submissions
| Leonard Cohen – One of Us Cannot Be Wrong Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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The first verse refers to voodoo. Cohen was into candles and spells during the 1960's, and the context suggests that he hopes to force the lover to return to him by lighting a green candle for jealousy. "Green" is always associated with envy, and "jealousy candles" could once be found on Beale Street and probably in Black communities across the South. "The dust of a long sleepless night" is very poetic, but putting it in the lover's shoe further increases the "hexing" imagery, and "torturing the dress" vaguely sounds like sticking pins in a voodoo doll in the hopes that it would cause physical suffering or induce the lover to return. The second verse refers to a "doctor", who as the story unfolds has clearly been in love with the same lover as the narrator, presumably Cohen. The verse shows remarkable points of similarity with Bob Dylan's "Leopard-Skinned Pill-Box Hat" in which a doctor tells the narrator that seeing the lover is bad for his health, analogous to "he said I'd just have to quit." The third verse refers to a saint that had loved you, and studying in his school. Cohen was interested in religious retreats, studies and monastic orders most of his life, and the verse clearly uses imagery from this, imagery that seems drawn more from Zen Buddhism or Hinduism than Catholicism, from which the concept of "saint" arises. All the verses seem to collectively be a roundabout put-down of a woman who has hurt the narrator deeply- he mentions his own hurt that she caused, describes how she ended a physician's career after an affair, how the "saint" killed himself on her account, and how the Eskimo "couldn't get warm" after the "wind took her clothes" (perhaps a reference to infidelity, although couched in terms that remind one of Hiawatha's conception by the west wind). Still, somewhat helplessly, Cohen yearns to be allowed "into the storm." Even knowing what this woman does to men, he wants her. |
submissions
| Leonard Cohen – The Old Revolution Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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Much about this song is speculative, but it was written around 1968-1969, shortly after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and during the high point of the Vietnam War. I have often thought of "The Old Revolution" as a reference to the Civil Rights Movement, with the "ghost" being John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and the "King" being MLK. Of course, it was also possible that MLK was both the "ghost" and "king" to which Cohen referred. Cohen "thought that we were winning", but his hopes were dashed by the Vietnam War..."I can't pretend I feel very much like singing, as they carried the bodies away." On the other hand, the repeated chorus has always confused me. Clearly there is a reference to Israel's history in the reference to the furnace. The Bible records Daniel's three friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being thrown into a fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar, and Jewish tradition claims that the same happened to Abraham, thrown into a furnace by Nimrod for espousing monotheism. It could be that the chorus is a prayer, in which Cohen (a priest) is invoking the "fourth man", the Son of the gods, to venture into the furnace and rescue the Hebrew children, You (the Messiah) "whom I cannot betray." |
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