PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION VI

Now more than thirty years after the poem above was written, Cohen, in his mid-sixties, is still dominated by desire. It’s his inspiration; and women are his Muse. A protégé in a Buddhist monastery, he tries to exorcize the ‘demon’ through asceticism. But he is not religious enough; Buddhism is a poor choice. Desire draws him downward, and Cohen drowns in lust. Here are two stanzas from a song that he recently wrote: 

“The ponies run, the girls are

young,

The odds are there to beat.

You win a while, and then it’s

done—

Your little winning streak.

And summoned now to deal

With your invincible defeat,

You live your life as if it’s real,

A thousand kisses deep.

“I’m turning tricks, I’m getting

fixed,

I’m back on Boogie Street.

You lose your grip, and then you

slip

Into the masterpiece.

And maybe I had miles to drive,

And promises to keep:

You ditch it all to stay alive,

A thousand kisses deep”

(National Post, May 12th, 2000.)

Though usually it is shabby criticism to assume that the poet is the subject of the poem that he writes, this one is tailor-made to fit Cohen’s desire in the crisis of advancing age. In this poem, with some help from Robert Frost, is he not confessing his longing to repossess the girls that he once had? But when you get old, the ponies are faster, the girls are younger. You go back and forth from womanizing or flirting to reality: ‘your invincible defeat.’ You’ve lost your grip on ‘Boogie Street.’ But you want to ‘ditch it all’—all your obligations and ‘promises,’ like maybe your promise to defeat desire in a monastery.

One of the ‘four noble truths’ that Buddha is alleged to have apprehended is that desire must be annihilated. So Buddhism is made to order for Leonard Cohen—if the practice of Buddhism could annihilate desire, that is. Desire is tenacious. It defies age. The Buddhist monastery can’t eradicate it even in an old man. So Cohen continues to meditate on the seduction of women. He continues to write about it. Desire compels him. 

When a man has not been reconciled to God, he will worship a substitute. What more natural substitute than members of the opposite sex bearing the image of God? Young women remind man of life and vigor; their skin, until marked by trouble and time, is man’s alternative altar. Maybe Cohen is craving to relive what might have been his most profound religious experience: his ‘masterpiece.’ Are not women his religion, and desire the conduit?

In a sense, women are a religious experience, and men do want that experience to last forever. To a man, the imprint of God is most noticeable on the opposite sex. When man and woman unite, this is, at its marital best, a devout experience between two creatures made in the image of the One to be worshiped. Of course, men know that the women they desire are not able to impart salvation. But many men who are distanced from God act as if that were possible. Instead of choosing one woman, which limitation would leave room for God, they spend their resources and energies on many women. These are men who live ‘under the sun,’ as Solomon puts it in Ecclesiastes—men who live for base desires. They cling to their sexual objects as if for salvation. The man who is determined to live for desires ‘under the sun’ hates the thought of mortifying his desire for women because women are the best experience ‘under the sun’ that he has ever had. The poet ‘under the sun’ does not want to give up his source of inspiration, especially when that source is Woman. 

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION V

Leonard Cohen’s poetry has not been influenced by God very much. However, Cohen often uses the Bible to embellish his work and to shroud it in mystery. Often, awards are given to lesser talents. But in 1972 the literary powers were captivated by a superior talent, and honored Cohen with the Governor General’s Award for his Selected Poems. Cohen kindly rejected the award. In writing, he replied: “…Much in me strives for this honor but the poems themselves forbid it absolutely” (15 Canadian Poets, p. 274.) Because his poetry is beautifully personal, yet temptingly carnal, Cohen has drawn oxymorons for accolades. On the back cover of his Selected Poems, he is called ‘a beautiful creep’ and ‘a secret all over the block.’ He suitably wrote a book titled, Beautiful Losers. 

These accolades befit his poems. The reader of poetry may be instantly drawn to Cohen’s craft; but if he comes looking for purity, he will be soon disappointed:

“I heard of a man

who says words so beautifully

that if he only speaks their name

women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body

while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips

it is because I hear a man climb stairs

and clear his throat outside our door” 

(Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, p. 30.) 

This poem, written between 1956 and 1968, flows because of where the lines break and because of the number of syllables each line contains. By using the pronoun ‘I,’ Cohen makes the poem personal. In the first stanza, a man is spoken of who seduces women with words; this is perhaps a reference to himself. Then in stanza two, sin gives way to guilty silence, for the man is made dumb when the consequence of sin shows up. The first stanza is matter-of-fact; the second one is a shock. 

When Cohen writes about the opposite sex, you can expect him to include many or you can expect the sex to be sinful. Desire dominates him and defaces his work. When Solomon writes about the opposite sex, he zeroes in on one, and the sex is pure and undefiled. Solomon was able to overcome desire, at least in his compositions. The influence of God made the difference. The difference is a song that edifies instead of pollutes.

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INFLUENCE IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION IV

Christians—called ‘saints’ in the Bible, which is what Solomon ostensibly was—are frequently called prudes who think sex is dirty. If, instead of being falsely accused, they were judged by what they profess to believe, the conclusion would be that they find sex more delightful than dirty:       

“While the king sitteth at his table,

My spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.

A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me;

He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.

My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire

In the vineyards of En Gedi” 

(Song of Songs 1.12-14.) 

If Christians believe this part of the Bible, and if they exploit it for their fulfillment, it must be that they are not prudes who have sex for no other reason than to make babies:

“I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse:

I have gathered my myrrh with my spice;

I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey;

I have drunk my wine with my milk:

Eat, O friends; drink, yea,

Drink abundantly, O beloved” 

(Song of Songs 5.1.)

The couple’s enjoyment of each other here is exhaustive, at least in the casual sense of that word; it is comprehensive, significant, and intimate. Solomon and his beloved knew what it means to become one flesh bodily, emotionally, and on the intuitive level. But like what happens to so many men when temptations tumble into life, be it from position, power, or plenty, Solomon failed to control his desire. It got away from him, and he enhanced his harem until it was preposterously huge. Nevertheless, at some point in his life he was disposed by God to write this epitome of love between man and woman. One of the trickiest things for a writer to do is to write about sexual love both poetically and purely. One of the things deemed ‘too wonderful’ for Agur the son of Jakeh to come to terms with was ‘the way of a man with a maid’ (Proverbs 30.19.) King Solomon was divinely assisted to write about this, or at least the sexual aspect of it; God inclined him to do it in good taste. The result was the composition of what is now the standard text for Christian lovers to turn to, learn from, and be animated by. 

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INSPIRATION IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION III

We usually call the Song of Solomon, Canticles; this means, ‘little song.’ But the author of it calls it ‘the Song of Songs,’ or ‘Ballad of Ballads’; this, in some sense, means that it is rather large. He defines the song in the first verse: “The song of songs, which is Solomon’s.” It is a bold move, to say the least, for a person to give his song an ambitious title like that. Unless we knew that he titled the book under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we might call it a presumptuous move. This title seems even less audacious if we consider that he called this ‘the song of songs’ among the one thousand and five that he wrote (1 Kings 4.32.) Since the Bible sometimes rounds off to the number thousand, as when it tells us that Solomon amassed, during his lifetime, one thousand women (1 Kings 11.3), it is not farfetched to guess that he might have written a song for each one of his women, up to the number one thousand and five. 

Though the song is about love between King Solomon and the Shulamite, it is a book of love for Man and Woman. It has also been treated as an allegory of love between God and Israel or between Christ and his Church. A. B. Simpson penned an excellent exposition of it with this kind of interpretation in mind. That allegory is called, The Love Life of the Lord. It is interesting that ancient Jewish authorities discouraged the reading of Solomon’s Canticles among the youth on the basis that a person could be inflamed with lust by the reading of it. This book of Scripture was not intended, then, if its subject matter is so obviously sexual, as an allegory and nothing else, as many commentators contend. Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) used it allegorically to describe the ‘joy of the Holy Ghost’ that he was the recipient of, especially when a prisoner. In his letters, he calls this joy the ‘love-kisses’ of Jesus, the ‘kisses of his mouth,’ and even his ‘soft and sweet kisses,’ obviously on the basis of Solomon’s Canticles (Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, pp. 171, 71, 132.) He was made fun of by some vulgar persons for speaking like this of his experiences with the Lord; but holy experiences can make their beneficiaries startlingly familiar in speech. By the Lord’s acceptance of this vernacular by the holy Rutherford, we know that God honors the allegorical use of this portion of Scripture. And this is what we should expect in light of the expressions used elsewhere in the Bible to depict the relationship of Jehovah with Israel and of the Lord with his Church (Hosea 2.19; Ephesians 5.22-33.) I nevertheless agree with Adam Clarke (1762-1832), in his commentary, that when it comes to exposition, the Song of Solomon is meant to be exposited literally, not allegorically. To allegorize content that so plainly and thoroughly narrates the practice of romance comes too close to perpetrating and encouraging the unsound hermeneutical method that we find in the writings of Origen. In Solomon’s Song: the woman’s breasts are like young deer, her neck is like ivory, her belly is like wheat highlighted by lilies; and the man is white and ruddy, his head has the bearing of gold, and his lips drop sweetness. What does all of this basically and literally signify but a princely man and a bonny woman?    

The Song of Songs is most basically intended as an incentive, or aphrodisiac, for Man and Wife, and for exploratory discovery. This nuptial song has been appreciated for thousands of years. It is an ancient text; but it is shockingly up to date with what we are only now discovering, or discovering anew, about physical intimacy. There are revelations in it that are best kept between married lovers. If a person were to study it closely, that person would be jolted into realizing how up to date it is. There are things in it that could have knocked even a man like Sigmund Freud over. And this has nothing to do with, for example, that term of endearment: ‘my sister, my spouse’ (Song of Songs 4.10.) The soap operas and movies get love wrong when they show a man and woman fumbling breathlessly for buttons and zippers while knocking each other against the wall as if their wills are possessed. Right after Solomon tells us what the song is in the very first verse of it, he jumps right in with words from his lover in verse 2: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” What do wine tasters do? They ‘savour’ (verse 3.) The lovers in the Song savor the wine, the smells, the kisses, and the mouth; they linger instead of lust. They aren’t possessed; they want possession. “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake love, until he please” (8.4.) “Let me have you!” they seem to say. “Let me have you for days and nights together! Don’t disturb us tonight; and don’t wake us up in the morning.” They, like our lonesome nice guys and the girls that get played by bad boys, want commitment. They don’t want to sneak out in the morning; and they don’t want the other party to do so. They are all about the bed, the sporting, the ravishing, and the honeycomb; and they want it to last. The lovers are intoxicated; but they are more aware than they’ve ever been. “It is good for us to be here” (Matthew 17.4), they say with Peter, though about something else. They want to tabernacle together. They want to get to ‘know’ each other (Genesis 4.25), not just have a passing acquaintance. This takes time, scrutiny, play, practice, experimentation. Their love is like a fantasy come into focus. Solomon’s love-song about his amorous relationship is idyllic except for occasional references to swiftly resolved love-spats. But what are love-spats but arid spaces for new sparks to form? Is it not true that ideal love includes these minor breaches that must be made up by romantic overtures?

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INSPIRATION IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION II

That Israel’s King Solomon was obsessed with women is attested by the biblical fact that he obtained for himself at least 1,000 women during his lifetime (1 Kings 11.3.) Leonard Cohen’s obsession is attested by his life and work. The obsession common to each is at variance with the influence of God on the writings of one. 

Leonard Cohen would never put himself on the level with Solomon as a poet. A comparison of their work is an unequal and unfair comparison. But to compare will demonstrate the difference that God can make in the writings of a man when that man comes under God’s governing direction.

Solomon was either a backslider, an apostate, or he converted late in life. His idolatrous lifestyle is documented in 1 Kings. This idolatry increased when he nurtured his desire for women because so many of these women were idolaters. “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11.4.) Many of these wives were ‘strange women’; that is, not of Israel: Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites (verse 1.) No doubt this list of nations that he obtained his women from is not exhaustive. These strange women goaded Solomon into raising heathen altars to gods and goddesses. In the Old Testament, sexual immorality and idolatry are ordinarily found together. By giving in to one, King Solomon was lured into practicing the other. Satan is not satisfied with taking man halfway. God commands our full devotion; the devil would have no less. Despite his inconstancy, however, Solomon was chosen by God to compose an inspired song of sensuous love. The object of his love was a Shulamite. The word ‘Shulamite’ may be a feminine version of the word ‘Solomon,’ signifying the woman’s attachment to him. Or the word may refer to a woman from a district called Shunem, in Palestine, a city of the tribe of Issachar. Some scholars say that the Shulamite was his Egyptian wife. This is convincing because in the song, her majesty is compared to ‘a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots’ (Song of Songs 1.9.) Moreover, his Egyptian woman is singled out from the rest of his women in 1 Kings 11.1, like so, ‘together with the daughter of Pharaoh.’ When this romantic interchange occurred, or if it occurred, is not certain. If it actually happened—if it is more than a nuptial song—it happened before ‘Solomon was old.’ This is obvious from the content: “his locks are bushy, and black as a raven” (Song of Songs 5.11.) Therefore if it happened it happened before his idolatry called forth the disapprobation of God that we read about in 1 Kings 11. It is presumable that this romance occurred when Solomon was relatively young because the two subjects of the composition are so intense. And it seems reasonable to assert that the love-trysts that are written about occurred before the days of Solomon’s harem, for even if the accumulation of wives and concubines was a common practice among great men in the olden time, would the Shulamite have been so passionate had Solomon’s love been spread so thin or so poisoned by lust? This seems like a reasonable assertion unless or until we realize that his other women are often mentioned in the text. For example, Solomon’s ‘dove’ is compared with the rest of his growing harem in chapter 6, verses 8 and 9. The events in the song likely happened when Solomon was a comparatively youthful king; and the song was probably written some time later than that. It is harder to say when the composition was written than when the events related in it occurred. It might have been written by a young man. But it might just as well have been written while, in the midst of his completed harem, Solomon realized that his illicit lifestyle was not the ideal that his carnal flesh had thought it would be. It may be that Solomon reflected on the lover that he had once enjoyed, and the Spirit came upon him to write a song of remembrance down. It is remarkable, regardless, for a man who desires women in the mass to center on just one in his song—to explore that part of his heart that longs for the way things ought to be. Solomon says nothing—not in the Song, and neither in Proverbs nor Ecclesiastes, for that matter—to suggest that there might be satisfaction in the possession of a harem. It is an astonishing omission from a man who, for so many years, did not deny himself the pleasure.

PART II, ARTICLE VI: DESIRE AND INSPIRATION IN THE LIVES OF TWO POETS, SECTION I

The Bible exhibits the standard of whatever genre of literature it contains. In the Bible are found the quintessential models of the proverb, the parable, the historical narrative, the letter, and so on. Poetry is acknowledged more universally than any other genre, though, as reaching its acme in the Bible. One can only look down from the Bible’s poetic heights; even haters of God have admitted this. When the Bible reader peruses poetry that is less than biblical, then, he will compare one with the other. If Solomon’s Canticles have been labeled ‘restricted’ by ancient Jewish doctors and certain Christian sects, it is not going too far to say that they would call the poetry of Leonard Cohen ‘licentious’—what today would be dubbed ‘pornographic.’ That said, not all of Cohen’s poetry is distasteful; Leonard Cohen is, if judged on the basis of poetic ability, a poet indeed. Unlike postmodern poetry, his poems evince poetic elements and manifest actual communication. Before my conversion to Christianity, I experienced an awakening to nature, art, and literature. This Awakening and this Faith dovetailed, the latter following closely upon the former. It was during this dovetailing period that I read a volume of what Cohen had written, not without, however, due to my growing zeal for God, blotting out his foul allusions and naughty words as I went. I don’t know if I would have noticed the licentious, and therefore blasphemous, character of his ‘Hallelujah’ if it had been one of the poems included in the book. But I would have been no more naïve about it, I guess, than those persons are who sing it as if engaged in the supernal religious exercise of their lives. It is a conspicuous proof of how debased we have become that crowds would cheer the singing of that song and that singers would line up to sing it; as it happens, even kids are encouraged to lend their voices to sacrilege, which is what an amalgam of worship and sexual innuendos amounts to.          

Desire is unsatisfied longing. Man’s unsatisfied longing for women has not tailed off with time, not since “men began to multiply on the face of the earth” and “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair” (Genesis 6.1, 2.) Man’s desire for women has been the hinge upon which lives, be they great or small, have swayed; and events, be they of passing moment or of lasting consequence, have swung. This feral desire, therefore, has always been a chief subject on the point of the poet’s pen, quill, or (in the case of Gilgamesh) reed stylus. The droit du seigneur—the right of a lord to couple with his serf’s bride-to-be—may be traced back, not merely to medieval Europe and feudal France, but to when the oldest book presently known to man was written, which was when either Noah or his immediate descendents still walked the earth. “He will couple with the wife-to-be,/He first of all, the bridegroom after./By divine consent it is so ordained:/When his navel-cord was cut, for him she was destined” (The Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 15.)    

Inside the recesses of the sin nature, there lies in man the desire to have, not one, but many women. This desire lurks inside every man, though for the sake of peace with their wives or girlfriends, men will deny that it does. This desire overcomes the man when he stirs it up and makes it his focal point. This especially happens to the poets among us. Two such poets are King Solomon 3,000 years ago, and Canada’s own Leonard Cohen.

PART II, ARTICLE V: THE WRITINGS OF G. K. CHESTERTON DISMISSED, SECTION V

The essays contained in A Handful of Authors were written for newspapers from 1901 to 1935. We expect, therefore, essays of inferior quality. But articles written for newspapers ought to benefit, not deceive and bore, the commuters who pass time reading them. These essays are time wasters to be thrown away after use. Truer yet, they are not worth browsing through before being thrown out. They remind me of New York Times book reviews, which are thin on subject and thick with envy. Chesterton is the father of book reviewers who preen more than review, and who come out looking all the worse for doing so, at least to readers who demand the subjects that they read about to be actually delved into. Unlike Chesterton, I have dealt with my subject in this essay. I have quoted; I have explained; I have judged. I have done something else than pose in the mirror, cover for bad conduct, and reinterpret the Bible to suit my infidelity.        

It should go without saying that an author is not worth reading who is more concerned with trying to look fancy than opening the titles of his essays. Given his treatment of R. L. Stevenson, moreover, how can Chesterton ever be trusted? If he makes a saint out of an obstinate sinner such as Stevenson was, can he be safely read on anyone or anything? A Chesterton fan would no doubt say something like, “But you selected the wrong book. You should have picked one of his other ones, be it this one or that one.” No, sir, it looks like I picked the right one—the one that calls for this Chesterton project to be finished—the one that calls for Chesterton to be dismissed au complet, en bloc, in toto. Because of his vain show, his material is unattractive. Because his essays are empty vessels, they are useless to consume. Because of his deception, his body of work is now dismissed. I don’t care to find out one thing more about what G. K. Chesterton believed, said, or wrote. If he ever wrote anything insightful or prescient, there are more ethical authors to turn to for the same, both for the acquisition of wisdom and for the understanding of what must shortly come to pass. A reader is just as likely to be corrupted by reading A Handful of Authors as Stevenson was deceived by Herbert Spencer, the Darwinian. Thankfully, G. K. Chesterton is so transparently deceptive that it is not even true to say of him that latet anguis in herba (a snake lurks in the grass.) His deceit is as discernible as green hair on a Ugandan.     

The man who recommended Chesterton so unqualifiedly, claimed to be a Reformed Christian. Maybe he read some book of Chesterton’s that has more merit than this one has. He came across as a man who has read a lot of Chesterton, though. If this man has read A Handful of Authors, and even after that recommends Chesterton without reservation, I have to wonder if his Reformed Christianity is more nominal and hereditary than actual and spiritual. Whether this man is a Reformed Christian or not, I discourage the reading of Chesterton as ardently as he promotes him. Based on the first twenty-eight pages of  A Handful of Authors—pages that I have looked closely at—I shamelessly assert that no more of Chesterton needs to be read or should be read. His writings ought to be, if not burned, then at least shelved. These essays of his are not only travesties; they are treacherous. Their only good use is for quoting in order to show what should never be imitated. Therefore they will be kept on my heresy shelf in case they are needed for that purpose once again.