Tuesday 14 December 2021

Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of GeniusLeonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius by Harry Freedman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Ghost of Spinoza

That Leonard Cohen wrote profound poetry and music is widely recognised. That he had a deeply religious upbringing in one of Montreal’s most prominent Jewish families is probably less well-known. And his explicit biblical and other scriptural references can easily be missed because the very artistic talent by which he subtly blended them into a distinctive voice in popular culture.

Harry Freedman, a Jewish scholar and literary historian, has accomplished something remarkable in this book about the intersection of Cohen’s public/professional and private/spiritual life. Essentially it is a kind of reverse exegesis which traces much of Cohen’s work back to its original scriptural and other cultural inspirations. Freedman interprets Cohen in light of both Cohen’s biography, and Freedman’s knowledge of Judaic culture. The result is informative, interesting, and provocative in the best sense.

To use only one example, Freedman shows how Cohen takes the somewhat problematic biblical story of The Binding of Isaac, the Akedah, and transforms it into a contemporary moral tale in his song The Story of Isaac. In the spirit of the Talmud, the Midrash, and Kabbalah, Cohen digs at what is unsaid in the Bible, creatively interprets what’s there in terms of current conditions, and ultimately represents it in Story of Isaac.

Through this, the Akedah undergoes a profound transformation from, “… a test of Abraham’s religious fanaticism, into a protest about the way people are willing to sacrifice others for absurd ideals.” Cohen’s specific issue was the American War in VietNam, but like so much of his work it also has universal significance. Other less obvious references to the Hebrew Bible are to King David in The Tower of Song, to the tale of Bathsheba in Hallelujah among many others.

Cohen also had (thanks to his Irish nanny) an intimate understanding of the Christian Gospels (but notably less of the writings of St. Paul whom I doubt he had much time for either philosophically or aesthetically). So the song Democracy draws a comparison between the protestors in Tiananmen Square and the crowds surrounding Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. But many of his allusions - to the Gospel of Matthew in Suzanne, the subtle poetic puns on Hebrew and Christian scripture, Christ’s temptation in the desert in Closing Time, and the Crucifixion in Ain’t No Cure for Love - are far more subtle and refined. Cohen was learned in other traditions as well. He had a commitment to Buddhism throughout his adult life. Buddhism permeates his work in equally subtle ways

Cohen was, of course, an artist not a theologian. He did not aim to develop any kind of systematic view of the divine. He nonetheless did have a sort of religious ambition beyond his own spiritual development. Freedman quotes him from an interview:
“Everybody has a sense that they are in their own capsule and the one that I have always been in, for want of a better word, is that of cantor – a priest of a catacomb religion that is underground, just beginning, and I am one of the many singers, one of the many priests, not by any means a high priest, but one of the creators of the liturgy that will create the church.”


This citation suggests to me Cohen as more than a popular singer/songwriter who also happens to be Jewish. He is also a continuation of a tradition, arguably established by another notable Jewish artist/philosopher, the 17th century Baruch Spinoza. I say artist with reference to Spinoza because he too was intent upon understanding the world by constructing a new aesthetic.

I associate Spinoza and Cohen not only because I think they may have had compatable intentions but also because their patterns of spiritual life were so similar. Both men were steeped in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. It should be no surprise, therefore that they developed a similar syncretistic spiritually appropriate to their times.

Like Spinoza, Cohen broke his formal relationship with Judaism without abjuring his respect for Judaic culture or his acceptance of a divine presence in the world. Freedman quotes the speech in which Cohen essentially banished himself from Judaism:
“I believe that the God worshipped in our synagogues is a hideous distortion of a supreme idea – and deserves to be attacked and destroyed. I consider it one of my duties to expose the platitude which we have created.”


Although Spinoza was a bit more circumspect and diplomatic than Cohen, the two shared just about the same sentiments and came to similar religious views. Spinoza considered the entire cosmos as a manifestation of God, in particular each human being as an instance of God to be treated as such. Cohen, although adopting the language of Buddhism which has no concept of God, nevertheless expressed a functionally equivalent ethic. According to Cohen, “the ethical question is, what is the proper behaviour, what is the appropriate behaviour in the midst of a catastrophe?” This comes directly from the Śīla, one of the three sections of the Noble Eightfold Path. But it is entirely consistent with not only Spinoza but also the fundamental principle of Judaic and Christian ethics as a whole.*

Cohen, like Spinoza was consciously involved in a cultural conflict. Cohen describes it this way:
“This is the old war, Athens against Sparta, Socrates against Athens, Isaiah against the priests, the war that deeply involves ‘our western civilization’, the one to which I am committed.”
Like Spinoza, Cohen’s war was, as Freedman notes, “a spiritual and cultural confrontation, a battle for the human soul.” Precisely this phrase could attach easily to Spinoza. Each in their own way was attempting to influence the world, to make everyone more aware of how and why they were acting from moment to moment - Cohen through his music, Spinoza through his formal logic.

My point in making note of the similarities between Cohen and Spinoza is not to diminish Freedman’s analysis. Rather I would like to enhance it by suggesting that Cohen is not just a carrier of a literary and ethical tradition of Judaism. There is a Judaic political tradition which is equally profound, that of being “ a light to the Gentiles.” Like the prophets Isaac and Micah (and even Jesus) as well as Spinoza, Cohen calls insistently for the priests, rabbis and political leaders of the time to shed their smug conventional wisdom, the rituals that have become merely ritualistic, and the sanctimonious cant that replaces spiritual experience. He is sorely missed - for himself and as the ghost of Spinoza..

* As summarised by the 1st century CE rabbi Akiva: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Leviticus 19:18) - This is the all-embracing principle of the divine law.” Jesus said the same as did Marcus Aurelius, and St. Augustine after him.

View all my reviews

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home