Leonard Cohen nejznámější citáty
„Vypustit do povětří píseň a mít ji tam celých dvacet let - to je úžasná věc.“
při předávání cen Juno 1991
Zdroj: [Nadel, Ira, 1995, Leonard Cohen - Život v umění, Votobia, 103, 80-85885-57-3]
Leonard Cohen citáty a výroky
„Když se pořádně podíváte na moje protiválečné písně, zjistíte, že jsou zároveň i protimírové.“
Zdroj: Pozoruhodný život, s. 219
1992
Zdroj: [Reynolds, Anthony, Leonard Cohen: Pozoruhodný život, Mladá fronta, Praha, 2012, 256, Klára Kolinská a Miroslav Jindra, 978-80-204-2400-6, 15, dále jen „Pozoruhodný život“]
Leonard Cohen: Citáty anglicky
“I see you standing on the other side.
I don't know how the river got so wide.”
" Tower Of Song http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/leonard+cohen/tower+of+song_20082815.html" - Tower of Song with U2, Video http://vimeo.com/13286028
I'm Your Man (1988)
Kontext: p>I see you standing on the other side.
I don't know how the river got so wide.
I loved you, baby, way back when.
And all the bridges are burning that
We might have crossed and I feel so close to everything that we've lost.
We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again.Now I bid You farewell, I don't when I'll be back.
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track.
But you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone.
I'll speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower Of Song</p
"Hallelujah"
Various Positions (1984)
Kontext: You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
“Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.”
"Sisters of Mercy"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Kontext: Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.
"The Stranger Song"
Alludes to the dealer in Nelson Algren's 1949 novel The Man with the Golden Arm.
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Kontext: O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbow to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
"Hallelujah" - 1984 performance http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rwo0_leonard-cohen-hallelujah_music · Montreal Jazz Festival 2008 performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FpwjQLZTTs
Various Positions (1984)
Kontext: Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
“I have no program, I have no five-year plan.”
Introducing "Chelsea Hotel #2"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Kontext: I have no program, I have no five-year plan. … It doesn’t mean that you shouldn't have one! I just move from hotel to hotel, and from bar to bar, and by the grace of the One above occasionally a song comes, and I remember sitting at this particularly obnoxious Polynesian restaurant where they served a kind of coconut drink that was particularly lethal and sinister which contained no alcohol but a certain chemical that demoralized you entirely. And I remember writing on one of their very badly designed napkins, "I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel..." so I dedicate this song to one of the great singers, Janis Joplin.
“When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can.”
"Story of Isaac"
Songs from a Room (1969)
Kontext: When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can.
“Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”
"Leonard Cohen Penned Letter to 'So Long, Marianne' Muse Before Her Death" by Daniel Kreps, in Rolling Stone (7 August 2016) http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/leonard-cohen-pens-final-letter-to-so-long-marianne-muse-w433144
Kontext: Well Marianne it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. … And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.
“I guess you go for nothing
if you really want to go that far.”
"Death of a Ladies' Man" (1977)
Other Lyrics
Kontext: So the great affair is over
but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant
and so deeply unimpressed.
It's like our visit to the moon
or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing
if you really want to go that far.
“I know there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do.”
Introducing "Hallelujah"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Kontext: I know there is an eye that watches all of us. There is a judgment that weighs everything we do. And before this great force, which is greater than any government I stand in awe and I kneel in respect and it is to this great judgment that I dedicate this next song, "Hallelujah".
"Half the Perfect World" (2006) (co-written with Anjani)
Other Lyrics
Kontext: The candles burned
The moon went down
The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love's unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found.
Introducing "Who by Fire"
Warsaw concert (1985)
Kontext: I come from a country where we do not have the same struggles as you have. I respect your struggles. And it may surprise you, but I respect both sides of this struggle. It seems to be that in Europe there needs to be a left foot and a right foot to move forward. I wish that both feet move forward and the body moves towards its proper destiny. This is an intense country; the people are heroic, the spirit is independent. It is a difficult country to govern, it needs a strong government and a strong union. … I would like to say to you, to the leaders of the left, and the leaders of the right, I sing... I sing for everyone. My song has no flag, my song has no party. And I say the prayer, that we said in our synagogue, I say it for the leader of your union and the leader of your party. May the Lord put a spirit, a wisdom and understanding into the hearts of your leaders and into the hearts of all their counsellors.
Beautiful Losers (1966)
Kontext: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
As quoted in "The Joking Troubadour of Gloom" in The Daily Telegraph (26 April 1993) http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/feb93.htm
Kontext: I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around. I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. … I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I've always been free from hope. It's never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful..... I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.
“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”
Zdroj: Beautiful Losers
“Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.”
Zdroj: Selected Poems 1956-1968
“Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”
Zdroj: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs
“The sweetest little song:
You go your way
I'll go your way too!”
Varianta: You go your way
I'll go your way too
Zdroj: Book of Longing
“At first first nothing will happen to us
and later on
it will happen to us again.”
Varianta: first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again
Zdroj: Book of Longing
