The Traitor

Well I guess, it is fundamentally positive, and for a long time I just amaze myself at the beauty of the methaphore, the idea of the world as a stage, as the scene of a quest, in which the spectators are the judges as well, then i heard Leonard Cohen's explaantion of the line of thought that made him write the poem. It goes like this:

“It was called “The traitor”. It was about the feeling that we have of betraying some mission that we were mandated to fulfill, and being unable to fulfill it, and then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it, and that the deeper courage was to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself”. It talks about the unvoidable predicament of failure from without, and the only right posture when one's faced with a situation in which one cannot but fail: standing guiltless, in the predicament in which you find yourself. I think that is positive: not blaming yourself for outcomes of which you could not fully control.

As Leonard Cohen said himself, "'The Traitor' was about the feeling that we have of betraying some mission that we were mandated to fulfill, and being unable to fulfill it, and then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it, and that the deeper courage was to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself”.

The whole idea that we have a mission in life to fulfill implies a belief that life is not random. We have a destiny that we act out with certain people who come into our lives. When we encounter them, there is a kind of connection that we do not have with other random people. We know them, and they know us. Some of these can be romantic connections, such as the one the song describes. These connections have a strange kind of magical energy to them when they happen. When you meet someone that you have this kind of connection with, you may be inclined to think that you will spend the rest of your life with them. You even have a powerful inner sense that guides or “judges” from the “Other Side”, the unseen spirit world, have brought you together to fulfill some kind of life purpose. This might sound like a fantasy to a skeptic, but, to people who experience this kind of thing directly and personally, it is real as anything.

Unfortunately, something often makes these connections problematic over the course of time. One of the people involved ends up betraying the other in some way. Karma gets in the way.

It can be painful to be the person who ends up being let down. But, as this song illustrates, it can also be painful and difficult to be the person who ends up letting the other down. In this case, L.C. talks about a woman who trusts and needs him, but he finds himself unable to stay. Because she needs him, he stays longer than he would have, feeling guilt at the prospect of abandoning her. But, though he stays on, his heart is simply no longer in it. He goes through the motions in a way that seems mechanical, and she, of course, comes to realize it. Eventually she herself withdraws from the situation emotionally. The whole thing becomes empty, a tragic dead end.

As the story goes, Leonard Cohen found himself in situations like this a number of times in his life. When it happened, he would eventually leave the woman he was with for someone else in an abrupt way. People blamed him for his inability to stay or to commit in a relationship. There may have been reason to think that he was at fault in a number of ways. But, as this song illustrates in an exceptionally insightful, poetic way, there is another side to the story.

1. It seems to be about a man settling for someone who is not right for him rather than what his heart desires. He becomes an enemy of love, The Men of Action Falling back is the man too weak to take action and leave, following his heart. He has a relationship of physical love but not real love. He is a traitor to himself.

The rose is the womans genitals, the swan would be his. The line "run some wire through the rose and wind the swan" would be the woman asking him to have sex with her. He daily performs his "idle duty" but he doesn't love her. He has become an "enemy of love" for betraying his true love.

Damb, aint any Cohen song remotley happy?

And long ago she said "I must be leaving, Ah but keep my body here to lie upon You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping Run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan"

God what a punishment ( the cruelty of the victim is almost far more than of the criminal) He betrayed her , she doesn’t love him no more but she keeps her body for him to have sex with while her soul is somewhere else ...

What the Traitor has betrayed is the ideal of love. His 'scarlet fever' is lust, but when it is satisfied by 'lingering on her thighs', the Traitor is shamed. He recognises that other young men go off to battle without high ideals and they too become 'the enemies of love'. Lovely metaphors - great Leonard Cohen.

Please, note parallels with famous 'O Rose Thou Art Sick' by William Blake, with specific reference to Englishness to remove further doubts. This is widened reinterpretation of the famous poem from the worm's point of view.

O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.