INDG 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Chord Progression, Theodor W. Adorno, A Priori And A Posteriori
9 Jun 2018
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ENGL 409, Lecture February 6, 2018
The Captain
- Very upbeat tune, country chord progression
- But the words are slightly dark
- The captain likes to say noble things: “If a woman take your hand / then go and stand
with her”
o Stand by me in the background
o Country western song shows how self-reflexive Cohen is
- “I’m on the side that’s always lost”
o What’s beautiful about losing?
o Good precursor to Beautiful Losers
- Holocaust joke
o Complain complain
o Dramatic moment in which Cohen suggests you can joke about it
o Yet in the rebuttal the voice says you can’t
- Just because the captain makes a holocaust doesn’t mean the statement mean joke is okay
in our search for discourse about atrocity
o Cohen often will pitch us between two irreconcilable landscapes
- Question young person asks (bottom of p. 341)
o I’ve got to go / there’s blood upon your hands…
o Captain says: “there’s no decent place to stand in a massacre”
o Yearning of young person for ethically sound place to stand in time of atrocity
and the captain knowing there is absolutely no way to find that place in a
massacre
o Forced into winning or losing
- Something at stake in that song
- One way to approach Flower for Hitler
o Also could say that Cohen abandons all place to stand
o Doesn’t seem to invest much in the search for a decent place to stand
o You could argue the volume after the first poem is attempting to scandalize or
blaspheme the sacredness of the Holocaust
- Cohen is clearing refusing to treat this as sacred subject matter
o Determined to break with that approach
o Scandalize us with anything but
- Someone wanting to disburden himself so much from vocation must start from a place
that he feels it so profoundly
- Undercurrent of Holocaust in Cohen’s writing
- Knows of the case of A.M. Klein’s case
o Silenced just as Cohen is finding his voice
- Knows of Theodor Adorno’s famous statement
o A possible challenge in that line?
o Make poetry barbaric
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Document Summary
The captain likes to say noble things: if a woman take your hand / then go and stand with her : stand by me in the background, country western song shows how self-reflexive cohen is. I"m on the side that"s always lost : what"s beautiful about losing, good precursor to beautiful losers. Holocaust joke: complain complain, dramatic moment in which cohen suggests you can joke about it, yet in the rebuttal the voice says you can"t. Just because the captain makes a holocaust doesn"t mean the statement mean joke is okay in our search for discourse about atrocity: cohen often will pitch us between two irreconcilable landscapes. Cohen is clearing refusing to treat this as sacred subject matter: determined to break with that approach, scandalize us with anything but. Someone wanting to disburden himself so much from vocation must start from a place that he feels it so profoundly.
