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Beautiful Losers:
Mohawk Myth and Jesuit Legend
By Leslie Monkman
The writer who incorporates in his work cultural traditions unfamiliar to his reader encounters special problems. Margaret Atwood notes that the writer who draws on the mythology of the Indian or Eskimo must often recount the myth itself before he "interprets or assimilates it to his own cultural experience".1 An examination of Leonard Cohen's solution to this kind of problem in Beautiful Losers provides a new perspective on the roles of the legendary martyr, Catherine Tekakwitha, and the Algonquin demi-god, Oscotarach the Head-Piercer.
The novel opens with a series of questions: "Catherine Tekakwitha, who are you? Are you (1656-1680)? Is that enough? Are you the Iroquois Virgin? Are you the Lily of the Shores of the Mohawk River? Can I love you in my own way?"2 Cohen's narrator, an anthropologist who has studied Catherine's history for years is now beginning to understand the significance of her martyrdom for his own life. In answering the questions which he poses at the beginning of the novel, he provides the details of Catherine's history which are crucial to the reader's understanding of the book. Catherine's history has been written by representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, and the interpretation of her significance in Beautiful Losers encompasses both an awareness of the traditional view of Catherine and an extreme reaction against this conventional perspective. Thus, the narrator asserts: "Catherine Tekakwitha. I have come to rescue you from the Jesuits" (p. 5).
An investigation of Cohen's sources indicates that almost all of the details of Catherine's life are taken from Edoward Lecompte's Une Vierge Iroquoise Catherine Tekakwitha: Le Lis des bords de la Mohawk et du St-Laurent (1656-1680). Through quotation, translation, and paraphrase, Cohen provides a full historical background for Catherine as seen by a Jesuit priest in 1927. The picture described on the first page of the novel matches detail by detail the portrait of Catherine which serves as frontispiece of Lecompte's book. Quotations ascribed to Fathers Cholonec, Chauchetière, and Remy are also restricted to citations appearing in this volume. A comparison of the account given of the Iroquois Confederation in Beautiful Losers with that given by Lecompte can only suggest the extent to which Cohen has relied on the Jesuit's biography:
The Iroquois was a confederation of five tribes situated between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Going from east to west we have the Agniers (whom the English call Mohawks), the Onneyouts, the Onnontagués, the Goyoqouins (or Goyogouins), and the Tsonnontouans. The Mohawks (whom the French called Agniers) occupied a territory between the upper reaches of the Hudson River, Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the Richelieu River (first called the Iroquois River). Catherine Tekakwitha was a Mohawk, born 1656.
Ils formaient une vaste confederation qui comprenait cinq nations ou tribus, situées entre la rivière Hudson et le lac Erié. Allant de l'Est à l'Quest, on avait d'abord les Agniers, puis les Onneyouts, les Onnontagues, les Goyogouins et les Tsonnontouans.
Le canton des Agniers se trouvait ainsi le plus rapproché de l'Hudson, du lac George, du lac Champlain et du Richelieu (appelé d'abord rivière des Iroquois). C'est dans ce canton que naîtra Catherine Tekakwitha.3 |
Leslie Fiedler, Desmond Pacey, and others have discussed Cohen's unique interpretation of Catherine's history extensively; my purpose is to point out his reliance on Lecompte as a source for the extensive details of the life of the "Lily of the Mohawks" which makes his own interpretation intelligible to the reader.
The importance of Oscotarch's role in Beautiful Losers is less immediately obvious than Catherine's significance, perhaps because his role can be so easily subsumed into the primitivistic perspective which pervades the novel. While recognizing the elements of what Lovejoy has termed "hard primitivism" in his treatment of the savagery and rigorous living conditions of the Iroquois, Cohen's narrator still calls for Fifth Avenue "to remember its Indian trails" (p. 20) and complains that Catherine's successors have forgotten how to build birchbark canoes. The particular element of Indian culture to which Cohen gives greatest emphasis is the Indian's recognition of his place in an eternal cosmic order -- an awareness which distinguishes him from the representatives of white civilization. Catherine Tekakwitha's uncle reminds the Jesuit who is hurriedly trying to convert him before he dies: "There is much time, Black Robe. If you and I should talk until the weasel befriends the rabbit, we would not break the rope of days" (p. 112). The failure of whites to recognize the implicit continuum of "the rope of days" is attacked by F. in his diatribe against connections where he invokes a parallel image of a unique necklace:
| All the disparates of the world...my needle pierces it all, and I myself, my greedy fantasies, everything which has existed and does exist, we are part of a necklace of incomparable beauty and unmeaning. Connect nothing: F. shouted. Place things side by side on your arborite table, if you must, but connect nothing (p. 17) |
The piercing needle which F. invokes links him to Oscotarach, the Mohawk head-piercer, and de-rationalizing agent of the primitive culture which the protagonist finds so superior to the rationlist materialism of the twentieth century.
Yet Oscotarach's importance extends beyond these anti-rationalist associations, for the path which Cohen's protagonist follows in order to achieve ultimate fusion with the cosmic rhythms is closely identified with the path which the Mohawk follows to the "External Hunt", the path which terminates at Oscotarach's hut.
Cohen's concern that the reader recall the stages of the Indian's pilgrimage to the "Eternal Hunt" is demonstrated by the recounting of this myth on two different occasions. First, Catherine's uncle anticipates his own death in describing the journey which he must take and later F. re-tells the story in almost identical terms:
| The Indians believed that after physical death the spirit made a long journey heavenward. It was a hard, dangerous journey, and many did not complete it. A treacherous river had to be crossed on a log which bounced through wild rapids. A huge howling dog harrassed the traveler. There was a narrow path between dancing bounlders which crashed together, pulverizing the pilgrim who could not dance with them. The Hurons believed that there was a bark hut beside this path. Here lived Oscotarach, meaning the Head-Piercer. It was his function to remove the brains from the skulls of all who went by, 'as a necessary preparation for immortality' (pp. 183-4).4 |
F. insists on the link between Oscotarach and himself: "Ask yourself. Perhaps the treehouse where you suffer is the hut of Oscotarach...Was I your Oscotarach? I pray that I was. The surgery is deep in progress" (p. 184).
The first stage of the Indian pilgrim's journey to the Eternal Hunt is to cross a hazardous river by balancing on a log; F.'s first lesson to the narrator also focuses on the problem of balance. This concept is integral to the book's definition of sainthood, for the saint is "someone who has achieved a remote human possibility...a kind of balance in the chaos of existence" (p. 95), and F. repeatedly denies the ineffectiveness of reason in achieving this balance. Cohen borrows from Lecompte's account of the derivation of the name "Iroquois" in order to illustrate the Indians' recognition of the limitations of reason. Lecompte explains:
| On sait que le nom Iroquois leur fut donné par les Français, parce que ces sauvages terminaient tous leur discours par le mot Hiro (j'ai dit), en ajoutant le mot Koué, cri de joie ou de tristesse, selon qu'il était prononcé long ou court.5 |
To a translation of this passage, Cohen's narrator adds:
| Thus each man took full responsibility for intruding into the inarticulate murmur of the spheres... Thus they essayed to pierce the mysterious curtain which hangs between all talking men...attempted to subvert the beguiling intellect with the noise of true emotion (pp. 7-8). |
F. asserts that he and Edith transcended the boundaries of rational communication through the Telephone Dance and achieved fusion with "ordinary eternal machinery" (p. 33). Yet, if F. and Edith try to reach this state through repeated sexual exploitation of the body, Catherine reaches the same end through mortification of the flesh when on her death-bed, she too hears "ordinary eternal machinery" (p. 204). These alternatives are fused in the imagery of the Mohawk's journey as the narrator recalls Edith's attempt to subvert his reliance on rationality by painting herself in red greasepaint and inviting him to join her in becoming "other people".
| Perhaps she meant: Come on a new journey with me, a journey only strangers can take and we can remember it when we are ourselves again and therefore never be merely ourselves again. Perhaps she had some landscape in mind where she always meant to travel, just as I envisage a northern river, a night as clean and bright as river pebbles for my supreme trip with Catherine Tekakwitha (pp. 14-15). |
While Edith lived, the narrator rejected the super-world affirmed by her, but now, guided by F., he recognizes the significance of any attempt to escape the bonds of rationally directed behavior. Like the Indian pilgrim, he understands the importance of balance, and he can now proceed to the next stage of his journey.
Contact with the super-world cannot be achieved without effort and determination. As a boy, F. was frustrated by the narrator's lack of perseverance in the body-building programme of Charles Axis. The comic book advertisement promises immunity to beach bullies through only fifteen minutes of exercise each day and Cohen's narrator must learn to oppose the threats assaulting him in his world just as the Indian pilgrim must withstand the harassment of a howling dog biting at her heels.
F. explains that the achievements of Charles Axis and his devotees are not to be confused with actual entrance into the super-world:
| Charles Axis wants to be our uncle. He is one of us slobs who dwells pages behind Plastic Man. But can't you see that he has made his peace with Plastic Man? With Blue Beetle? With Captain Marvel? Can't you see that he believes in the super-world? (p. 72) |
Although he stands "at the sad edge of the spirit world" (p. 72), Axis nevertheless functions in F.'s words as an embodiment of "the triumph of election over discipline" (p. 160). In his letter, F. recalls his realization that he, like Axis, could never become the New Jew: "I was the Moses of our little exodus. I would never cross" (p. 167). Instead, he escapes from the hospital with Mary Voolnd only to hear of her mutilation by savage police dogs which pursue them just as the Mohawk pilgrim is pursued.
The narrator has lacked the determination to follow the programme which F. advocates and years later he acknowledges his failure:
| Yes, Yes I confess. I wanted miracles! I didn't want to climb to success on a ladder of coupons! I wanted to wake up suddenly with X-ray vision. I confess (p. 116). |
F. tells the narrator that he has waited a long time for the confession, and when he is asked to explain his smile, he replies: "I'm smiling because I think I've taught you enough" (p. 117).
Walking "through the narrow harbour streets of Montreal", just as the pilgrim follows a narrow path to his third test, the narrator and F. reach the Québec-libre demonstration where, like the pilgrim dancing with the boulders which surround him, the narrator stands amidst "the crowd of which I was now a joyful particle" (p. 119). Political and sexual frenzy fuse as the narrator stops functioning as a detached individual and becomes part of the seething mass which surrounds him. We recall F.'s necklace "of uncomparable beauty and unmeaning" (p. 17) as the narrator sees the crowd "all bound in the sweetest bursting daisy chain" (p. 121). The narrator's loss of rational self-consciousness leads F. to comment that he has passed:
Passed what?
The test?
What test?
The second to last test. (p. 123) |
Having successfully passed through the various stages of the journey the narrator reaches F.'s tree house just as the Indian spirit reaches Oscotarach's bark hut. The pilgrim must have his brain removed before entering the world of the Eternal Hunt, and the narrator observes that his brain is "ruined" (p. 96).
In the System Theatre, the narrator can enter the "Magic" world for the first time. As his eyes blink at the same speed as the shutter in the projector, he fuses with the magic world of film and its idols, and just as stars like Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark are transformed by the magic of film he too will undergo a transformation:
| The old man commenced his remarkable performance... Suffice it to say, he disintegrated slowly...he dissolved from the inside out... His presence had not completely disappeared when he began to reassemble himself... His presence was like the shape of an hourglass, strongest where it was smallest... That is the beautiful waist of the hourglass! That is the point of Clear light (p. 241) |
The "Eternal Hunt" of the old man is over as he frees himself from the bonds of mind and body in a fusion with "the Magic length of God" (p. 158).
In one of the first reviews of the novel. E.B. Gose says:
| Cohen seems to be saying that Western institutions have ruined man's relation to nature, the universe and God; at the same time he leaves room for the individual somehow to triumph over the faulty patterns for living charted by our culture.6 |
What has not been recognized is that Cohen offers both a new pattern for living and an organizing structure for his novel in the myth of Oscotarach.
In the conclusion to the novel, Cohen's narrator asserts that "the end of this book has been rented to the Jesuits" (p. 242), and he quotes the concluding paragraphs of Lecompte's book in which the case for Catherine's beautification is made. Having paid this ironic tribute to the Jesuits, the shifting narrator returns to the image of the pilgrimage to end the novel:
| Welcome to you who read me today. Welcome to you who put my heart down. Welcome to you, darling and friend, who miss me forever in your trip to the end (p. 243) |
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1 Margaret Atwood, Survival (Toronto: Anansi, 1972), p. 103.
2 Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1966), p. 3. All future citations from the novel will be taken from this edition: page numbers will be enclosed in parentheses and inserted in the text.
3 Edouard Lecompte, S.J., Une Vierge Iroquoise: Catherine Tekakwitha (Montreal: Imprimerie du Messager, 1927), p. 12.
4 Although Cohen acknowledges a source at the end of this passage, he does not identify it; the reference is to Francis Parkman's The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, II (Toronto: George N. Morang and Co., Ltd., 1906), p. 78.
...The Hurons believed that a personnage named Oscotarach, or the Head-Piercer, dwelt in a bark house beside the path, and that it was his office to remove the brains from the heads of all who went by as a necessary preparation for immortality.
5 Lecompte, Catherine Tekakwitha, p. 11.
6 E. B. Gose, "Of Beauty and Unmeaning", Canadian Literature, XXIX (Summer, 1966), p. 63.
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