A Command of Leonard Cohen's Politics

Andrew Sullivan brings up an interesting -- though quite likely extraordinarily wrong -- analysis of the politics of Leonard Cohen, beginning with his song, Anthem. After quoting a few lines, Sullian is inspired to write: "We have to win this war. And we have managed to get rid of some of the madmen who were busy losing it, and exposed some of the charlatans who were enabling them. It's a start..."?

Note this is the second time this month that Sullivan has quoted from L.C's most overtly political album, The Future. I have absolutely zero direct knowledge of Leonard Cohen's politics, but in his music they are usually conveyed with either irony or ambivalence, or both.

When Cohen sings in "Anthem" for example, "Cant run no more /With the lawless crowd / While the killers in high places /Say their prayers out loud /But theyve summoned up / A thundercloud / And theyre going to hear from me," he doesn't seem convincingly serious. That is, I don't really take Cohen to be Batman, or the Old Testament God, or something. Isn't this the ironic Leonard Cohen, the "Field Commander," who being the "most important spy was "wounded in the line of duty, parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties, urging Fidel Castro to abandon fields and castles," etc? Isn't this Leonard Cohen the same as one whose name is printed in bold, and whose face along with two ladies appears above an album titled "Death of a Ladies Man"? The same one who after being "Sentenced to twenty years of boredom" promises revolution first by taking Manhattan and then Berlin?

The Future, admittedly, seems like a departure from these earlier songs I've been citing. But where it may lack in irony, it makes up for it in ambivalence. On the Revelations-esque "The Future" he sings, "give me back the Berlin wall, give me Stalin and St. Paul. I've seen the future, brother, and it's muder." A few songs later, though, we get the two songs Sullivan cites: one of a vague Biblibal vengeance against those who have "summoned up a thundercloud," and the other of "Democracy is Coming to the U.S.A."

At the conclusion of this little Tocquevillian bit, Cohen sings, "I love the country but I can't stand the scene. And I'm neither left nor right, I'm just staying home tonight, geting lost in that hopless little screen." Where Sullivan here would likely pick up on -- and identify with -- "I'm neither left nor right" I tend to focus on Cohen's first sentence, where again, that detached irony returns. This is a songwriter, I think, who is genuinely interested in political questions. He's simply incredibly aware of his own weakness, or indifference, or some combination. "Field Commander Cohen" is I think the greatest expression of his political yearnings (on perhaps his greatest album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony), along with the greatest expression of his inevitable political failures. As in "First we Take Manhattan" he brings up with issue of "boredom," which it seems he associates with his career as an artist, these "forms of boredom advertised as poetry." The life of the poet is quite far -- perhaps contrary to Walter Benjamin's belief -- from the messianic role of healer and do-gooder. The song urges the Field Commander (or is it Castro?) to retire to the normal complexities of modern life, and to poetry. Yet, once removed the life of action and politics, what becomes of the poet? His role seems rather irresponsible while "many men are falling, where you promised to stand guard." Then, we return to the ultimate ironic self-consciousness:

I never asked but I heard you cast your lot along with the poor.
But then I overheard your prayer,
that you be this and nothing more
than just some grateful faithful woman's favourite singing millionaire,
the patron Saint of envy and the grocer of despair,
working for the Yankee Dollar.

While Cohen would perhaps like to cast his lot with the poor, there's little doubt that he at the very least struggles to avoid these last traits. Of course he's envious and full of despair (what else do you think of when you think of Leonard Cohen?) Of Course he profits off of his poetry.

These songs remain fairly ambiguous, but I think this ambiguity -- especially when concerned with politics -- is quite purposeful. At the end of the day, Cohen simply says what about a million other poets have said before, but perhaps says it a bit better. While he's fearful of the future, and yet desparate and hopeful for change, he's well aware that life is about more than fighting for these things, and that he is incapable of dedicating himself entirely to a life of fighting injustice. (Perhaps here would be a good time to bring up the fact that, biographically, Cohen became a Buddhist monk: the perfect expression of despair (the recognition of human suffering) and hope (not so much in poetry, but meditation.) To be critical, in other words, he wants to be both descriptively ambiguous -- not saying exactly what's wrong with the world, only that something's not right -- and prescriptively ambiguous -- ironically calling for revolution, or retribution, or divine intervention at times, and at other times calling for poetry, or sex.

So, back to where we began, I think Sullivan's rather full of shit (dare I call him "intellectually dishonest!") to use Leonard Cohen in support of a renewed military effort in Iraq. There's plenty of other poems he could have chosen to get that fighting spirit going. Leonard Cohen, however, remains a rather odd choice.


ps. How many senior theses have been written on this topic? I shudder to think...