A brief history of the fruitful career of the Canadian poet, songwriter, musician and novelist Leonard Cohen, his influence on generations of young writers.
What is there left to say about Leonard Cohen?
We know everything about him. Some say he is a living legend. If you Google his name you will be presented with an overwhelming amount of information about Leonard Cohen; a prominent literary figure, Leonard Cohen a poet, Leonard Cohen a songwriter and Leonard Cohen a musician, a Jew and a Buddhist.
A Short Biography of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen was born on September 21, 1934, in Westmount, Quebec, Canada, into a middle-class Jewish family. His father, Nathan Cohen, owned a clothing store but died when Leonard was only nine years old, leaving a deep impact on him. His mother, Masha, nurtured his love of literature and music.
As a teenager, Cohen learned to play guitar and formed a folk group called The Buckskin Boys. His early influences came from traditional folk, country, and Spanish music, but also from literature, especially the works of Federico García Lorca and poets like W. B. Yeats.
Cohen studied English literature at McGill University in Montreal, where he began publishing poetry. His first book of poems, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), marked the beginning of his literary career.
He later published several acclaimed poetry collections, including The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), which made him well known in Canadian literary circles. In the 1960s, he also wrote novels such as The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), both of which gained cult status for their daring style and themes of love, religion, and politics.
The best biography about Leonard Cohen, perhaps, we can find on his official website where one can learn in the first few sentences:
For four decades, Leonard Cohen has been one of the most important and influential songwriters of our time, a figure whose body of work achieves greater depths of mystery and meaning as time goes on. His songs have set a virtually unmatched standard in their seriousness and range…
His work has been listed from his early days as a young poet, novelist and a songwriter until today.
Part of the reason why Cohen’s early work revealed such a high degree of achievement is that he was an accomplished literary figure before he ever began to record. His collections of poetry, including Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) and Flowers for Hitler (1964), and his novels, including The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), had already brought him considerable recognition.
Music Career
Though already an established writer, Cohen turned to music in the mid-1960s, believing it offered a broader audience. In 1967, he released his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, which included classics like Suzanne and So Long, Marianne. His deep, gravelly voice and poetic lyrics set him apart from other folk artists of the era.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Cohen released influential albums such as:
- Songs of Love and Hate (1971)
- New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974)
- I’m Your Man (1988), which redefined his sound with synthesizers and gave hits like First We Take Manhattan and Everybody Knows
Cohen’s work is known for its exploration of:
- Love and Desire – often conflicted, spiritual, and sensual.
- Religion and Spirituality – he drew on Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist imagery.
- Politics and Society – subtle reflections on war, injustice, and human struggle.
His ability to blend poetry with melody made his songs resonate deeply, even if they weren’t always chart-topping hits.
In the 1990s, Cohen retreated to the Mount Baldy Zen Center in California, where he lived as a monk for several years. He returned to music in the early 2000s, especially after discovering that his former manager had misappropriated much of his fortune.
This financial setback led him to tour extensively again. His comeback was triumphant, with albums such as:
- Ten New Songs (2001)
- Old Ideas (2012)
- You Want It Darker (2016), released shortly before his death
Awards
Throughout his career, Cohen received numerous honors:
- Companion of the Order of Canada (the country’s highest civilian honor)
- Induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- A Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010
Personal Life
Cohen never married but had long-term relationships with women who inspired some of his most famous songs:
- Marianne Ihlen, his muse behind So Long, Marianne
- Suzanne Verdal, who inspired Suzanne
He had two children, Adam Cohen (a musician) and Lorca Cohen (a photographer and filmmaker), with artist Suzanne Elrod.
Cohen struggled with depression for much of his life, often channeling it into his art. He also embraced spirituality deeply, moving between Judaism, Christianity, and Zen Buddhism.
Death
Leonard Cohen passed away on November 7, 2016, in Los Angeles, at the age of 82. His death came just weeks after the release of You Want It Darker, an album many considered his farewell.
He left behind an immense legacy as a poet, songwriter, and cultural icon. Songs like Hallelujah, Bird on the Wire, and Dance Me to the End of Love continue to inspire generations.
A Personal Note
What I want to write about is an impact Leonard Cohen had on me, and ‘me’ here represents generations of young souls trapped immediately by the beauty, honesty and mystery of his poetry and his unique persona.
Our meeting was never arranged; not that I went to the record shop and bought one of his long play records in the mid seventies. In the mid seventies I was a young girl troubled by puberty and some sort of unnamed glum.
I remember that magic moment still vividly: I was standing on the balcony of my parental home overlooking the Adriatic Sea when I heard the first few chords. They were as gentle as a feather but the sharp point of that feather pierced through my heart then and there infecting me with some strange kind of love for melancholy.
A few more chords and I was almost paralyzed. Then I heard that deep husky voice. My Lord! I couldn’t move – I was mesmerized by the voice of a man who, I would learn later, would be characterized by his critics as “the poet laureate of pessimism,” “the grocer of despair,” and “the godfather of gloom.”
At that time English was a compulsory subject at school, but to be honest, all what I had understood was only that he was singing about a woman called Susanne. I wished I was Susanne, knowing nothing about him yet, nothing about Susanne, and nothing at all about his ‘pessimistic’ music.
But that song was enough for the beginning of a longstanding love affair between me and Leonard Cohen’s music and his poetry.
When the song about woman called Susanne had finished, I found myself dumbstruck. Honestly, it made a major impact on me. When that first feeling passed, I was in panic – who was this singer and how was I going to find out?
I rang the radio station and asked who sang the song about the woman called Susanne.
Leonard Cohen, I was told.
How do you spell it?
Back then we hadn’t had the luxury of finding information in a few seconds by googling it. Straight away upon hearing his name, I went downtown to the record shop and asked if they had any Leonard Cohen’s records, emphasizing that I was particularly keen to get the one about a woman called Susanne.
So, I got it. And it played on and on and on… I’d never stopped listening to it. That very same day I learned the lyrics off by heart, and again back to plain honesty, three quarters of the lyrics I didn’t understand.
I called my friends to come to help me figure out the words. Who was Susanne? She feeds him teas and oranges that came all the way from China? Wow! I had never heard about someone feeding one with teas and oranges…
I wanted more of his songs and lyrics and started obsessively to ‘follow’ him. Those were times before handy social websites, so to follow your idol was really a mighty task… especially to follow him across the oceans. But I navigated well.
I had bought all of his records and had learned all of his songs off by heart. I started to interpret life through his verses and decorated my room with all of his smiles he had ever managed.
Leonard Cohen and My Life
When my heart was broken, I had – Leonard Cohen…
…you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me, it’s just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea…
When I was about to break someone’s heart, it rang within me…
…show me slowly what I only know the limits of, dance me to the end of love…
When it was cold and rainy and everybody hid themselves in their homes, I wasn’t alone… I had over me that famous blue raincoat as some sort of refuge for my inner restlessness…
…yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes…
… and the story goes on and on.
I grew up. I learned English well enough to understand all of his songs without the need to translate them.
I was sitting in a friend’s café, it was one of the most difficult days in my adult life, just a few days after my marriage sadly ended and I heard him singing “I’m your man.”
I left the coffee on the table and a puzzled friend but took the song with me and hummed it on the way to the car.
In the car I pulled out one of his CD’s (which replaced my LP’s a long time ago), I put it on and felt as if I was not alone… he said he was ‘my man’… and after all, we had already been together some thirty years.
A long time ago I started to call him Leo. It looked to me that he knew all of human pains as if he had been there, somehow before us. He was ‘a little Jew who wrote the Bible’.
I came home and my daughter was playing the piano, she asked me to listen. She mastered “Hallelujah”… she said it was Jeff Buckley’s song.
I said that it was Leo’s song, she was so surprised that the song was ‘that old?’ and I said “Hallelujah!”
2008 was a landmark year for Leonard Cohen. It marked his return to the live stage. After a five-year period in a Zen Buddhist monastery, ‘a little Jew who wrote the Bible’ was back on the road.
He travelled across the world, delivering three-hour concerts to sold-out audiences who offered standing ovations to the poet with over 40 years worth of repertoire.
In 2009 it was my daughter who asked me if I knew who was coming to Sydney.
I didn’t want to buy my ticket online. I am an old school woman, one’s never sure with those electronic purchases. I went downtown.
It was Monday, the first day for tickets sale. Ticketmaster opens at 9 am. I was there much earlier, and honestly, I was the first in the queue to buy the ticket.
If I was ever the first in anything I was the first in buying that ticket for Leo’s concert at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney.
For a few months the ticket was waiting in an honorary place in my house. I never wanted to tell any of my friends that I was going to the concert. They might have asked to join me and to that I would never have agreed.
It was me and him all those years, so I wouldn’t want to share our intangible communication… the one only I understood all those years as if he had written his poetry to suit my soul.
The Entertainment Centre was full of ‘oldies’ in slightly odd clothes and relics. Surprisingly there were a number of young people too.
I was so excited about the event, I felt young again; stopped being a mother for a while, a bread-winner, a house-maker, a writer… I was just free to take Susanne’s hand to lead me down to her place near the river and through the alleys of my youth in the inner chambers of my memory.
On that evening he was 70 plus I was 40 plus. But feeling-wise nothing has changed. They said that some men are like a good wine – they get better with age.
Leonard Cohen: A Stranger or a Buddhist?
Neatly, regularly I bought everything what was there on offer: T-shirts and posters of different sizes. While I am writing this article, he is smiling at me: impeccably dressed as he always is (an old school gentleman) in his dark suit and a hat, leaning onto his guitar where it is written across ‘Stranger.’
…And then taking from his wallet an old schedule of trains, he’ll say I told you when I came I was a stranger…
He was never a stranger to me, I always felt a friend was with me when I’d put his music on.
How many stories intervened, how many pictures and vignettes painted while listening… he takes me back, he lifts me up, he takes me forward… and dances me to the end of (every) love.
Because of Leonard Cohen I found good friends in my youth. We would recognize each other by some invisible yet tangible signs. A secret brotherhood.
