Leonard Cohen — a sublime, spiritual voice for his generation
The musician and poet never thought he was ‘one of the big guys’, so he cultivated ‘this tiny corner of the field to do with self-investigation without self-indulgence’
New York — Leonard Cohen, who has died at age 82, wandered the world reaching into his own melancholy and emerged as a sublime, spiritual voice for his generation. Best known as a singer and songwriter, Cohen entered the music industry relatively late and was first a poet, a solitary vocation that suited the personality of the shy and frequently depressed boy from Montreal. But Cohen, who struggled with stage fright even at the height of his career, went on to record some of the 20th century’s most critically acclaimed, if not always commercially lucrative, songs. They include So Long, Marianne and Suzanne — named after two of the many women who became his muses — and the religiously intoned, frequently covered Hallelujah. Born into a prosperous Jewish family that had founded synagogues in Canada, Cohen would be hailed as one of the all-time literary greats in his native country. Montreal lowered flags to half-mast on Thursday on the announcement of his death. "No other poet’s music...
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