The length of lines becomes quite erratic, with some much longer than others and necessitating a kind of anacrusic babble to fit them into any kind of stress pattern, e.g. The variation between expected and sung metres continues throughout the song, and anacrusis (jamming in extra syllables) becomes even more pronounced. used to think | I was | some kind of | gyp-sy boy| ![]() “ | ov-er to the | win-dow, | my little | dar-ling|. ![]() Oddly enough, this actually tightens up the stress pattern by imposing 4 stresses on each line: used to | think I was | some kind of | gyp-sy boy|īut, when Cohen sings the lyric, he drops a stress in L1 by racing onto “window,” and also rushes the 3rd line by taking the stress off the expected “think”, and putting it onto the next word “I”. “ | ov-er | to the | win-dow, | my little | dar-ling|.Written, V1 seems to fall into a pattern of lines alternating between To be frank, in the verses, the stress and metre are all over the place.īoth as a poem and as a song, the lyrics contain a fair sprinkling of odd, un-metred words (the technical term is anacrusis).Īnd what seems the natural distribution of beats in the written lyric is not always followed when Cohen sings it – I’ve never forgotten your love and your beauty. This old body has given up, just as yours has too, and the eviction notice is on its way any day now. I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand. Cohen, also suffering from leukaemia, and with just over 3 months to live himself, sent her an e-mail that was read to her at her bedside: Marianne Ihlen died of leukaemia in hospital in Oslo on 28 July 2016, aged 81. A photo of her appears on the back cover of his second album, Songs from a Room. Hence the probable farewell implied by the lyric.Ĭohen dedicated his third volume of poetry, Flowers for Hitler, to Marianne, and she directly inspired many of his other songs and poems. The song So Long, Marianne came out on Cohen’s first album Songs of Leonard Cohen in 1967, by which time they were effectively in an open relationship and drifting slowly apart – though they always remained friends. She accepted, and they lived together all through the 1960s, spending time in New York, Montreal, and Hydra. ![]() Later, he asked her and her son, Axel, to live with him in Montreal. Some months later, he drove with her from Greece to Oslo so that she could finalise her divorce. He called her the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and they started living together. Cohen, standing in the doorway with the sun behind him, asked: “Would you like to join us, we’re sitting outside?” One day Marianne was in the village shop to buy bottled water and milk. Her husband, the Norwegian writer Axel Jensen, had recently left her and their six-month-old son alone on the island. The song was inspired by Marianne Jensen, born Marianne Ihlen, whom Cohen met on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. It has one of those choruses that, coming after an extended dominant cadence, both prepares and invites audiences to join in. 7th 2016), there has been a resurgence of interest in his songs, and many of them are now staples of acoustic sessions. Follow Bob Leslie is an Independent Scottish Songwriter, Singer, and Recording Artist
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