A poet, a novelist, and a singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen was born in 1934 in Westmount, Quebec, Canada. His first book of poetry, "Let Us Compare Mythologies", was published in 1956; his first novel, "The Favourite Game", was published in 1963; his first album, "Songs of Leonard Cohen", was released in 1967.
Although the initial inspiration for this song was the musicians forced to play outside the Nazi deathcamp cremarotia while Jews were being murdered, he says that "... the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song -- it's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity."
Dance Me to the End of Love by Leonard Cohen from the 1984 (Canada)/1985 (USA) album "Various Positions"
Leonard Cohen website
The Leonard Cohen Files for bibliography, discography, biography, interviews, and more.
Wikipedia biography (for a nice little nutshell of a not-so-little life)
2 comments:
AND he's ancient now but still tours.
AND he's a genius.
AND he finds beauty in men as well as women.
AND
Thank you for posting this. :) I hadn't read that much about him.
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