Leonard Cohen was born in Westmount in 1934, and his remains were interred on November 10th 2016 in the cemetery of the Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in which he had taken Bar Mitzvah in 1947.听 The cantor of that congregation sang on Cohen鈥檚 final album, You Want It Darker.听 In his later years, as travel became more painful for the old chansonnier, Cohen would visit Montreal less and less frequently.听 But he once said that he had to return regularly to Montreal to renew his 鈥渘eurotic affiliations鈥� with the city of his birth, and he has done so one last time.
听听听听听听听听听听听 Take heart: Cohen鈥檚 years at 平特五不中 were academically undistinguished.听 He found there, however, the mentorship of Louis Dudek, Canadian poet and a new young professor in the Department of English.听 Legend has it that, after reading a sheaf of the young Cohen鈥檚 poems, Dudek made him kneel in the corridor in the Arts Building and struck him with the manuscript on both shoulders鈥斺�渒nighting鈥� him as of the fellowship of Canadian poets.听 Through Dudek Cohen was to meet his lifelong friend Irving Layton and thereafter to join the avant-garde literary circles of Montreal.听 And it was Dudek who created the 鈥溒教匚宀恢� Poetry Series,鈥� at his own personal cost, in which Cohen鈥檚 first book, Let Us Compare Mythologies, was published in 1956.
听听听听听听听听听听听 Not long after, Columbia and New York, and then the island of Hydra in Greece, would call Cohen鈥檚 restless spirit away from the jazz clubs of downtown Montreal in which he was learning to perform his poems to musical accompaniment.听 He was acclaimed by Canadian poets and audiences for his second book of poems, The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), and denounced in Parliament for his second novel, Beautiful Losers (1966).听 When in the mid-sixties he chose to turn to the opportunities of income and fame that song-writing and singing could provide, scholars in Canada lost interest in him鈥攁 minor rejection compared with the millions of too-adoring fans he was soon dealing with on the world stage.听 It would take many years of fame, many years of depression and withdrawal and declining sales, many of the greatest songs written in the twentieth century, and one of the finest single books of literature produced in that century (Death of a Lady鈥檚 Man, 1978), before Cohen would receive again the attention of his alma mater.听 平特五不中 granted him an honorary doctorate in 1992, not long after his album The Future forecast so much of what we face, without him now, in the 21st century.听 Only after the turn of our century did a significant body of criticism and scholarship develop around Cohen鈥檚 works鈥攁ppraisal and appreciation that looks set to continue for decades.
Now the Captain he was dying
But the Captain wasn鈥檛 hurt
The silver bars were in my hand
I pinned them to my shirt.
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You Want It Darker听(2016)
Ladies and Gentlemen鈥r. Leonard Cohen听(Donald Brittain & Don Owen, 1965)
CBC interview with Adrienne Clarkson (1989)
鈥淭he Sparrows鈥� and 鈥淭houghts of a Landsman鈥�
Cohen鈥檚 poetry won the Department鈥檚听Chester Macnaghten Prize in Creative Writing in 1955. 听Here are photographs of the original typescripts of his prize-winning submissions,听鈥淭he Sparrows鈥� and 鈥淭houghts of a Landsman.鈥� 听The typescripts are held in the 平特五不中 Library鈥檚 Rare Books and Special Collections division.
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