Chris Bateman rubs shoulders with punk Flamenco singers, accountants and death as he considers Leonard Cohen’s sweet swansong

“I’m slowing down the tune

I never liked it fast

You want to get there soon

I want to get there last”

– Leonard Cohen, ‘Slow’

And slow it was, right up to the end. Such was Leonard Cohen’s unhurried pace, that The Flame, his final published work has been released almost a full two years to the date since the he passed away. A collection of 63 poems, the lyrics from his last four albums and a miscellaneous section of entries from the notebooks he obsessively filled throughout his life, The Flame is an opportunity to explore some of the great works in the Canadian poet and songwriter’s final years. Make no mistake, this is no posthumous hack job, crudely glued together for a quick buck, The Flame is a collection that shows a writer whose fire never diminished with old age, but instead continued to burn brightly. For Cohen, just because it was his swansong, it never meant it would be sung any less sweetly.

What can we expect from late period Cohen? All his great themes are here: death, war, religion (both Buddhism and Judaism) and beauty. Alongside such lofty subjects, we also find references to punk Flamenco singers, accountants and Kanye West even gets a mention.

Throughout his long career, a debate existed over the artistic identity of Cohen. For some, he was a singer and a songwriter, for others he was really a poet and a writer. As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in between. One of the pleasing symmetries around the publication of this book is that Cohen, who started out as a poet, with his first work being published in 1954 has come full circle with this collection, which displays his talent not only for putting fine words on the page but one who had the ability, as the lyrics demonstrate, to transform his verse into song. Writing was Cohen’s true passion, and in reading The Flame, it becomes clear that it was here that he found his true vocation. In a touching introduction by his son, Adam Cohen, we learn that so committed was he to completing the book, which he knew would be his final work, that it became his singular focus, “his sole breathing purpose in the end.” In answering that question of his father’s identity, Adam Cohen tells us that “writing was his only solace, his truest purpose.”

That Cohen saw himself as a writer and a poet first is clear throughout this colecction. One of the treasures contained within this edition is his acceptance address on receiving the Prince of Asturias Prize. Here, along with paying tribute to his beloved Flamenco guitar style, which inspired his first forays into songwriting, he speaks of his relationship with that great unknown, the writer’s muse. Describing his poetry as coming from “a place that no one commands and no one conquers”, he acknowledges, like all great writers, that he is a mere slave to its powers, knowing full well that when it dictates, he must “blacken the page” with its words.

As well as grappling with the greater issues, The Flame also makes room for earthlier matters. You can find a tribute to Enrique Morente, a punk Flamenco singer Cohen worked with in the nineties, in his poem “Homage to Morente”. Here we find Cohen perhaps recognising a quality in his own work, writing songs that lament our “baffled contradictions of the heart”.

Someone whom Cohen definitely has less time for, and takes something of a pop at, is Kanye West. The rapper is only worthy of some scorn, with tongue firmly in cheek, he writes how “Kanye West is not Picasso”, and expresses his disdain for West and “the great bogus shift of bullshit culture”.

In other parts of this collection, Cohen can be found in a more reflective mood, for example in “My Guitar Stood Up Today”, which has something of his hero, the poet, Federico Garcia Lorca about it. Here he conjures up the image of his guitar, inspired by some higher power, calling the tune as dancers “stamp their feet and cry; against the fate that bends us down; beneath the thorny bloody crown”. In this poem, as throughout the book, the theme of death is near, waiting in the shadows, rarely called out but acknowledged and feared, always accepted.

Although Cohen knew this was to be his last work, he refused to depart the stage on a mournful note. Instead, as well as considering all his great themes one more time, there is an insistence that beauty and elegance must also be present at the end. Although not the final poem in the book, I like to regard “Thanks for the Dance” as his true farewell. To corrupt the old line from one of his most well-known songs, this is a way to say goodbye as he asks us to join him on the dance floor one last time as he whispers in our ears:

“Thanks for the dance

It was hell, it was swell it was fun,

Thanks for all the

Dances

One two three, one two three one…”

The Flame by Leonard Cohen is published by Canongate. 

Chris Bateman
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