I remember watching Leonard Cohen (b. 1934) describe his songs as: "the response to what struck me as beauty ... whatever that curious emination from a being or an object or a situation or a landscape, you know. That had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone and ... I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me ... and they were alive." If It Be Your Will
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well
And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.
On the same video there were interviews with other artists.
Bono and The Edge from U2 spoke about Cohen's kind of vision
for these things:
Edge - "He's the man, for me, who like, comes down from the
mountaintop with the tablets of stone, you know, having been up
there ... talking to the angels"
Bono - "I didn't, you know, get a religious feeling from him. It
was more ... tacit, or sensual. The world was just really brightly
coloured."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) produced in his poems this
strange mysticism whereby nature could be used to signify
everything going on internally. Look at his poems In Limine
(On the Threshold) and I Limoni (The Lemons):
In Limine
Godi se il vento ch'entra nel pomario
vi rimena l'ondata della vita:
qui dove affonda un morto
viluppo di memorie,
orto non era, ma reliquiario.
Il frullo che tu senti non e' un volo,
ma il commuoversi dell'eterno grembo;
vedi che si trasforma questo lembo
di terra solitario in un crogiuolo.
Un rovello e' di qua dall'erto muro.
Se procedi t'imbatti
tu forse nel fantasma che ti salva:
si compongono qui le storie, gli atti
scancellati pel giuoco del futuro.
Cerca una maglia rotta nella rete
che ci stringe, tu balza fuori, fuggi!
Va, per te l'ho pregato - ora la sete
mi sara' lieve, meno acre la ruggine ...
On the Threshold (my loose translation)
Enjoy the wind when it enters the orchard for it may carry back to you life's tidal surge
here in this dead sinking
tangle of memories,
this garden which is actually a reliquary.
This rhythm you hear is not flight,
it's the movement of the eternal womb;
watch this relegated strip of land
transform into a crucible.
You may see as you move forward
that behind the wall
there she is raging,
the phantom who will save you:
here are made histories
and acts which erase futures.
Look for a hole in the net
that has us bound so tight,
break through and flee from it!
Go, I've prayed this for you -
now my thirst won't be so bad,
my resentment not so bitter.
I Limoni
Vedi, in questi silenzi in cui le cose
s'abbandonano e sembrano vicine
a tradire il lore ultimo segreto,
talora ci si aspetta
di scoprire uno sbaglio di Natura,
il punto morto del mondo, l'anello che non tiene,
il filo da disbrogliare che finalmente ci metta
nel mezzo di una verita.
Lo sguardo fruga d'intorno,
la mente indaga accorda disunisce
nel profumo che dilaga
quando il giorno piu' languisce.
Sono i silenzi in cui si vede
in ogni ombra umana che si allontana
qualche disturbata Divinita.
Ma l'illusione manca e ci riporta il tempo
nelle citta rumorose dove l'azzurro si mostra
soltanto a pezzi, in altro, tra le cimase.
La pioggia stanca la terra, di poi; s'affolta
il tedio dell'inverno sulle case,
la luce si fa avara - amara l'anima.
Quando un giorno da un malchiuso portone
tra gli alberi di una corte
ci si mostrano i gialli dei limoni;
e il gelo del curoe si sfa,
e in petto ci scrosciano
le loro canzoni
le trombe d'oro della solarita.
The Lemons (translated by Jonathan Galassi)
See in these silences where things
give over and seem on the verge of betraying
their final secret,
sometimes we feel we're about
to uncover an error in Nature,
the still point of the world, the link that won't hold,
the thread to untangle that will finally lead
to the heart of a truth.
The eye scans its surroundings,
the mind inquires aligns divides
in the perfume that gets diffused
at the day's most languid.
It's in these silences you see
It's in these silences you see
in every fleeting human
shadow some disturbed Divinity.
But the illusion fails, and time returns us
to noisy cities where the blue
is seen in patches, up between the roofs.
The rain exhausts the earth then;
winter's tedium weighs the houses down,
the light turns miserly - the soul bitter.
'Till one day through a half-shut gate
in a courtyard, there among the trees,
we can see the yellow of the lemons;
and the chill in the heart
melts, and deep in us
the golden horns of sunlight
pelt their songs.
I'm no mystic
but it seems if you watch
and listen
when life is still,
in those moments
which stop you,
you may just find life's secrets.
We don't stop long enough.
We get back to business
and schedules
and memos
and forget what we saw.
Yet we encounter again
in short glimpses
through courtyard fences
a different life going on
in our midst
outside of our categories
which brings our deadened spirits
to life
and it sounds like 10,000 trumpets
are playing
and we're suddenly
before the throne
of the invisible God.
I want to be open to life like this!
I don't worship by looking at creation much.
I don't argue for creationism, nor the existence of God
by the apparent design in nature,
because nature is also full of cruelty
and ambiguity and natural selection
which speaks of godlessness and godforsakenness too.
I think God is met in people,
and the meaning for life found in relationships.
But religious particulars aside
life is brightly coloured
and one must respond.
