Book of Mercy #8-10

[tomsakic]

DB, my first (and only) connotation when I think about the "fall" is it seems fall from Eden, and the complete history of humankind being the result of that fall, or the fall itself. Yesterday I read great review of BoM by David Lyle Jeffrey (in 1986' Journal of Canadian Poetry), partially quoted by Simon here, and it seems that's his impression also. I think that Book of Mercy deals much with that Fall, not the Fall of Satan, but that is so maybe because I actually NEVER connected Satan's Fall or Satan at all with Cohen's work. Indeed, thinking now about it, does he (or evil instance) appear at all in his writing? In terms like Satan in Milton i.e. or Dante?


Although this thread is indeed becoming too big and goes into various directions (and achieve various positions) at the same time, I also had momentary attacks of deja vu. It also seems that search engine doesn't work well as yesterday it claimed that words "50" and "150" were not used in this thread. And they were. (Thank you, Joe - I think you're right, we confused 150 psalms from the Bible with Leonard's 50. Btw, D.L. Jeffrey has great explanation why 50 psalms. I knew it was because it was Cohen's 50th birthday, but - Doron probably would know better - Jeffrey mentions 50th birthday as the year of the Jubilee, which is the "sabbath of sabbaths when, after seven cycles of seven years of work coming to their point in rest, on the Day of Atonement the trumpet would sound to announce a year not merely of rest but of restitution". He also points that each psalm is meditation for one year of his life.)

What I wanted to say is that I don't recall did we discuss the title motif itself - MERCY? Or we took it as obvious? I just read articles Mercy and Divine Grace at Wikipedia.

Searching engine is working after all:-)

Let’s start with the title: Book of Mercy. Not “The Book of Mercy” as we might have expected. The omission of the definite article must be intended. Is it perhaps a sign of modesty, avoiding the claim that we are supplied with THE book on the subject? I think this understanding may fit LC’s sensibilities. The title can mean several things: a book about mercy, a book giving mercy, or a book of an entity called “mercy”, among others. The last possibility leads us in the direction of the Kabbalah, the symbolism of which appears several times in the book. The problem is that “mercy” can be the translation of different Hebrew terms, including chesed and rachamim. This problem should be considered again later. And “mercy”, of course, is a word that LC tends to use quite often, as all lovers of his songs and poems know.

In some religions, mercy is associated with feminine figures: the Virgin Mary in Christianity, or Kannon Bosatsu in Japanese Buddhism (originally, in Indian Buddhism, this was a male figure of a bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara, but in its passage through China it acquired feminine attributes as Kuan Yin, and as Kannon in Japan). In Judaism, and also in Islam, God himself is merciful. In Judaism (and even more so in Islam) the feminine aspects of the divine were neutralized in favor of strict monotheism, but mythological undercurrents continued to exist and burst up especially in the Kabbalah. As we go along we will have to examine to what extent do the author address a male or a female figure.

So, maybe "This problem should be considered again later" indeed - after we do al 50 psalms. I was thinking about mercy and title today, but let's leave that then, for now. Only to say that in many languages (incl. Croatian) it's connected with GRACE as being synonyms (thus the title in few translations actually was "Book of Grace" - which is also supposed to be my title, but I am not sure anymore).


I have also short notice from Leonard, about intertwined hearts. More later:-)

[DBCohen]

Tom,

I also don’t know of Satan mentioned by LC, but Lucifer, before he was identified as Satan, had a history of his own. His original association is with light, as the Morning Star, before he became the “Prince of Darkness” in Christianity. And light is a strong symbol in this psalm.

A symbol belonging to the dark side (or “left side” in Kabbalah) and favored by LC, however, is that of Babylon, the great whore, which is also a Christian motif, coming from Revelation 17 (see “Last Year’s Man”, “Is This What You Wanted”, “Dance Me To The End Of Love”, and more). She is the menacing female, the naked sexual force, which is both alluring and intimidating, and from which he sometimes wishes to distance himself in favor of the ideal of abstinence. In “Last Year’s Man” Babylon is juxtaposed with Bethlehem, which may symbolize both David and Jesus. They are depicted as bride and groom: apparently they represent two sides of his soul, and he can’t give up either of them (at least at that stage).

About the 50th year as the year of the Jubilee (originally yovel – this is one more of those Hebrew words which entered the English language): it is prescribed in Leviticus 25. It is the year when all slaves are set free, among other things.

As for “Mercy”, I agree that we should discuss its meaning later on. I tend to think that it has to do with the sixth Sefirah, according to the Kabbalah (page 9 above), but this is just a tentative suggestion.

[lazariuk]

DB, my first (and only) connotation when I think about the "fall" is it seems fall from Eden, and the complete history of humankind being the result of that fall, or the fall itself.

That seems pretty much in keeping with what Leonard has himself stated when he said that we should return to the central myth of our civilization which is our fall from Eden.

[tomsakic]

Thanks, DB, I actually meant Lucifer (and Satan), and I really think it's not present at all in cohen's work. But your're surely right about Babylon, and By the Rivers Dark actually depict life itself as being in Babylon. So maybe human condition (conditio humana) is Babylon, exile of Eden/G-d's presence (i.e. fall from it).

Later in that review, D.L. Jeffrey does cite the same quote from Leviticus.

Also, in one of those 1985 interviews (Simon has scanned them all, andquoted earlier in this thread), Cohen says that he prefers exile as human condition, and writers of exile. It seems that he sees exile more as concept, than speaking about actual exile of writers.

[tomsakic]

Finally, the jacket design.

Maybe we should have started with the cover of the book first, and the intertwined hearts.

In his 1986 review of Book of Mercy, David Lyle Jeffrey wrote :

The beautiful jacket design, with its red and gold intertwined hearts, tells the reader that Jewish identity is in each part of Cohen’s reflections. But the intertwined hearts reinterpret even as they represent the star of David. In the sefirot of the Kabbalah – the ten complex images or names for God – the sixth sefireh is Tiferet (« beauty ») or Rahamin (« mercy »). In the medieval tradition of Jewish mysticism, this is an aesthetic realm of God’s beauty – for the Kabbalah, all the beauty there is – and yet its sing is the Heart of God, mercy, Rahamin. Here in the old tradition is its principle of mediation and « centering » and, by implication healing.
Jeffrey, David Lyle. (Untitled: Review of Book of Mercy). Journal of Canadian Poetry. No. 1 (1986): 24-29.

It was never clear to me whether LC had designed the intertwined hearts himself or if it was a symbol belonging to an older tradition.
Did LC start using it with the publication of BoM, or had he been using it before? If the sign is from old tradition, does it have a name?

From Leonard's e-mail:

I thought it was my own design, but much later I read in a book of Jewish history that such a design was discovered in the ruins of an ancient synagogue in Asia Minor. The book did not give an illustration of the decoration, but described it, I believe, as "interlocking hearts". Very recently I learned that a German pharmaceutical company uses the design as their logo. I don't know where they got it from. Perhaps it predates my own design. Somewhere in my notebooks from the early eighties there is my own first crude sketch, two hearts, one on the other, one up, one down, but not interlocking. The interlocking, common to renditions of The Star of David, was drawn by an artist at McClelland & Stewart, my Canadian publisher.

So, we can conclude that symbol is Leonard's own design as possible previous use is the result of similar artistic and spiritual inspiration.

Maybe it's wrong to describe the symbol as "intertwining hearts" as that's commonly used phrase to describe hearts on wedding rings and postcards. More common, they're also reffered to as "interlocking hearts". Like this one:



Also, intertwined heart is one of most often used designs in Celtic Knot. It seems it usualy has 4 hearts, and maybe it's ancient symbol:



Trying to trace Leonard's mention of Asia Minor, I found only Armenian website (http://www.armenianhighland.com), with Malatian Gospel from 13th century:



Basicaly, this "intertwined heart" on right side of ornamentum is the same as Leonard's; in his own words, "two hearts, one on the other, one up, one down". I don't know does it refer to star of David, as Leonard's, it could.

Intertwined or interlocked hearts commonly means, it seems, two hearts interlocked, one beside another, thus representing the union, mariagge. I'd say that Leonard's idea of making them one up and one down, as star of David, is new, nevertheless possible uses in middle age or ancient Asia Minor, which seems to be very rare and also widely unknown.

I also recall that German pharmaceutical logo. It was discovered by old Forum member tom.d.stiller in times of release of Dear Heather, in his home town, and it seemed like the copy of Leonard's logo.

Also, intertwined hearts, described as "two interlocking cardioids (one inverted) which together resemble a Star of David" in an old thread here, were later used as symbol for Various Positions album, in Leonard's complicate system of icon symbols.

Also, it it also has become the sign of Leonard's Order of the Unified Heart, which is, I believe, his imagined order of his fans:-)

[DBCohen]

That’s wonderful, Tom. And indeed, even if it existed sometime, somewhere, it can still be considered his own original design (it would have been interesting to hear a Jungian interpretation of this symbol and its reemergence).

Where can I read the full text of the review by David Lyle Jeffery? We seem to agree about the Kabbalistic notion of “Mercy”.

[tomsakic]

Simon scanned all available reviews of Book of Mercy last July at McGill, to help me with my ttranslation - we didn't expect thread like this to happen:-) I'll send it to you now.

Also, we did agree with Simon that we will use all his stuff for making new page on Speaking Cohen site, dedicated only to Book of Mercy's reception. That idea is also in work from this morning between Marie of http://www.speakingcohen.com and me (inspired by this thread and L's email), so you can expect it soon, I hope, when we do the html design etc.

[Simon]

Tom, I've been working on a basic web page that we could use as database to make those documents easier to transfer between ourselves. I've started collecting scans of articles and essays listed in Brian Cameron's bibliography. It's not meant to be public because all the stuff is of course copyrighted and some of the .pdf documents are very large making them slow to transfer. I'd rather have all that on your page. I don't have much server space either. This could be seen as a Leonard Cohen virtual library if the copyright stuff could be worked out in some way.

Great stuff about the unified hearts. I had been tracking this over the last few weeks and had reached the Celts era but nothing more. It's all very interesting.

Last night I read over pretty much all I have on BoM but couldn't find anything on the 150 psalms ( or was it 100). But I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that the 50 psalms in the book are the result of a selection from a larger body of work. Unless I'm confusing with another topic that was discussed here. If those left over psalms exist they are probably in the boxes at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto.

[lazariuk]

Am I missing something here? Is there a reason that it seems that no one wants to talk about the current page we are on?

[lazariuk]

Jack,

I said that in the Bible they are painted black; that was the opinion of those who wrote the stories. They wrote them in such a way that we will not think favorably about those two. Of course, everyone is free to interpret them differently, and to see in their actions other meanings than those intended by the authors.

How about you? Do you see her as those who wrote the story want you to see her?

[Simon]

I had posted this in the Hallelujah thread but it would also fit here in relation to the unified hearts. Maybe Doron can comment on it in the Kabbalah perspective. Magen David, the six pointed star is a representation of the six directions and thus a representation of balance between the six directions. I know I often bring back this idea of balance in the discussions. I do so because he has mentioned a few times how it is important to him. I don't know to what extent he was conscious of the symbolic balance involved in the design. My idea is that the desired mercy would be finding balance at last. The Fall in this perspective is falling off balance, being thrown off the center of star of David or off the center of the unified hearts. In this perspective being elevated to the realm of angels is also in a way being thrown off human balance. Mercy would also be balance between the left and right, up and down of the kabbalistic tree of life. So this idea of balance is wonderfully expressed in the unified hearts.

[lazariuk]

Book of Mercy, I, 8

he trips
He falls
Blessed are you
master of the human accident.

I can relate to that, here is my trip.

I am going to be a bit detailed about the trip I took because I've learned that context is usually important and I want to make sure that I don't miss anything because it is not a trip that I ever want to have to take again.
Once is quite enough.
Back in the mid nineties my life collapsed in a very big way. I felt that I was looking at failure coming at me from every side. In relationships, family and my work everything was coming undone.
Took my beating, got back to my feet and started to get back at it again but found that there was one part of me that wasn't so anxious about getting at things until it was satisfied, and that was my curiosity.
I found that making dollars does not help if you are not making sense. I needed to know why so much had apparently failed. I dropped out.
I remember the exact street corner I was on and the exact day. It was early on a friday evening. That week I had made $4000.00 doing technology consulting work. I soon moved out to a little town bringing the population of the town to thirteen.
I handed the reigns of my life over to my curiosity and took myself along for the ride. It was around this time that I began posting to alt.music.leonard-cohen.
I have always posted under my own name and if it is of any interest it is easy to see how I was behaving during those times. This and other groups gave me the opportunity to encounter other people sometimes in very interesting ways and often in ways that were rewarding beyond my greatest expectations. Luckily my grade three principal had already relieved me of having to deal with guilt and that left me free to focus on other areas. This lasted for quite a few years and I got to a point that I felt that I found what I was looking for and wasn't going to get any further so disconnected .
I wasn't totally disconnected as I didn't stay that long in that small town and I did work from time to time as needed to keep the wolf from the door. But when I wanted to re-enter society in a more complete way I felt a little lost as to what I should be doing.
I got involved is a significant technology project and did the work and got paid well but I felt that my work lacked the heart that was required for me to sustain the activity and so was looking around for other opportunities.
Time to time I would do work as a casual laborer while I was floundering about. This is where I tripped into a hole that led me into some kind of joke.
I was working with a team of four other workers demolishing a warehouse roof. I noticed that one of the other workers didn't seem too bright that day and it seemed like he was a little hung over.
In the work we were doing he was in the most difficult position and so I traded places with him thinking that I was better prepared, and that would be safer for all concerned. I immediately stepped onto a piece of roofing that had no support and started going through the roof. You know that game of snakes and ladders? Well I started feeling that I was in one, with all it's false starts, going two steps forward and then three back and now I was thinking pretty clearly about that last ladder I climbed so that I could calculate how far my fall was going to be. I realized that it was high enough that I could be killed, thought a bit about the implications of that and after considering all the variables involved, decided that I was going to try to survive. You would be amazed at how fast the mind works when brother death taps you on the shoulder. I remembered everything I had ever heard about how to survive a fall, put it into practice and then for the last 15 feet of my 21 foot fall had nothing else to think about. When I hit the concrete floor I had plenty to think about. I shattered both of my heels, fractured both ankles and broke the two bones in one of my legs. The pain was enormous.
I had this idea in my brain that when the ambulance arrived and they gave me some drugs that the pain would subside.
No such luck. For the next twelve days the pain would be unrelenting, sometimes pushed back a bit but always present. I got to the hospital during a nurses strike which lasted through my stay.
What quickly developed on my legs were what is called fracture blisters the size of tennis balls. For fear of infection the doctors did not want to operate and so I had to lay on my bed for twelve days in great pain.
The doctors knew that it would be a long time before they could operate and because they didn't want me to develop a drug problem they felt it wise to allow me only the minimum amount of pain medication and also with the shortage of staff owing to the nurses strike they could not spare the manpower to monitor higher dosages. They put me on a self administering morphine drip. Every eight minuets it allowed me to press a button which would release a small amount of morphine. In addition to that every six hours they would give me oral pain killers. The eight minuet drip, while certainly not taking away all the pain, did make it somewhat bearable.
The trouble was that I never figured out how to do it in my sleep and so when I occasionally drifted off into delirium the job of the morphine would fall far behind.
Occasionally a room mate would tell me that he had to leave the room because of the screaming I was doing, which I wasn't aware of.
(Pay close attention to picturing this part because it might be on the quiz afterwards. ) One time, for some unknown reason, I did manage to fall asleep for quite a few hours.
It was nighttime and the room was dark. Someone was very gently touching me on the shoulder to wake me from my sleep. Two things happened at once.
I opened my eyes to this most beautiful vision. So as not to frighten me in the dark, the nurse was shinning a flashlight on herself giving an effect of a halo around her head. She was a very beautiful woman and she was looking at me with such a sweet tenderness.
Then she said in her most beautiful voice " I'm here to give you something for your pain"
The other thing that was happening was that I was being awakened to about the worse pain that I had during my whole stay at the hospital. I had gone a very long time without pushing that little button and I must have moved my leg in my sleep and so while one hand was reaching out to see if I could touch that halo the other hand was busy pushing that little button over and over again even though I knew that every push after one was a total waste of energy.
Then this beautiful nurse, this angel of compassion, this beacon of truth and light, this vision of tenderness dressed in white looked at her watch and said "Oh I see that it is still three minuets before your medication time, I'll wait here" and she stood there looking at her watch.
I was thinking of screaming at her "Just give me the fucking pill" but I didn't.
I figured that I had gone through so much, I might as well go all the way and wait those three minuets more.
I'm glad I did.
It gave me time to ponder just how fucking insane this universe can be.
This woman just woke me, plunging me into incredible pain, tells me that she is here to help me with my pain and is now standing there looking at her watch with a saint like devotion like she is absolutely sure it's ticking out it's 180 seconds will save all the babies in Africa from hunger, will prevent the destruction of the Earth by a passing star and reconcile the fallen angels at the Seat of Mercy.
Maybe she woke me three minutes too early or was giving me the pill three minutes too late, but in those three minutes I started laughing and I couldn't stop. I was in terrible pain and didn't want to laugh but I couldn't stop it.
I laughed uncontrollably and I certainly wasn't laughing at her because when I started laughing I felt that I was also her and she was just as much I. It also seemed like what she was doing was one of the most commonest things that pretty much everyone does every day in their own little way. I told some of this story once before to a LC group and Sue made a little picture and posted it on the Internet. It can be seen here. http://www.suewinterbottom.freeserve.co ... kAngel.gif
My finding out now what is so funny is drawing from my lips my own little Hallelujah

[lizzytysh]

Hi Tom ~

I'll mention it, since I was at least one who might have missed it. I went back on the pages, trying to find what I wanted to quote and came across your fuller explanation, including graphics, of intertwining hearts, interlocking hearts, unified hearts, and their various origins. Very interesting information regarding Leonard's creation of it that people shouldn't miss. If anyone has, however, it's all very beautiful and worth a visit to page 23. Especially interesting that it dates so far back . I thought DBCohen's above comment was still related to what you had just said, not what he had just seen.


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Hi Jack ~

I too like hearing how Leonard's work assists people in sorting through the details of their daily lives and gives them a voice to express themselves. His work seems so open to that.

Jack

This is what I'd gone to find when I passed Tom's posting getting to it. I'm glad I went on the search.

I can understand why you wanted to stick with the page we were on. Your own story brightly illuminates your above comments in relation to the lines Leonard wrote. An amazing story of many elements that dovetails with the concept of "mercy," as well. Sue's drawing highlights the 'angles' of connection that quickly developed in the course of that experience. From angel to angle, she quickly transformed. No intertwining here, though it appeared there would be, given this, which I read with absolute wistfulness, until " . . . I'll wait here . . . ":

Then this beautiful nurse, this angel of compassion, this beacon of truth and light, this vision of tenderness dressed in white looked at her watch and said "Oh I see that it is still three minuets before your medication time, I'll wait here" and she stood there looking at her watch.

No free-falling to the rescue with that Angle of Mercy.

Even in your recall, however, your sense of humour surrounding it is impeccable:

This woman just woke me, plunging me into incredible pain, tells me that she is here to help me with my pain and is now standing there looking at her watch with a saint like devotion like she is absolutely sure it's ticking out it's 180 seconds will save all the babies in Africa from hunger, will prevent the destruction of the Earth by a passing star and reconcile the fallen angels at the Seat of Mercy.

Perhaps laughter, such as you've described, can be as much the expressor and detractor from pain as screams. The human voice uttering forth loudly with uncontrollability, marking the absurdities of one human accident after another with the attendant lack of attention to reality, works as an apex of how we beg in our ways for mercy.
Or, perhaps, it's merely a registration of the absurd. Wouldn't it be grand if Leonard could somehow know [all of] the balm and healings his work has brought.

A transformational period all around for you as a human being. In fact, this lends itself to a parody:

Oh, the angles of mercy,
they are not departed or gone...
they were waiting for me,
when I thought that I
just can't go on...

They brought me to laughter
and later they . . .

But that's another whole new direction...

"Hallelujah" is right.


~ Lizzy

[lazariuk]

Wouldn't it be grand if Leonard could somehow know [all of] the balm and healings his work has brought.

Before I would go personally patting him on the shoulder I would want to know why he used that word "up" in the poem. It's starting to really bother me. Does any one have an idea that makes any sense?

Jack