INDG 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Leonard Cohen, Lionel Trilling, Old Age
9 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ENGL 409, Lecture March 27, 2018
“How to speak poetry”
- As voices of Death of a Lady’s man establish a ground more for renewal
- Commentaries turn more and more negative
- More positive visions for art in the future?
o Debate “positive” further
- Felt some need to double that development with a negative, critical, harsh ranting
response
- Cohen felt the need to interpolated voices that would rise up against his work if it moved
towards any more positive understandings of the artist’s place, of marriage in all the
figurative senses
- Cohen anticipates attack for some of these late works in death of a lady’s man
o Young poet likes to think of himself as sustaining a con
o Early statements of the con is a way of understanding that everything is bound up
in the performance
o Post-modern mediatized age, there would be no way for him to present sincerely
felt emotion and have people trust and respect it
o What better way to foreground the conman game and deciding himself to be the
conman
- Performing in a particular might encode and make official my Leonard Cohen sense of
the words mean, but also make a closed meaning
o Performing to ensure my meaning is a kind of mastery
- Book: Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling
o Series of lecture given in 1969
Dance me to the end of love
- Violin to call back images of youth?
- Video
o Old age imagery
o Gaps between images of young lovers and then them as old lovers
o Aging and death played up by the video
o Continuity over a lifetime in love
- Holocaust influences in the song
- Period when the word broken becomes a part of his vocabulary
- “Though every thread is torn”
- Relates to some themes in Book of Mercy and images in Hallelujah
- Shredding of our materials
- Dance me to the end of love
o Dancing isn’t a transient action
- Think of Leonard Cohens inability to maintain a relationship
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
As voices of death of a lady"s man establish a ground more for renewal. More positive visions for art in the future: debate positive further. Felt some need to double that development with a negative, critical, harsh ranting response. Cohen felt the need to interpolated voices that would rise up against his work if it moved towards any more positive understandings of the artist"s place, of marriage in all the figurative senses. Performing in a particular might encode and make official my leonard cohen sense of the words mean, but also make a closed meaning: performing to ensure my meaning is a kind of mastery. Book: sincerity and authenticity by lionel trilling: series of lecture given in 1969. Video: old age imagery, gaps between images of young lovers and then them as old lovers, aging and death played up by the video, continuity over a lifetime in love. Period when the word broken becomes a part of his vocabulary.
