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April 22, 2005
A Nobel Prize for Cohen?
CBC host leads charge to have poet, singer honored.
JANICE ARNOLD CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS
What began as "a bit of a joke" – the nomination
of Leonard Cohen for the Nobel Prize in literature – is starting
to look like a serious campaign after the Blue Metropolis International
Literary Festival.
Paul Kennedy, host of the CBC Radio program Ideas, formally
launched what he hopes will become a groundswell of support for
the Montreal-born poet, songwriter, novelist and singer-songwriter
to take his place beside the likes of Rudyard Kipling, William Butler
Keats and T.S. Eliot.
Support for Cohen's nomination was declared unanimous by Kennedy
after a show of hands among the large audience at a March 2 evening
session at the festival titled A Nobel for Leonard.
Kennedy said he has not spoken to Cohen, but that won't stop him
from making a submission to the Nobel committee in Stockholm.
Also making the pitch for Cohen on the panel were Governor General-Award-winning
poet George Elliott Clarke, jazz singer Karen Young, John Abbott
College English teacher Edward Palumbo and poet/playwright Michel
Garneau, who has translated Cohen's work into French.
Clarke made the most impassioned plea for Cohen's elevation to the
literary pantheon.
Like Bob Dylan, Clarke said, Cohen, 70, is a troubadour whose poetry
"bridges the divide between romanticism and modernism"
and "speaks to the heart as well as the head." Cohen is
able to express universal themes in a language that is suited to
both reading and singing, which is not easy, Clarke said.
'The divine is always in his work, in tandem with the physical and
the vulgar.... This tension gives rise to a sense of the absurd,
the absurdity of life itself."
Clarke noted the influence of the Hebrew scriptures on Cohen, especially
of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, books that speak of both the longing
for the divine and everyday realities.
He compared Cohen to the late poet A.M. Klein for his ability to
capture bilingual and multicultural Montreal, and cited Cohen's
knack for "combining the Mediterranean and the Laurentian."
(Cohen has spent a great deal of time in Greece.)
Cohen is, above all, romantic, even "chivalrous," according
to Clarke. Women, at least in his ideal, Clarke said, are a conduit
to the divine. He is in awe of "the power, majesty and –
not equality – but superiority, of women."
Kennedy, 53, said he became hooked on Cohen in high school, when
a teacher read Cohen's "Suzanne" in class. The fact that
a Canadian, one who was a "rock star" no less, could be
suitable for an English literature class was thrilling to him.
"I understood Leonard Cohen was something very special. He
has had a great influence on my life, and colored the way I look
at the world," Kennedy said.
Cohen's "genius," Kennedy said, is finding new audiences
in each generation. In fact, he compared him to Homer, who was also
a poet and a singer, for his universality.
Kennedy recalled how, through his university years, he had to "struggle
to convince my friends that Cohen is not depressing" and actually
represents "a prime example of Canadian humor."
Palumbo contended Cohen's uninhibited novel about sexual obsession,
Beautiful Losers, was underrated when it was published in
the 1960s. Palumbo hailed the novel for its bringing together of
"the vulgar and the sacred," as well as its evocation
of Montreal. (Cohen, incidentally, turned down a Governor General's
Award for the novel.)
Young discovered Cohen as a Grade 10 student when she took a bus
into Montreal to see a black-and-white movie about him "and
fell madly in love." To this day, she finds great meaning in
his poetry.
Garneau was the only panelist to curb the enthusiasm a tad. He said
that giving writers prizes is "a little dangerous" because
their creativity may suffer or they may retreat into obscurity.
He also questioned whether Cohen really wants a Nobel.
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