This Hour Has Seven Days: Leonard Cohen
CBC, May 1, 1966
Patrick Watson
Leonard Cohen is a Canadian poet and novelist and despite an air of frail vulnerability, he is a very confident young man. He's the author of a new novel called Beautiful Losers which many critics are respectfully rejecting. Cohen lives in Greece and comes home to Montreal only once or twice a year to quote "renew his neurotic affiliation with Canada." We meet him with Beryl Fox who attempts to define his personality to his face.
Beryl Fox
He's a very mild man who writes brutal startling poetry.
Leonard Cohen
I thought I was a very startling brutal man who wrote very mild lyrical poetry.
Beryl Fox
Don't you read your own publicity?
Leonard Cohen
Well, I read it but, I read it as, I read it as a mistake and I say here's another mistake.
Beryl Fox
Does your mother think that when she reads it?
Leonard Cohen
Oh my mother doesn't read it that way; my mother just reads it as a triumph.
Beryl Fox
Is it triumphant for her to read that her son's next novel is going to be troublesome to the censors.
Leonard Cohen
I think that, that could be construed a triumph in 1966.
Beryl Fox
What, that your mother accepts it?
[Both laugh]
Leonard Cohen
No, I don't think that anybody really considers the censor's opinion of your work definitive. The censor is in disrepute. The censor is having a hard time.
Beryl Fox
Because of guys like you?
Leonard Cohen
No, because people really are having more fun in an obvious kind of way. At least people are professing their appetites in a franker way, although they are probably not getting turned on very much. But anyhow, the society seems to be making a lot about orgasms and appetites and freedom so that one, by writing a pornographic novel, in a sense, you are forced into the role of a very minor hero.
Beryl Fox
I'm always curious to know what happens to the inner feelings of a writer or a poet when he takes this cry of suffering within him and puts its down on to paper and sees it on a thousand stands and know its going to go...
Leonard Cohen
Is this a straight question?
Beryl Fox
Yeah.
Leonard Cohen
Do you really –
Beryl Fox
Yeah.
Leonard Cohen
...do you really want to know?
Beryl Fox
...I really want to know.
Leonard Cohen
What its like?
Beryl Fox
Yeah, why they do it.
Leonard Cohen
I think the only reason why that particular activity is brought to light is because these kind of people leave evidence of their struggles. You know, other kinds of people don't leave that kind of evidence like brick builders, I mean brick layers. You know, you can't really read the anguish of the man's life in the wall but because of the nature of writing, the thing is made articulate.
Beryl Fox
What happens to your own personal anguish when you see it spread across the country and you know that you are making money on it.
Leonard Cohen
Well, I don't know if I am gonna make any money on it. [Laughs] I don't know if you can, if you can sell your anguish then you have probably done one of the best possible things you can do with anguish you know, anything you can do with anguish is good like Frank Sinatra said "I'm for anything that gets you through the night." Print is a minor form of invisibility. I think that if you really get good then you do disappear.
Beryl Fox
Have you ever thought of changing your name?
Leonard Cohen
Yeah, I was gonna change my name to September.
Beryl Fox
I beg your pardon? [Laughs]
Leonard Cohen
I was gonna change my name to September when I started writing songs and singing and...
Beryl Fox
Leonard September?
Leonard Cohen
No. September Cohen.
Beryl Fox
Oh... [Laughs] but Cohen is such a standard name.
Leonard Cohen
Yeah well, September is a pretty standard name too.
Beryl Fox
Not for a first name.
Leonard Cohen
No well, I thought that, you know, I always had this feeling that new things were beginning when I thought that I would change my name and get a tattoo.
Beryl Fox
Where?
Leonard Cohen
There's this place on St. Lawrence Boulevard. I don't have any plans. I mean it's just as well, you know, the Government, the country is just fine, society is just fine as it is just now without a Government.
Beryl Fox
[Laughs] There is a Government.
Leonard Cohen
In this country?
Beryl Fox
[Laughs]
Leonard Cohen
Well, I had the impression there wasn't a Government.
Beryl Fox
Well, where do get that impression from?
Leonard Cohen
Well, I mean I don't say this critically but I think that Canada is one of the few countries in an enviable position of having no Government. You know, it's simply something that nobody believes in. It operates and there are no repercussions.
Beryl Fox
Would you think that...
Leonard Cohen
Occasionally a dirty joke is told. You know, it's a stag party that you are happy you weren't invited to.
Beryl Fox
From what I know about you, you went to the usual schools and you got into law and decided that wasn't for you and then you went back for an MA and decided that was out. To drift, to go through the, all the motions and end up a poet, it seems that somewhere along the road you took a turn and made certain decisions for yourself that were off the main drag.
Leonard Cohen
Listen, I didn't end up a poet, you know. That isn't like err, that isn't the rest room. I wasn't looking for this. No this is just a kind of ID card that you've got to carry somehow because people are continually asking you for an ID card. But that is just err, I have often said this, I mean poetry is not an exclusive domain of writers or of poets and poetry is a verdict not a choice.
Beryl Fox
Critics have said that your love poetry has on occasion approached greatness and surely that can't come only out of yourself, it must come out of relationships with certain attitudes towards women.
Leonard Cohen
Yes, I never wrote an abstract poem. I mean, when I wrote something, I suppose it is called a love poem, it was written to somebody. And if I really think that the thing is good, then I can publish it because if its good enough it becomes anonymous. If its good enough, it really stands for the whole thing. Its not, it doesn't stand for her telephone number. You know a poem, a book of poems is not a black book, it's not an address book. I think that everybody who isn't in love should be divorced. You know, sometimes I go down the street and when I am not in a particularly liturgical mood blessing everything, I divorce everybody. I divorce everybody in all the houses and I see people, you know, bursting out of the front doors and running in different directions and I feel that I really, really cleaned up the streets.
Beryl Fox
By giving everyone their freedom?
Leonard Cohen
Just divorcing people. A lot of people wanna divorce.
Beryl Fox
When you talk about freedom what do you mean? For yourself?
Leonard Cohen
I never talk about it really. You brought it up.
Beryl Fox
Yeah, but you used it.
Leonard Cohen
Well, I used it out of courtesy.
Beryl Fox
Well now, explain what you mean out of courtesy.
Leonard Cohen
Well, I feel free when I am singing and I wish I was singing right now. [Laughs]
Beryl Fox
You can sing, it's your hour.
Leonard Cohen
I didn't bring my music. [Laughs]
Beryl Fox
[Laughs] Just listen to the sounds in your head.
Leonard Cohen
That's not music.
Beryl Fox
Do you make up your own songs.
Leonard Cohen
Umm.
Beryl Fox
On the spur?
Leonard Cohen
Well there gotta be a spur somewhere, its on some particular spur. I always thought of myself as a singer and kinda got sidetracked into literature.
Beryl Fox
Can you sing?
Leonard Cohen
Well I think that if the song is really good and its your own then what comes out is music.
Beryl Fox
Sing one for us.
Leonard Cohen
I couldn't, I couldn't make it.
Beryl Fox
Why? How do you know until you have had the experience?
Leonard Cohen
I couldn't.
Beryl Fox
I'm about to make you free.
Leonard Cohen
No you're about to turn...
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