Religion & Law

The song's motif is a 'love triangle,' though it's unclear whether the events constituting the triangle ever occurred outside of Cohen's imagination.  The same motif, of course, marks the narrative of LC's remakable novel, Beautiful Losers.  I think it's also evident in The Master Song, n'est-ce pas? 

My guess is that the recurrence of this motif in LC's writing stems from a Gnostic-reminiscent understanding, on his part, of a familiar sort of 'duality' that LC perceived in his own nature, one side of which he thought to be aspiring to some form of passionate sainthood, the other side of which he thought to be that of a passionate sensualist.  (I was always struck by the line, 'I forget to pray/ for/ the angels, and then the an/ gels/ forget/ to pray/ for usssss...' in So Long, Mary Anne,' which surely is also expressive of this struggle.)  So the 'other man' who so often seems to enter into these 'love triangle' stories of LC's to seduce and transform his spouse might be, in a sense, LC's 'other nature' -- the sensualist one -- itself.  The saintly side keeps 'praying for the angels,' while the sensualist one remains attentive to the particular -- one's beloved earthly mate.

So so very many of LC's poems and songs seem to stem from the agony of his struggle to merge these sides of the soul.  (I suspect that some of the Church's 'scandals' are rooted in this selfsame struggle, and represent horrible failures to mediate the separation harmoniously.)  I suspect that those who label LC a 'Troubador' are in a certain sense even more spot-on than they realize in this labeling.  For there is something distinctly Cathar or Albigensian in flavor, I think, in LC's sensibility.  Indeed it surely is part of what renders him so very fascinating -- particularly to 'spiritual moderns.' 

Happy Liberation and Resurrection Week to All,

Bob