Ein poetischer Prophet: »There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.«
Photo: dpa
The quality of his texts, its beautiful and touching melodies – a lot of Leonard Cohen is still enthusiastic. But not this almost toneless grate, crackle, cough, cough, the Cohen’s singing is. Now the cultural scientist Caspar Battegay, who teaches in Switzerland, is putting Cohen’s voice at the center of a book. Battegay is a confessed fan of the Canadian songwriter, who died in 2016, is also annoyed by his mannerisms. He sees the women’s pictures drawn in some Cohen songs as abundant male fantasies.
The tone is completely different when it comes to the song “Story of Isaac”. In it, Cohen picks up the Old Testament narrative in which Abraham is asked by God to provide him with his firstborn son Isaac as a victim. Unlike in the Bible, the son raises his voice near Cohen, opposes the command. Since “Story of Isaac” was released in those legendary sixties when the youth in many western countries voted revolutionary and pop culture had come into the so -called politics, this song is often grasped as a protest song. As a reminder in the direction of the old men at the “High Places” of society: If you continue to sacrifice young people for your power and business interests, you will pay expensive for it.
This interpretation is not wrong, says Battegay, but falls short. “Story of Isaac” is a song full of literary covers, ambiguous, difficult to decrypt. Among other things, Cohen is about making it clear how schematically and brutally simplifying the language of politics and the public. With this and other songs, the singer counter his nuanced language of poetry. And here Leonard Cohen’s voice comes into play. It is anything but perfect, but it is very own not to bring in line; the voice of an individual. And as such, it can make it sound what to embezzle, displace, to extinguish in the world of the smooth and harmonious: the real with all its facets. The fact that Cohen’s voice can express what else would not happen makes a technical non -known like him a famous singer.
The highlight of Battegay’s study is the chapter on the 90s. That was the time when the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union, was just imploding, the “Cold War” had ended. A attitude characterized by the spirit of optimism and optimism took many people. But not Leonard Cohen, who sang on his album “The Future” published in 1992, we would soon be looking back after the time of the Cold War; He, the singer, saw the future and she was filled with crises and bloody disasters.
Cohen’s voice cannot be brought in line, the voice of an individual.
Attachments like this – also and especially in pop culture – have often glued the label “Culture Pessimism” and dismissed them knowledgeable. Battegay, however, points out how much Cohen’s view of “The Future” is similar to that of the philosopher Walter Benjamin. In 1940, when the National Socialist Germany conquered large parts of Europe and treading people like him after his life, Benjamin had criticized the optimistic belief in progress as blind in his last writing. Both Walter Benjamin and Leonard Cohen come from Jewish families. Cohen’s both grandfathers held important positions in the Jewish community of Montreal. This origin, its lifelong examination with it, should be decisive reasons why episodes and shapes of biblical mythology play a major role in the texts of Cohens.
Like Walter Benjamin, Leonard Cohen doesn’t tell us what to think. As a member of Judaism, which has (and is) exposed to traumatizing violence again and again in the course of history, but both in their works always expect the worst, with the meanness and stupidity of people, with the abysses in and between them. Everything that has happened once can always happen.
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If you look back on the 90s from today, the history optimism, which was then largely represented by pop culture, proves to be a pure illusion, while Leonard Cohens was extremely clear. Of course there is also hope in Cohen’s work. But not in the form of the romantic postcard presentation that you make everywhere. Rather, hope is always seen in connection with the complicated conditions between people. What Leonard Cohen knows how to pour into a poetry that is broken and dazzling at the same time: “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Battegay shows what resonates when Cohen raises to sing on his albums. A terrific book that demonstrates how much pleasure can prepare for people with pop music, the focus of which is stubbornness, intellectuality and thoughtfulness.
Caspar Battegay: Leonard Cohens Stimme,
Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 144 pages, born € 22.
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