Book of Mercy , livre ebook

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65 pages

English

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Description

The poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions. Internationally celebrated for his writing and his music, Leonard Cohen is revered as one of the greatest writers, performers, and most consistently daring artists of the last hundred years.

Informations

Publié par	Canongate Books
Date de parution	03 octobre 2019
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781786896872
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Leonard Cohen began his artistic career in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies . He went on to publish twelve more books, including two celebrated novels, and gained worldwide recognition as an iconic singer-songwriter. He released fourteen studio albums, including three in the last years of his life when he also became one of the most acclaimed arena-performing artists in the world.
Among his numerous honours, he is the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 2010, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2011, the inaugural New England PEN Award for Excellence in Lyrics 2012, the 2016 Juno Awards for Song of the Year and Album of the Year, and he has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the US Songwriters Hall of Fame. He died in November 2016.
Also by Leonard Cohen
POETRY
Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956)
The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)
Flowers for Hitler (1964)
Parasites of Heaven (1966)
Selected Poems: 1956–1968 (1968)
The Energy of Slaves (1972)
Death of a Lady’s Man (1978)
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)
Book of Longing (2006)
The Flame (2018)
FICTION
The Favourite Game (1963)
Beautiful Losers (1966)

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
canongate.co.uk
Published in Canada in 1984 by McLelland & Stewart Ltd, 75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 2P9
This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Leonard Cohen, 1984
The right of Leonard Cohen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 686 5 eISBN 978 1 78689 687 2
for my teacher
CONTENTS
I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
II
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Index of Opening Phrases
I
1
I STOPPED TO LISTEN, BUT he did not come. I began again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and didn’t work at all. Much time, years, were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.
2
W HEN I LEFT THE KING I began to rehearse what I would say to the world: long rehearsals full of revisions, imaginary applause, humiliations, edicts of revenge. I grew swollen as I conspired with my ambition, I struggled, I expanded, and when the term was up, I gave birth to an ape. After some small inevitable misunderstanding, the ape turned on me. Limping, stumbling, I fled back to the swept courtyards of the king. ‘Where is your ape?’ the king demanded. ‘Bring me your ape.’ The work is slow. The ape is old. He clowns behind his bars, imitating our hands in the dream. He winks at my official sense of urgency. What king, he wants to know. What courtyard? What highway?
3
I HEARD MY SOUL SINGING behind a leaf, plucked the leaf, but then I heard it singing behind a veil. I tore the veil, but then I heard it singing behind a wall. I broke the wall, and I heard my soul singing against me. I built up the wall, mended the curtain, but I could not put back the leaf. I held it in my hand and I heard my soul singing mightily against me. This is what it’s like to study without a friend.
4
A FTER SEARCHING AMONG the words, and never finding ease, I went to you, I asked you to gladden my heart. My prayer divided against itself, I was ashamed to have been deceived again, and bitterly, in the midst of loud defeat, I went out myself to gladden the heart. It was here that I found my will, a fragile thing, starving among ferns and women and snakes. I said to my will, ‘Come, let us make ourselves ready to be touched by the angel of song,’ and suddenly I was once again on the bed of defeat in the middle of the night, begging for mercy, searching among the words. With the two shields of bitterness and hope, I rose up carefully, and I went out of the house to rescue the angel of song from the place where she had chained herself to her nakedness.