“The song was begun, and the chord pattern was developed, before a woman's name entered the song. And I knew it was a song about Montreal, it seemed to come out of that landscape that I loved very much in Montreal, which was the harbour, and the waterfront, and the sailors' church there, called Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours ,which stood out over the river, and I knew that there were ships going by, I knew that there was a harbour, I knew that there was Our Lady of the Harbour, which was the Virgin on the church which stretched out her arms towards the seamen, and you can climb up to the tower and look out over the river, so the song came from that vision, from that view of the river. At a certain point, I bumped into Suzanne Vaillancourt, who was the wife of a friend of mine; they were a stunning couple around Montreal at the time, physically stunning, both of them; a handsome man and woman; everyone was in love with Suzanne Vaillancourt, and every woman was in love with Armand Vaillancourt. But there was no... well, there was thought, but there was no possibility, one would not allow oneself to think of toiling at the seduction of Armand Vaillancourt's wife. First of all he was a friend, and second of all as a couple they were inviolate, you just didn't intrude into that kind of shared glory that they manifested. I bumped into her one evening, and she invited me down to her place near the river. She had a loft, at a time when lofts were... the word wasn't used. She had a space in a warehouse down there, and she invited me down, and I went with her, and she served me Constant Comment tea, which has little bits of oranges in it. And the boats were going by, and I touched her perfect body with my mind, because there was no other opportunity. There was no other way that you could touch her perfect body under those circumstances. So she provided the name in the song” (1)
Suzanne is Cohen’s most famous song. A lyrical masterpiece which evolved from “the emotional Montreal Landscape” and has subsequently been vocalised by generations of diverse
performers. A delicate interplay of rhyme, rhythm and linguistic perfection. There are excellent critiques on Cohen’s work, on its dialectical discourse (2), its post modernist construction (3) and Cohen too, intimates his disappointment at the lack of people to see the‘comedic’ element in his works . These are all valued avenues of discovery. I am not making an atempt to examine Suzanne with the rigour of a Custom's Officer (suspecting a concealment) but only to deconstruct and reconstruct based on imaginary perceptions. I have read, listened & performed (albeit with vocals that could have been dubbed into 'The Hound of The Baskervilles). Cohen's work for over 20 years. He stands aloft from his contemporaries offering his readers an intensity rarely found in literature and thus providing his critics an imaginative source of investigation. And in Cohen's words...
A person who eats meat
Wants to get his teeth into something
A person who doesn’t eat meat
Wants to get his teeth into something else
If these thoughts interest you for even a moment
You are lost…….(4).
We are not, however , lost in a Leonard Cohen after world. Suzanne is not a dark satanic melting pot, possessed by demons, rather a Utopian edifice were beauty & spirituality coincide. In fact, a realisation of himself the poet transcending into a climatic ‘neverland’ without a carnal act in sight. Cohen, as in most of his songs, is not concerned with the flirtatious and superficial boy meets girl relationship. The ‘I love you do you love me syndrome’ is superceded by a concern for value, a preservation of integrity and in the case of Suzanne a realisation of universal beauty. Cohen resists the mundanity and mortal baggage of insecurity, and ‘Love’ for the poet lives on (or is at least contained in the blinding mesmic light of Suzanne) and does not fall victim to the fraility of individual emotions. The encounter with the “half-crazy” but “that’s why he wants to be there” Suzanne is not induced by 'Tea & Oranges' but a Lacanian Self Discovery (LSD for short) (5) an hallucinogenic journey, an inter-planetry excursion that transcends the materialist base an offers a love so powerful Suzanne encapsulates ‘our lady of the harbour’ to the point of being able to walk on water. Intrinsically, a powerful reverse-eclipse were the honey-like sun shrouds the already beautiful Suzanne in a godess-like mist.
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
(One can assume it's something more than the tea!)
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
(transcendental – transposition of the moment)
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
(more powerful than physical – metaphysical)
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.
(poets metaphysical sexual encounter)
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.
At this point one would expect from Cohen, as we find in ‘Take This Longing’ (6)
"Take this longing from my tonque
all the useless things
my hands have done;
let me see your beauty broken down,
like you would do
for the one that you love"
Or ‘Last Years Man’
“Bethlehem the bridegroom,
Babylon the bride.
Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me,
and Bethlehem inflamed us both
like the shy one at some orgy.
And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil
that I had to draw aside to see
the serpent eat its tail.”
, to indulge in the carnality of the moment. There is however, no incessant thirst to devour. This is not ‘last years man”; this is Cohen the visionary, the mystic harmonising a virtuos spiritual encounter with the occurrence of natural splendour.
Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
(contradictory interplay often used by Cohen)
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror.
In the most powerful verse of the poem Cohen uses contradiction, metaphor and a poetical metamorphisis as Suzanne encompasses the virginal ‘our lady of the harbour’ and instilling its purity as Suzanne becomes a spiritual embodiment. The suns rays are deflecting off this religious structure & as the bright rays fall on Suzanne the harsh shadows polarise the rivers bed and the depths of life without love in the form of dead sailors or in the form of children who will never scale the ladder of Suzannes beauty. The ‘rags & feathers’ from ‘salvation army counters’
reinforce the poets image of natural beauty, of the beautiful Suzanne not needing fine clothes to enhance her goddess like appearance. But Suzanne will never “lean out for love” she “holds the mirror” that embodies her reflection, her beauty & also holds the key to reflect the light, her beauty onto the poet himself “for she’s touched your perfect body with her mind”.......
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.
(Leonard Cohen quoting Irving Layton) "A poet is deeply confilcted and it's in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. The place is the harbor. It doesn't set the world in order, you know, it's the place of recociliation. It's the conssolumentum, the kiss of peace."
Through is imagery, use of metonym, his use of contradiction, his ability to contrast the dark and mysterious with the bright and the beautiful and ulimately his depiction of the sexual aspect of human nature, Leonard Cohen has taken us down to the harbor of serenity. Suzzane , perhaps, stands alone in his treatment of love as the "kiss of Peace".
If you disagree with any of the above comments or just wish to converse in dialogue please free to email me with your views ...
1. Interview BBC Radio 1 1994
4. A Person Who Eats Meat - Selected Poems 1956-68
2. Frederic Jameson - Postmodernism / The Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism
3. Clint Burnham - How Postodern is Cohen's Poetry?
Linda Hutcheon -The Canadian Postmoden
4. A Person Who Eats Meat - Selected Poems 1956-68
5. Jacques Lacan - The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis
6. New Skin For Old Ceremony
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