A few minutes with Leonard Cohen

He probably was Canada’s finest musical product ever -a risky proposition if we consider Joni Mitchell and Neil Young- but he was the promising poet and novelist who abandoned a literary career to sing in a gritty baritone voice meditative and succinct ballads of love, disappointment and religiosity. This is in anticipation to our review of his second and last novel Beautiful Losers

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It’s for others; it’s for others to use.

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

Recognize that your struggle and your suffering is the same as everyone else’s, I think that’s the beginning of a responsible life. Otherwise, we are in a continual savage battle with each other with no possible solution, political, social, or spiritual.

This is the most challenging activity that humans get into, which is love. You know, where we have the sense that we can’t live without love. That life has very little meaning without love.

A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

My reputation as a ladies’ man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the 10,000 nights I spent alone.

The basic function of popular music is to create an environment for courting, lovemaking, and doing the dishes. It’s useful because it addresses the heart in the midst of all these activities, and it will always be useful in this very important way.

There are some people who come to me for some illumination on their problems. I guess they feel I’m writing about some of the things they themselves are going through. But I don’t usually have much help to give – there isn’t much you can say to someone in the midst of their own crises.

As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.

Beautiful Losers is the second and final novel by Canadian writer and musician Leonard Cohen. It was published in 1966, before he began his career as a singer-songwriter. It has come to be seen as having introduced postmodernism into Canadian literature. It has become a steady seller, and is considered a part of the Canadian literary canon.