His explanation follows - - -

I fought in the old revolution
on the side of the ghost and the King.

ie, not on the side of marriage and tradition,
but rather on the side of poetic inspiration (the ghost)
and on the side of his own selfish bachelor-ism freedom (the King)

Of course I was very young

= excuses. (The interview above is full of this.)

and I thought that we were winning;

ie, as Dylan put it:

With hungry hearts through the heat and cold,
We never much thought we could get very old.
We thought we could sit forever in fun

But our chances really was a million to one.
- Bob Dylan's Dream -on- The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

I can't pretend I still feel very much like singing
as they carry the bodies away.

bodies away = old friends gone. Marianne, Axel, gone.
Susanne, gone. Etc. "Those relationships at that time
were all doomed, we didn’t know it at the time that they
were doomed, but they couldn’t somehow survive
from what life imposed on us"

as Dylan put it

And many a road taken by many a first friend,
And each one I've never seen again.
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
That we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.
(-same song)

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...

Lately you've started to stutter
as though you had nothing to say.

To all of my architects let me be traitor.
Now let me say I myself gave the order
to sleep and to search and to destroy.

Here, in view of the vulnerability and needs of the child ("your beggar"),
Cohen is loosing momentarily his faith in his excuses, which he had pieced together
from his intellectual architects. (When in the interview he said
" I have no sense of regret, I have no sense that I did something wrong
or she did something wrong or I did something right, or she did something right.
I place no exterior values." --you got the feeling he was protesting just a little bit
too much.) From the interview -

- How was it to get a child, all of a sudden?
Leonard Cohen:
- It also seemed alright, it seemed natural, you know,
it seemed okay, you know.
I was able to put him to sleep often, when Marianne couldn’t.
- How do you remember little Axel?
Leonard Cohen:
-He was very bright, very alive, you know. He was a very normal kid.
Our relationship was not… secure

-- which explains the "order to sleep."

The order to "search and to destroy" is, on the surface of it,
a old Vietnam idiom. But in this context it's rather the kind
of advise that father Cohen would very likely give the next generation.
In effect, "go to sleep now, and dream of searching and destroying
the lies handed down to you --including my own."
(Or, as he put it in the interview: "to overthrow the forms
that had been given to us,")

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...

Yes, you who are broken by power,
you who are absent all day,
you who are kings for the sake of your children's story,

"you" = Cohen, as soon to be absent ersatz father.
Cohen is soon to be going out in the world to become famous
for the sake of the stories this child will be able to tell the other
children at school. But Cohen himself will not be present for the
sake of the child himself.

the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money,

"beggar" = the child.
"burdened down with money" = what Cohen may be able to give him,
(if he succeeds and achieves fame) --instead of his time.(Which he knows,
deep in his heart, would be much more useful to the child, but impossible for Cohen.)

the hand of your lover is clay.

ie, wet clay. Slippery. "as they carry the bodies away."

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...

- where Cohen tries to fire the ephemeral wet clay of his life
into something eternally durable and valuable, - his songs and poems.

In short, Cohen is begging the child to try to understand him.
And to try to forgive him.

[mat james]

Thanks for the info on Zorba (my favourite literary character) Greg.
I had no idea about the Plato connections...(and my understanding of Plato is limited to his little book,"The Phaedrus", some of which I utterly love) so this connection your article alludes to, warms me deeply. Somehow I may have picked up on their common "mystical" source/perspective. I may not know what is going on in literature but maybe my unconscious does ! ?
Also, regarding Kazantzakis' influences in the development of the Zorba character, I wouldn't be surprised if most great characters of literature are based on real people in the authors life.
One of the juxtapositions/irony I picked up from the book was his love for Zorba (the wandering, eclectic Greek) and his disgust for the blinkered, dogmatic peasant.
I love Zorba.

Thanks again,
Matj

[~greg]

Me too.
For about a year after the movie came out, I woke up every morning
to the record. And I also read the book! (And I never read fiction! )
(Later, when Scorsese's Last Temptations of Christ came out, I read that too.)

The one thing I remember from the book which wasn't in the movie
was that Zorba cut off a couple of his fingers, simply because they
got in the way of a machine he happened to be working with at the time.
Which was something I thought a lot about once. And finally decided
that's where I draw the line on being influenced by Zorba.

The Plato connection is quite convincing. It is in dialogue form.
And it does end "without either side conclusively winning the argument."
(At least if you're the type who naturally tends to "think too much".
As many of us here apparently are. )

[mat james]

that's where I draw the line on being influenced by Zorba.

and with all your rescued fingers!

[DBCohen]

This thread was neglected recently, mainly due to the excitement surrounding the auspicious beginning of the long-awaited tour, naturally, but I guess it’s time to revive it once again.

Greg,

First, congratulations on your new avatar! I must confess I like it better than the old one.

Second, thanks once again for posting the amazing concordance for BoM, which will be most helpful for all of us from now on. I haven’t studied it thoroughly yet, but scrolling down the list, the frequency of certain words jump out, such as “darkness” and “light”, “heart” and “soul” and “love”, and, of course, “mercy” and “name”, and, interestingly, “place” and “return”. The great variety of words used is also illuminating, as are the relative absences: only very few mentions of “God” or “Lord”; mostly it is “you” or “he”.

Third, I appreciate your original interpretation of “The Old Revolution”, one of LC’s more enigmatic songs. I think the idea of interpreting it the way you did is very original and imaginative, although, as you said yourself, somewhat impressionistic. I enjoyed reading it and will give it further thought.

I also appreciate the earlier discussion of #32, as well as the discussion once again of #29. Let’s see if there are any further comments before introducing #33.

[mat james]

Hi ~greg,
Isn’t it strange how we read into a poem a different story??!!

I vision (impressionistically interpret ! ) the old “Fall”.
And its journey to matter and what Buddha calls “the world of the opposites”.
I see Satan (reason) blowing up the old way of perceiving things (by questioning, by exercising reason ) and I see the "soul" as the one who fought on the side of the ghost (holy ghost) and the King (god), blindly (wisely? ) accepting divine law.

But Satan and his troops are the old “revolutionaries” to me.

Then following on in that Jewish myth/story comes the next revolution, Eve and Adam’s grasp of reason (Satan) and they become another form of the “old revolution”.
And it follows that each of us, as we question/reject the accepted ways/laws/practices, (hippies ect.) we continue in the revolutionary tradition.
Then within Leonard’s song I see him relating this view of the “Old Revolution” to his own predicament, as you explain ~greg.
(The ultimate revolutionary for me is the “apostate”, who, in my opinion, paradoxically, has a chance of re-connecting to "pre-fall" perspectives. Mystic),
that is, being "free".


The Old RevolutionPeom by Leonard Cohen

I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.
Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows,
all the brave young men
they're waiting now to see a signal
which some killer will be lighting for pay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.

I fought in the old revolution
on the side of the ghost and the King.
Of course I was very young
and I thought that we were winning;
I can't pretend I still feel very much like singing
as they carry the bodies away.

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...

Lately you've started to stutter
as though you had nothing to say.
To all of my architects let me be traitor.
Now let me say I myself gave the order
to sleep and to search and to destroy.

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...

Yes, you who are broken by power,
you who are absent all day,
you who are kings for the sake of your children's story,
the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money,
the hand of your lover is clay.

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...

[Cate]

Hi Greg - I think you have an interesting interpretation of this song which seems like it could be valid. The song is new to me (shhh...) so I haven't formed a concrete notion of it yet. Over the weekend I have listened to it several times and listened to it in context of the album twice.

I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.



prison = marriage (pretended in Cohen-Marianne's case)
chain = traditions ( their "old-fashioned backgrounds" )

Makes sense, although I would would disagree with the word pretend - I know I was my husbands wife, long before a piece of paper declared it.

I particularly like your interpretation of the line "the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money,"

It's so true, after basic needs - time really is what children want and need. He says your beggar - there's ownership there, it makes sense that it would be a child that he was speaking of.

deep in his heart, would be much more useful to the child, but impossible for Cohen.)

the hand of your lover is clay.


ie, wet clay. Slippery. "as they carry the bodies away."

Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...


- where Cohen tries to fire the ephemeral wet clay of his life
into something eternally durable and valuable, - his songs and poems

Trying to mold, shape and create and then preserve the beauty that is created.

Who do you think he is inviting into the furnace - the boy, the wife or love, maybe a piece of himself?
I think your right about the furnace being a place of creation - but more specifically what do you think it is - is it gods furnace - is it love's furnace...

Love is a fire
It burns everyone
It disfigures everyone
It is the world’s excuss
For being ugly

from the Energy of Slaves

Is this the furnace?

[Manna]

Makes sense, although I would would disagree with the word pretend - I know I was my husbands wife, long before a piece of paper declared it.

yeah. I think I knew when I was about 12 or 13, and nobody in this country lets you get married when you're 12 these days. I don't think I fully acknowledged it until I was about 20, but the signs were there. This man I knew was the ideal; there was something magical, permanent, and perfect about him, and anyone who didn't measure up to the prototype was just practice, not husband.

I don't think I've taken teh time to listen very closely and analytically to The Old Revolution yet. But when I hear those lines - into this furnace I ask you now to venture, you whom I cannot betray - these are the things that come to mind for me: The Holocaust, Mercy.

[William]

Greg
I admire your succinct-ness.
Cate
Can you have a concrete notion? A motion perhaps but a notion??????

God bless
William.