One of my Christmas presents this year was Leonard Cohen, The Mystical Roots of Genius, by Harry Freedman. I first fell in love with Leonard Cohen’s lyrics when I was in my late teens. To anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the Bible it is clear that Cohen has a far-reaching knowledge of scripture.
Hallelujah is perhaps Cohen’s best-known song and is a good example. The opening lines, Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord: reveal the Biblical imagery as coming from the story of David in the Old Testament. David, like Cohen is a musician, a lover, and a poet. In Hallelujah each of these themes is explored and our attention is drawn to the irreconcilable conflicts they present. The theme of David as lover, for example: Your faith was strong, but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof: draws on the part of the story where David sees Bathsheba; but also to a Talmudic legend in which David asks God to test him. As we know when God complies David fails the test, unable to control his sexual desire.
Cohen could never quite feel the divine love but he does recognize ‘a judgement that weighs everything we do…..and it is to this great judgement that I dedicate the next song, Hallelujah;’ he said at a concert in 1985. The final lines of the song Even though it all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of song With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah, make my heart sing and remind me not of judgement but of the love I have given and received and how that love, however painful, at times, outweighs all that goes wrong.
Wendy Quill
