[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>> > Dylan's. The total published number to this date is twenty songs - a   
   >>> > number superficially disproportionate to the notice they have received   
   >>> > in the various magazines of the record trade. When we examine these   
   >>> > songs, we find that unlike Dylan's they are for the most part love   
   >>> > songs. But once again we find that they are raised to considerable   
   >>> > significance and poetic integrity by the unique and intelligent vision   
   >>> > which informs them.   
   >>> > Cohen, however, gives little thought to any impending apocalypse. His   
   >>> > songs present a threatening, devouring world and men desperate to   
   >>> > delay their doom. All of his songs contain some implicit social   
   >>> > criticism, although only two, "The Old Revolution" and "Stories of the   
   >>> > Street," have an overt social commentary. The most nearly political of   
   >>> > his songs is "Stories of the Street," which begins:   
   >>> >   
   >>> > The stories of the street are mine   
   >>> > The Spanish voices laugh   
   >>> > The cadillacs go creeping down   
   >>> > Through the night and the poison gas   
   >>> > I lean from my window sill   
   >>> > In this old hotel I chose.   
   >>> > Yes, one hand on my suicide   
   >>> > And one hand on the rose.   
   >>> > Cohen's vision here is of a society in imminent collapse because of   
   >>> > the greed and lust of its members.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > I know you've heard it's over now   
   >>> > And war must surely come,   
   >>> > The cities they are broke in half   
   >>> > And the middle men are gone.   
   >>> > But let me ask you one more time   
   >>> > O children of the dust,   
   >>> > All these hunters who are shrieking now   
   >>> > Do they speak for us?   
   >>> > And where do all these highways go   
   >>> > Now that we are free?   
   >>> > Why are the armies marching still   
   >>> > That were coming home to me?   
   >>> > O lady with your legs so fine   
   >>> > O stranger at your wheel   
   >>> > You are locked into your suffering   
   >>> > And your pleasures are the seal.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > The age of lust is giving birth   
   >>> > And both the parents ask the nurse   
   >>> > On both sides of the glass   
   >>> > Now the infant with his cord   
   >>> > Is hauled in like a kite   
   >>> > And one eye filled with blueprints   
   >>> > One eye filled with night.   
   >>> > Like Dylan, Cohen would escape a world unfeelingly ordered by highway   
   >>> > and blueprint, but this escape for him must be in the here and now.   
   >>> > And, if he cannot feel at home in his earthly refuge-here a   
   >>> > communalistic existence with other inhabitants of the natural   
   >>> > world-then he will have to accept, even though innocent, the fate of   
   >>> > his corrupt society.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > O come with me my little one   
   >>> > And we will find that farm   
   >>> > And grow us grass and apples there   
   >>> > And keep the animals warm   
   >>> > And if by chance I wake at night   
   >>> > And I ask you who I am   
   >>> > O take me to the slaughter house   
   >>> > I will wait there with the lamb.   
   >>> > Man often lives in Cohen's world like Isaac upon his father's altar.   
   >>> > There is only one place for a man to be-where he is-and, if here   
   >>> > corruption and death are inevitable, man must accept these as parts of   
   >>> > his humanity.   
   >>> > In his love songs Cohen is, like Dylan, consistently concerned with   
   >>> > values rather than with the incessant "I want you, I need you, I love   
   >>> > you" theme of the average popular songwriter. Cohen seems to have come   
   >>> > to a realization that has so far escaped most of the writers for the   
   >>> > popular hit parade: that to get the girl into bed is quite easy, but   
   >>> > to get her there without endangering one's own integrity, or without   
   >>> > drawing oneself into the "poison gas" world, is a bit more difficult.   
   >>> > In "The Stranger Song" Cohen presents the cowardly lover, the lover   
   >>> > who is afraid to continue on his quest but wishes to exchange his   
   >>> > freedom for security, the lover "who is just some Joseph looking for a   
   >>> > manger," who "wants to trade the game he plays for shelter." Cohen   
   >>> > terms himself, the quester who still seeks significance, a "stranger;"   
   >>> > he terms the other man, who watches "for the card/that is so high and   
   >>> > wild/he'll never need to deal another," the "dealer." The "dealer,"   
   >>> > the bridegroom who wishes the toil and agony of courtship over, makes   
   >>> > an inadequate lover, Cohen tells us.   
   >>> > I know that kind of man   
   >>> > It's hard to hold the hand of anyone   
   >>> > Who's reaching for the sky just to surrender.   
   >>> > In "Winter Lady" and "Sisters of Mercy" Cohen presents the female   
   >>> > counterpart to the "stranger." This counterpart also has her freedom,   
   >>> > has not sold out to the easy life of guaranteed possession offered by   
   >>> > marriage. Aloof, independent, choosy, this "travelling lady" gives an   
   >>> > affection which Cohen feels should be far more to a man than a paper   
   >>> > contract. In "Sisters of Mercy" this woman waits to refresh the   
   >>> > questing stranger, ministering to his tiredness without plotting for   
   >>> > his being.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > O the sisters of mercy   
   >>> > They are not departed or gone   
   >>> > They were waiting for me when I thought   
   >>> > That I just can't go on.   
   >>> > There is apparently no jealousy or possessiveness in his relationship   
   >>> > with these sisters; he can genuinely wish that they will be able to   
   >>> > aid other questing strangers like himself.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > When I left they were sleeping   
   >>> > I hope you run into them soon.   
   >>> > Don't turn on the lights,   
   >>> > You can read their address by the moon;   
   >>> > And you won't make me jealous   
   >>> > If I hear that they've sweetened your night   
   >>> > We weren't lovers like that   
   >>> > And besides it would still be all right   
   >>> > There is merely a community of love where any may help any in his or   
   >>> > her quest for life's fulfillment.   
   >>> > Casual love between man and woman is,in Cohen's songs, a desirable   
   >>> > escape from the ordeal of existence. Domestic love is merely part of   
   >>> > the ordeal. In "So Long, Marianne" this contradiction which Cohen sees   
   >>> > between domesticity and personal freedom is explored at length. He   
   >>> > thought himself "some kind of gypsy boy," he tells Marianne, before he   
   >>> > let her take him home. Now, he says, "You make me forget so very   
   >>> > much/I forget to pray for the angel/ And then the angels forget to   
   >>> > pray for us." Here the woman desperately attempts to bind him: "your   
   >>> > fine spider web/Is fastening my ankle to a stone." She heretically   
   >>> > clings to him as if he were a substitute for the divine, holding him,   
   >>> > he says, "like I was a crucifix/ As we went kneeling through the   
   >>> > dark." In this song Cohen wavers, tempted by sentimentality as he   
   >>> > remembers their love "deep in the green lilac park" but is   
   >>> > fortuitously set free by her own possessive- ness, this time for   
   >>> > another man.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > O you are really such a pretty one   
   >>> > I see youive gone and changed your name again   
   >>> > And just when I climbed this whole mountainside   
   >>> > To wash my eyelids in the rain.   
   >>> > "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" is Cohen's ironic story of a pos- sessive   
   >>> > lover, both sadistic in his attempting to dominate the woman, and   
   >>> > masochistic in his yearning to be in turn dominated by her. The song   
   >>> > begins:   
   >>> >   
   >>> > I lit a thin green candle   
   >>> > To make you jealous of me,   
   >>> > Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night   
   >>> > I put it in your little shoe.   
   >>> > And then I confess'd that I tortured the dress   
      
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   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)