I only heard this song very recently on a "Greatest Hits" album.
It epitomizes the "Jewishness" of Cohen in the melody, the instruments, and the lyrics. Some examples, "olive branch." "homeward dove," "Babylon," "curtains," "tent of shelter."
As sploogerella says it is indeed about getting married. And rather than being about a relationship that will not last it is the utter joy of a newly married man who wants to get it all, "the end" of love. It may well be that under the traditional Jewish system his marriage was arranged and he has before him now "when the witnesses are gone" so to speak, the opportunity to touch and explore and love his wife for the very first time. The curtains taht kept them aprt reminds me of the descriptiopn of the temple in Jerusalem that had a curtain that separated the Holy from the Most Holy and so, tonight as man and women they will go past the curtain taht kept them apart.
It is a song with electrifying love latent in it, the wonder and expectation of a first time. And he is willing to love her and wants her to love him with no inhibitions, "like they do in Babylon." Another instance of the "Jewishness."
I guess Cohen wrote this much later in his career. But it proves also that he was a very sexually active man. This is not just a song of eager yearning, it is a song of experience.
I really hate to disillusion you, but this is NOT a love song, not like you're thinking anyway, this is - according to Leonard Cohen himself - a song about the holocaust. He first recorded it in 1984 on the album Various Positions. Don't take my word for it, do a search for "wiki dance me to the end of love". In the death camps they would force musicians to sit outside the crematoriums and play classical music as the musician's fellow prisoners were burned - that was where the inspiration for the song came from - it was not...
I really hate to disillusion you, but this is NOT a love song, not like you're thinking anyway, this is - according to Leonard Cohen himself - a song about the holocaust. He first recorded it in 1984 on the album Various Positions. Don't take my word for it, do a search for "wiki dance me to the end of love". In the death camps they would force musicians to sit outside the crematoriums and play classical music as the musician's fellow prisoners were burned - that was where the inspiration for the song came from - it was not getting married.
I only heard this song very recently on a "Greatest Hits" album.
It epitomizes the "Jewishness" of Cohen in the melody, the instruments, and the lyrics. Some examples, "olive branch." "homeward dove," "Babylon," "curtains," "tent of shelter."
As sploogerella says it is indeed about getting married. And rather than being about a relationship that will not last it is the utter joy of a newly married man who wants to get it all, "the end" of love. It may well be that under the traditional Jewish system his marriage was arranged and he has before him now "when the witnesses are gone" so to speak, the opportunity to touch and explore and love his wife for the very first time. The curtains taht kept them aprt reminds me of the descriptiopn of the temple in Jerusalem that had a curtain that separated the Holy from the Most Holy and so, tonight as man and women they will go past the curtain taht kept them apart.
It is a song with electrifying love latent in it, the wonder and expectation of a first time. And he is willing to love her and wants her to love him with no inhibitions, "like they do in Babylon." Another instance of the "Jewishness."
I guess Cohen wrote this much later in his career. But it proves also that he was a very sexually active man. This is not just a song of eager yearning, it is a song of experience.
I really hate to disillusion you, but this is NOT a love song, not like you're thinking anyway, this is - according to Leonard Cohen himself - a song about the holocaust. He first recorded it in 1984 on the album Various Positions. Don't take my word for it, do a search for "wiki dance me to the end of love". In the death camps they would force musicians to sit outside the crematoriums and play classical music as the musician's fellow prisoners were burned - that was where the inspiration for the song came from - it was not...
I really hate to disillusion you, but this is NOT a love song, not like you're thinking anyway, this is - according to Leonard Cohen himself - a song about the holocaust. He first recorded it in 1984 on the album Various Positions. Don't take my word for it, do a search for "wiki dance me to the end of love". In the death camps they would force musicians to sit outside the crematoriums and play classical music as the musician's fellow prisoners were burned - that was where the inspiration for the song came from - it was not getting married.