Leonard Cohen against the sexual anarchists
by Jonathon van Maren, LifeSite:
With the Nobel committee’s controversial decision to award folk singer Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature, a flurry of columns and essays have erupted in a wide range of publications on Dylan’s place within the literary canon. He’s a songwriter and a poet, everyone seems to agree, but is the social commentary contained in his work profound enough to merit the award? Should singers be eligible for such a prestigious prize? And as the answers to those questions are debated, Canada’s growling poet and storyteller Leonard Cohen has suddenly found himself in the spotlight again, with much mention being made of Dylan’s apparent anointing of him as the official “number two” in the troubadour tradition.
Leonard Cohen, the 82-year-old poet, novelist, and songwriter born in Quebec and a wanderer ever since then, has long fascinated those who have attempted to categorize him. His religious journey has zig-zagged from West to East and left him with the vague mysticism favored by many of the artists of his generation. He’s never gone truly mainstream because he’s not a rock star, although he did dabble in drug culture. His treatment of religion and sexuality has always been troublesome, as he seems to simultaneously treat sexual intimacy as something sacred while excusing himself for his own “love them and leave them” approach. But where Leonard Cohen is truly fascinating is the social commentary woven through his poems, especially on an issue so controversial many refuse to touch it: abortion.
For all his many faults, Cohen is nothing if not unblinking. His work shows a clear and progressively growing disillusionment with our throwaway culture’s crude approach to everything good and beautiful, and his words often smolder with contempt. In “Stories from the Street,” he described the bankruptcy of the Sexual Revolution and its infantilizing effect on those who revelled in it:
See also: Did faith help Dylan win a Nobel Prize? by Derek Walker, CEN [£]
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