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Hi!
I'm new here, but this question already haunts me for years:

How should those Lines in the Chorus of Suzanne be understood:

"And you know she will trust you, for you've touched her perfect body with your mind."

Well, to understand the phrase "to touch her body with your mind" seems to essential for understanding here.
Is it, that 'he' longs in his thoughts for her body? And thus she trusts him, cause she knows, he has fallen for her and will do everything for her because of that?

Or does it mean, that through his mental powers, he manager to arouse fleshly longing in her, thus making her trust him?

or is both rubbish?

And how to interprete the last verse, where these roles are swopped?
"and you know that you can trust her, for she's touched you perfect body with her mind"
Does ist mean, all feelings are equal on both sides, or that the situation has turned the other way round in the course of time?


I must add I'm not a native speaker of English, maybe that's why I don't know what to make of these lines.
I would appreciate help in this matter very much!

Actaion wrote:Hi!
I'm new hear, but this question already haunts me for years:

How should those Lines in the Chorus of Suzanne be understood:

"And you know she will trust you, for you've touched her perfect body with your mind."

Well, to understand the phrase "to touch her body with your mind" seems to essential for understanding here.
Is it, that 'he' longs in his thoughts for her body? And thus she trusts him, cause she knows, he has fallen for her and will do everything for her because of that?

Or does it mean, that through his mental powers, he manager to arouse fleshly longing in her, thus making her trust him?

or is both rubbish?

And how to interprete the last verse, where these roles are swopped?
"and you know that you can trust her, for shes touches you perfect body with her mind"
Does ist mean, all feelings are equal on both sides, or that the situation has turned the other way round in the course of time?


I must add I'm not a native speaker of English, maybe that's why I don't know what to make of these lines.
I would appreciate help in this matter very much!

Hello Actaion, welcome to the Forum.

This is my interpretation, going back over 25 years since I first heard this song:

Leonard and Suzanne are connecting in a complete intertwining of the physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual. Each of these elements become one through the course of the song, the song describing the progression of Leonard's growth and learning. He is able to touch her perfect body with his mind at the beginning of the song since it is so obvious early on in their relationship that she is physically perfect. At the point Leonard wrote this song he was already a praised, published writer, so he must have been aware of his intellectual strength.

By the end of the song his learning has grown. He has realized that his body, like Suzanne's, is also perfect. He has learned so much from her that he realizes that just as he has touched her, she has touched him. There is the full completion of the intertwining of the relationship.

You didn't mention the line "Suzanne holds the mirror". This is a very important line in the song to me. I read it that Suzanne has shown Leonard who he truly is, which then leads to the completion of the loop between them.

Best wishes,

John K.

I think it means that where a physical relationship is out of the question (as in this case it apparently was) between two people who are nevertheless attracted to each other, it is still possible to make meaningful contact on a spiritual level. A sort of cerebral love-making, if you will. The body is connected with through the mind, and the spiritual relationship can be deep and trusting precisely because the physical element is curtailed.

The switching around in the last verse simply (and elegantly) shows that the effect is mutual.

John, you posted your reply as I was typing mine.

You said it much better than I did

Oh, and welcome to the forum Actaion. I hope you enjoy your time here.

It means what you take it to mean and what lc meant it to mean. That is art.

just a brief opinion:

I always thought about Suzanne and specially about that line as the same way I think about the relationship between Don Quijote and Dulcinea. Dulcinea was ugly but Don Quijote saw her perfect, beautiful, full of grace.
Suzanne is some kind of mistic woman, with powerful insights and an strange beauty that is not really defined. She always appeared to me as some kind of tramp lady, as the Sinatra song. He saw her through its mind, he reinvented her in his own mind as she helped him to find some other point of view about life, poetry, mistery, whatever ("she showed you where to look among the garbage and the flowers").
In poetry and in life we reinvent the person that is with us, in fact, we make it better than it is. The mistery of love is in that little space where anything can be true, between the real and the abstract, between the object and the image, between the garbage and the flowers, between Suzanne and the voice that sings about her.

Also suzanne is the hebrew name for Lily. The lily is in Christian art a symbol of purity, and has become the flower of the Virgin. Now a touching of her body with the mind, could have some connection to the Lily as a symbol of the immaculate conception of the Virgin.

About her holding a mirror
a)In renaissance art the virtue of prudence is represented by a woman with two heads, and she holds a mirror and a serpent
b)The spotless mirror is also a symbol of the virgin Mary

"And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour"
a)The sun and moon are used as attributes of the virgin mary, referring to the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet" (revelation 12:1)
b)The purity and sweetness of honey have made it a symbol of the work of God and the ministry of the Christ.
c)The harbor, according to some authorities is a symbol of eternal life, and the ships(in the song its "boats that go by") making for the harbor are likened souls in search of heaven

I think this Suzanne figure involves at least both the Virgin and the temption of man(kind):
"...and she feeds you tea and oranges..."
The orange tree is according to a book on Christian art by George Ferguson regarded as a symbol of purity, chastity, and generosity. Thus it is occasionally depicted in paintings of the virgin Mary. The Orange tree was sometimes used instead of the apple tree or the fig tree, in the scenes showing the fall of man. When it is seen in representations of paradise, it alludes to the fall of man and his redemption

So I think this a song about temptation, falling, drowning, salvation, redemption. I think it is a song about being touched by a power that performs miracles and saves. And that same power which is known in Jesus can be known in the other person, in the meeting, in trust, in blind love, by the interaction of the spirit.

Peter

I, of course, have no idea to what extent your interpretation is incorporated in Leonard's writing of the song, Peter. However, your thoughts on it are so perfectly lovely that I'd like to believe that at least some of these concepts and applications were in Leonard's mind.

~ Lizzy

Hi Lizzy,

Im working on a full reading of this lyric. But at the time I have to put all my efforts in my last exam due next monday. Then I will try to post some more thoughts.

Best wishes

Peter

Good luck on your exam, Peter ~ At least you'll be stress-free in time for Martine's root canal .

I look forward to the expanded version.

~ Lizzy

the first question must be... "Suzanne takes you down...."
so until last verse you must have a question on and on and on....

Hi all,

I love the pictures lc paint with his songs.

The mirror of Suzanne remember me to an Greek myth:
Narciss the son of a river's good didn't love a nymphe (don't remember the name). Pallas Athene disliked this and wanted to punish him. When he looked in the river, he saw his own face there, because the water was like a mirror. He had to love himself forever. Later he became a flower, the narcisse.

But I think all explanations could be right.

Regards
Gudrun

Gudrun Kürten wrote:Hi all,

I love the pictures lc paint with his songs.

I totally agree!!! It's such a great image
And I also have a dutch song, which is a translation, but not a cheap kind of one, but a very good one... The line: she feeds you tea and oranges, that come all the way from china, is replaced with a sort of sentence that means: 'You remember what she's looking at, as a memory for later days', which I always loved.
It was very interesting to read all these replies about the meaning of the song

To me the song is very transcendental and ultimately about spiritual love - it is about the Lover and the Beloved but it's also very earthed and grounded in physicality but points beyond that to a very ethereal and subtle world of imagination and melancholic surrender

whatever all that means