leonardcohenforum.com

OK, Linda. That's straight. And clear.

Now Tom, if you think I find BL a shocking book because of my petit bourgeois point of view about pornography you are off track too. I'll explain this another time (too much stuff, really).

For now, and in order to continue with History/Anthropo, here is a very interesting link about erotism in a society just before the big expansion of christianity as we are knowing now (let say a little scorned by antropy tout de même), which, I hope, will be a stretching exercice of the mind, which will begin to shed a light about how life could be before christianity or in societies that were/are not touched by it, like it was the case for Amerindians.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/pompeii.shtml

Tchocolatl wrote:Still I think that BL is still a shocking book and rape a shocking subject.

Really It's a shocking subject.

There were racist reasons, according to who tells us the facts - he is not LC-, the French-Canadian books of school do not foment the respect for the Indians and the Catholic Canadian mind is not sure of the victory of the Church on the Wizard. The rapists of this Indian girl were four French-Canadians. I'm sorry.

Run, run Edith!

A guy with a devastating suffering with a mind in state of decomposition imagines the narration, there is desire towards this poor girl who then would be his wife. Still from this point of view, the reader feels near Edith and shares her fear and pain. My poor Edith! Do you understand me Tchoco, the pity, the tears for her, the anger for not being able to avoid it? Help me, Katheri!

It is unbearable but, for some reason, inspires infinite tenderness. It's poetry and nothing of pornography.

"And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers"

Did Edith excuse? The feminists would not understand it. Who was this sickening one that embraced to the Edith's abdomen and left a few tears? Did Edith lie? Was he a rapist?

The sketch of the Danish thing may seem pornographic. Too long, with many details. Edith is there, and I would like to know more of her, but not in this way. Of course it is not free, it is not truth, it is F. torturing and/or making pleasure to his friend from the hell.

I believe that it is everything what gives my humble opinion, and do not laugh to me Tchoco .

I never laugh of people, I often laugh with them. I know that some people think I'm stupid because of that. I don't care. It is my choice.

Really It's a shocking subject.

There were racist reasons, according to who tells us the facts - he is not LC-, the French-Canadian books of school do not foment the respect for the Indians and the Catholic Canadian mind is not sure of the victory of the Church on the Wizard. The rapists of this Indian girl were four French-Canadians. I'm sorry.


That's it. Now you understand what I meant: on this particular layer, it is Canadian History.

Run, run Edith!
A guy with a devastating suffering with a mind in state of decomposition imagines the narration, there is desire towards this poor girl who then would be his wife. Still from this point of view, the reader feels near Edith and shares her fear and pain. My poor Edith! Do you understand me Tchoco, the pity, the tears for her, the anger for not being able to avoid it? Help me, Kateri!

And here another truth about a social reality of the place the author was born : the remorses, the love, the sense of lost for having destroyed this culture, even the move toward the BL to look for salvation (KT is the patron of ecology at some point). The idealization of the dead culture. I think it is true for whole North America. And was certainly a concern in the psychedelic times of Peace and Love. Another layer of History.

I don't think that we could talk in 2005 terms about "racism", the closed mind attitudes you are talking about, but it would be more accurate to talk in term of polarization of cultural differences that were more thick than today.

As for the real Kateri, she was persecuted by her own tribe for not being conform to their traditions.

I hope I am not to boring with all those details.

For the rest, I'll come back.

While I'm at it, I may as well bore you all little more (as I perfectly know you can find those link by yourself if you were really interested to explore this dimension - BL may seems more interesting, however :

http://conservation.catholic.org/kateri.htm

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.c ... Tekakwitha

Oh no, Tchoco, I think that city counsellor is petit-bourgeois, or it's better to say middle-class, I'd never think you are petit-bourgeois. Btw, petit-bougeois are self-aware pf their petit-bourgeois. OK, now I completely learne how to spell it. Jesus, how you say it in English? At least you undestand me; in Croatian, we do say exactly "bourgeois" for German Buerger...
I still enjoy your and ForYourSmile's insights into BL I promise I'll read it again during my coming vacation (ey: a month without me! I know you will not miss me... ) so we can discuss it more over in September. This is in any case ongoing affair

One of the good things is to share a few smiles or up to laughs .

Tchocolatl wrote:That's it. Now you understand what I meant: on this particular layer, it is Canadian History.

Why Canadian History? Is it more exact to say Quebecois History? And if the question is where the scene is set, also he might be History of Montreal.

Tchocolatl wrote:And here another truth about a social reality of the place the author was born : the remorses, the love, the sense of lost for having destroyed this culture, even the move toward the BL to look for salvation (KT is the patron of ecology at some point). The idealization of the dead culture. I think it is true for whole North America. And was certainly a concern in the psychedelic times of Peace and Love. Another layer of History.

I begin to think that you are Canadian . Is it true? Then the stage seems to you familiar, but also it is for me. All these concepts that you say are Canadian, North American and Universal.

There is a reference of F. to Quebec at the end of his long letter. He is not exactly cynical, just that you would say is in another layer. I believe that BL is in this neutral and that his author wants to seem too. Let it be .

I have to say that as Catalan I share the feelings of September_Cohen .

Tchocolatl wrote:I don't think that we could talk in 2005 terms about "racism", the closed mind attitudes you are talking about, but it would be more accurate to talk in term of polarization of cultural differences that were more thick than today.

Racism sounds pejorative and I like that sounds this way.

Tchocolatl wrote:As for the real Kateri, she was persecuted by her own tribe for not being conform to their traditions.

Yes! The Indians resisted and were a little disagreeable.

Tom wrote:Oh no, Tchoco, I think that city counsellor is petit-bourgeois, or it's better to say middle-class, I'd never think you are petit-bourgeois. Btw, petit-bougeois are self-aware pf their petit-bourgeois....

I have look for in my dictionary Collins small bourgeois , have found "lower middle-class" too much English structure and "petty bourgeois" this one is good, very European .

Tom, if still you read us, good vacations . This summer we wanted to go to Croatia, but for hurries and laziness, as because of my wife had the expired passport and those of foreign exchange , we went to Vienna. Wonderful city . I will wait for you to September to promote my bootlegs for trade .

Tom, middle-class is not always petit bourgeois. And petit bourgois is not always middle-class. Like you said, all was said about this anyway. Have nice vacation and come back in shape with sharp argumentation!

FYS, what you like better is not necessarily the more accurate but preferences are not to be discussed, are they? So stay with your preferences. (Sorry, I dont' feel like playing the game of proving something right now. Later maybe, we can have a good laughs, for now, be happy with a few smiles.)

In any case, BL is a fiction not a History Book, on this, we agree, but I wanted to stress how well LC was documented about the "stage" were the characters play their part of the human comedy, said comedy can be recognized easily everywhere in the world, as Tom already said about good lit.

But as a novel is much more long than a song, it seems that the analysis must be much more well done then to trow tidbits (? bigbits) of notions, like I did. Otherwise I'm afraid, I may lost the interest of the followers. Considering also how some analysis are long for a rather short song. The Chinese solution is so cleaver. Dear Mr. Cohen.

I digress from the subject of this topic but did you know that I take this nick because (among other things) I like very much the story of the cultural encounter - shock! - between Cortez and the Maya?

Ah! Vienna...

In Vienna ... (what a song, what a song, one of my so much favourite!)

Dylan? How it goes on your side?

I am still here I only announced by break off; I am going away in a week, so you'll have another seven days of me

Tchoco, I don't know the story about Cortez-Maya encounter. Is it connected to chocolate? If you care for telling the story...?

Vienna! Vienna! Ah... FYS, I hope you'll come next year... Or we will be all in Berlin?

Cortez, Cortez - Neil Young
He came dancing across the water
Cortez, Cortez
What a killer.
...
Neil Young, another great Canadian.


Take this waltz - Leonard Cohen
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws
...
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
...

Pequeño Vals Vienés - Federico Garcia Lorca
En Viena hay diez muchachas
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la mañana
En el museo de la escarcha.
Hay un salón con mil ventanas.
¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada

Este vals, este vals, este vals
de sí, de muerte y de coñac
que moja tu cola en el mar
....

Tom Sakic wrote:Tchoco, I don't know the story about Cortez-Maya encounter. Is it connected to chocolate? If you care for telling the story...?

You're a big boy.

As you see I have learned few things from "the Master" - as some trolls are calling Leonard Cohen - since I entered this discussion.

Oh! TTW is so WoW I have no words (or I would have too much, so the circle is closed by saying nothing). Do you like Federico Garcia Lorca, FYS? Do you like poetry? Do you like this one by Keith Barnes? Like LC he went to Greece, once, to write, and this is were he should have take the inspiration for the following.


Mediterranean


Ninety degrees Fahrenheit
Ninety percent frigidity
Bottletops pressed into tarmac
On the balcony six daughters
unbidden for knit one purl one


The Latin lover stands behind
seawalls watching the north undress
On one hand the mark of the cross
on the other hand - which is buried
in his pocket - forbidden flesh


The seawall streaks white with sorrows
Six daughters knit one drop one purl
Datepalms sniff their tufted armpits
a cricket flares its scarlet wings
someone sings a lost-love folksong


On the horizon where the light lifts the sky
over the blade-edge of the mountain
peasants slit the throat of a pig
and blood through two miles of stone writhes down


Six daughters welcome guests who are delayed
six islands in blue spheres of sea and sky
Islands that are passed by slowly but passed
The cactus bristles its clump of bats
sprouts spiked blood knit one purl one
Fruit to be beaten before eaten


My neighbor's unseen sequestered son
cracks against the wall moans to me
I hear him screeching at the bars
his talons . . . . In the garden
his mother sings sweet songs of Greece
beating wet clothes with a stone


From the belly of the bell of her house
below the bitter black hag
shrieks her living from the donkey bald
from the stick lash across the glistening hide
The stone creaks carobs mash The rutted path
streams brown with shitsweet Demerara


The dog lies blistering on the flat roof
mating noon His hear twitches
Flies like the raisins in a burnt cake
cluster on the sores that graze his side


The dark green aquarium madboy
thumps darkness Light trembles the lashes
A dark mash of husks is put to burn
The men are in the bars the women
knit one purl one The soft black bat creeps
back into the rafters
The seawall hand delves
deeper deeper in the pocket

***

And this one is one of my favourite too. How do you like those, ev. who like poetry?

for Jerry

October in the Old House


She the sun at last leans back sinks down and sighs
throwing wide the pastel of her flimsy gowns
her naked thighs the halflight of hills and dales
under the eye of master moon marauding
like a silver clasp clipped on the cloak of night


The house on the bank darkens to an outline
Thru one window only the glow of the fire
we lit now flaring wavering in the applegreen
interior where the woodwork rots 200 years


Three men in the moments of a gentle October
bright ochre leaves that chandelier the morning
epaulettes braid brocade on nature's tabard
The dew losing lustre makes the boat seat damp
needs wiping along the blue length of his cuff
the cracked old man sniffs his dog barks jumps
The cat tamps and tamps the grass with its forepaws
A squeal A fieldmouse belly soft still warm
Its tiny head triangular with caviar eyes
Slumps back It crunches in the jaw just twice
The man leans his rod on the wall in the bare room
where he's lost on his chair the hag shouting at him
selling us cider mildewed at the cork
wired like champagne a round of Brie then calva
to help the firewarmth tread a hearth inside


We heave upstream or drift down to Florida
rats on the wood-floe gnats in the evening air
Three friends in the metaphors of gentle October
a smoking laughing farting free burlesque
The woodfire to stock stoke bellow with the breath
till its caverns are red ready to be talked to
which burn away the bread-and-buckle-under
install the peace of having noone to please
and hours to unlock into dreams

Sincerely I had not read Keith Barnes, I have liked him very much, thank you .

You see, though it is Greece, I recognize the land and the people of my country, rural and of a few years ago. It is a very descriptive poetry, belongs to a territory and a time. The look of a foreigner gives the wealth to something, which for daily, we do not estimate.

I wrote the Lorca's poem to compare the Cohen's adaptation. A good work. Always I have wanted to know that Lorca's books fell in Cohen's hands and have thought that the translations had to be very good to fill with enthusiasm to him. Lorca's world is very special.

In Mediterranean poem we see that these poets bore heat up to the sunstroke .

About Beautiful Losers, those of the Gallery, I expect to see soon your face. I will try to improve my English and regular participation to deserve this honor... another year .

ForYourSmile wrote:Sincerely I had not read Keith Barnes, I have liked him very much, thank you .

No surprise. He died when he was still young, and his work reappered since few, like a treasor rescuded from the belly of some wreck ship. As this poet is born the same year as Leonard Cohen, he is of the same generation, the generation and time that fascinating me so much. As for all artists I knew I don't like the whole body of works but I'm very found of some pieces.

ForYourSmile wrote:You see, though it is Greece, I recognize the land and the people of my country, rural and of a few years ago. It is a very descriptive poetry, belongs to a territory and a time. The look of a foreigner gives the wealth to something, which for daily, we do not estimate. (...) In Mediterranean poem we see that these poets bore heat up to the sunstroke .

Ah! You did remark, did you? A similitude in the delirium

(This sun of Greece.... may be responsible for Diogene's acting, as well as many other of his fellow citizens )

ForYourSmile wrote:I wrote the Lorca's poem to compare the Cohen's adaptation. A good work. Always I have wanted to know that Lorca's books fell in Cohen's hands and have thought that the translations had to be very good to fill with enthusiasm to him. Lorca's world is very special.

I guess that you know by now how Leonard Cohen found his first Lorca's book. Nice encounter - shock! - also.

ForYourSmile wrote:About Beautiful Losers, those of the Gallery, I expect to see soon your face. I will try to improve my English and regular participation to deserve this honor... another year .

I wonder if it is my post about the lyrics of the song sing by Roberta Flack that is at the origin of this up-date of the gallery? "your face, your face, your face, your face, at the end of the song... ". The honour to enter this gallery is all for me, though.

I've read The Favourite Game, and found it ... well... a bit difficult in places. Brilliantly written, though. The way he uses words is very effective, and all his own.

I am now reading Beautiful Losers. I've got to page 78. I can't read it all in one go, as I did with The Favourite Game; I have to keep coming up for air, because I feel as though I'm suffocating. It's taken me three or four determined efforts to get so far as I have. I'm having another break at the moment (reading Terry Pratchett), before going on.

The subject matter is the most difficult I have ever read. But the way it is written is compelling. He draws you down into nightmare and rubs your face in human baseness and anguish. I know of no other writer who spreads his soul all over the page like that.

He does it in his music lyrics and poetry as well. He seems to hold nothing back.

We all have bits of ourselves we want to hide, to be ashamed of, to avoid admitting to.

Cohen doesn't.

I like your critic Fljotsdale!

I just have a reserve with your two last sentences. The novel is written using the narrator as a lense the lector is seing through, but the narrator, this is not the author.

YorYourSmile, here I am for the suite of the follow-up. I was thinking about it, you know, after all, classic History books are somtimes more a roman than BL

This said whitout any intention of beginning a war, I want to stress to you that Spanish colonialism was much more rough, tough, wathever, than French colonialism (even though colonialism is never "innocent", the French, they wanted more to "civilized" the population than to exploit them - anyway hell is paved of good intentions, we know this). First. Second, there was "indians" and "indians". Some tribes were soft people, like for example this tribe of this island, let remimber me the names, that Spaniards used as slaves in mines in a somewhat cruel manner that they died of working, and there was "indians", like the Aztecs which had nothing to with soft or smooth. As everybody knows. The Iroquois were more the kind of "indians" like Aztecs. They were fiery warriors.

Now two other links for you, to illustrate this last concept I introduced to you, and the class is over.

About Jeanne Mance :

http://www.collectionscanada.ca/women/002026-410-e.html

On a film about Jeanne Mance :
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/women/002026-711-e.html

Now in regard of your opinion being more like Sept....

Once upon a time, great ideals were attached to the idea of Independance, now it is like just great money, a kind of Québec inc. which is left me cold as cold turkey, though I find it necessary to still have states, it facilitates gestion of ordinary life.

Hope both of you, Tom and you have nice vacation! Come back in shape too, FYS!

Tchoco wrote:Once upon a time, great ideals were attached to the idea of Independance, now it is like just great money, a kind of Québec inc. which is left me cold as cold turkey, though I find it necessary to still have states, it facilitates gestion of ordinary life.

.

Therein lies part of my 'metaphor' on BL re: Quebec and Aboriginals. The post-colonial misread as post-coital?? It had nothing to do with the literal, sexually graphic nature of this novel. My thinking was more along the lines of who F***ed who.

Not in the literal sense, of course.

Linda.