Category Archives: Leonard Cohen

Pico Iyer’s Leonard Cohen Lyrics Correction

Pico Iyer, who authored one of the most insightful Leonard Cohen interviews ever published,¹  took keyboard in hand to write to The New York Review of Books about The ‘Stoned Gallantry’ of Leonard Cohen, Dan Chiasson’s book review of I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons that appeared in the February 21, 2013 issue:

To the Editors:

There are many things I might quarrel with—and some I would applaud—in Dan Chiasson’s essay on Leonard Cohen [“The ‘Stoned Gallantry’ of Leonard Cohen,” NYR, February 21]. But just to stick to the opening section for now, the “most famous lyrics” of “his most famous song,” as the article calls them, speak not of the “holy dark” but the “holy dove.”

Cohen is more than capable of singing about the “holy dark,” no doubt, but the dove is a recurrent and central image in his work, not least because he once called his supporting band “The Army.” Perhaps a poet who’s been publishing for forty-seven years deserves a slightly closer reading?

Dan Chiasson’s Reply To Pico Iyer’s Correction

I’d misheard those lyrics for years, it seems. I’m grateful to Pico Iyer for so many things he’s written; now I owe him thanks for this important correction.

Both Pico Iyer’s letter and Dan Chiasson’s response were published by The New York Review of Books at Leonard Cohen’s Holy Dove.

DrHGuy’s Assessment Of The Holy Kerfuffle

The Iyer-Chiasson call and response brings up several points:²

1. Dan Chiasson did make a significant error, mistakenly replacing “holy dove” in Leonard Cohen’s lyrics with “holy dark.” Now, lyrics are misheard frequently enough to support several web sites of the KissThisGuy.com sort. And, in the course of publishing a few thousand posts about Leonard Cohen, I’ve certainly misquoted his lyrics on occasion. If, however, I were writing an essay for The New York Review of Books, the premier US journal of literary pontification, I would like to think I would double check – or at least Google-check my references and quotations.

2. Am I the only one who assumed The New York Review of Books had fact checkers on its staff to prevent this kind of faux pas?

3. Does Pico Iyer, a sophisticated and empathic writer, think it necessary to point out to the readership of The New York Review of Books that it is important to carefully and accurately peruse the words of a poet or a songwriter or is that line about “Perhaps a poet who’s been publishing for forty-seven years deserves a slightly closer reading” just a sardonic embellishment to emphasize that he discovered an error?

4, OK, does anyone believe that The New York Review of Books would have printed that same letter of correction if it had been sent by, say a psychiatrist who runs a couple of Cohencentric web sites instead of by a well known writer? If so, please contact me immediately, because I can offer you a great deal on timeshares for Leonard Cohen’s Montreal home while he’s away on tour.

5. Given that the mistaken lyric was part of Chiasson’s argument made in the following context,

In another vein, “Hallelujah,” his most famous song, played at the end of Shrek as the two computer-generated ogres embraced. This was an odd choice, considering the fact that the most famous lyrics from that song are “remember when I moved in you/the holy dark was moving too”: I don’t need to picture Shrek and his girl in that kind of detail.

it seems pertinent to at least acknowledge that the Rufus Wainwright version of Hallelujah, which appeared on the Shrek: Music from the Original Motion Picture album but not in the movie itself, does include the line, “The holy dark was moving too.”

John Cale’s rendition of Hallelujah, which appears in the Shrek movie but not on the album, uses Cohen’s original lyrics, “The holy dove was moving too.” Still, it seems possible that Wainwright’s “holy dark” could be the source of Mr Chiasson’s belief in the holy dark and is, in any case, worthy of mention although neither Iyer or Chiasson do so.

6. Finally, let’s take another look at the context in which that error appeared. Mr Chiasson wrote,

In another vein, “Hallelujah,” his most famous song, played at the end of Shrek as the two computer-generated ogres embraced. This was an odd choice, considering the fact that the most famous lyrics from that song are “remember when I moved in you/the holy dark was moving too”: I don’t need to picture Shrek and his girl in that kind of detail.

About his premise, “‘Hallelujah,’ his most famous song, played at the end of Shrek as the two computer-generated ogres embraced” – I don’t think so. In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I don’t own a copy of Shrek, and since no one is paying me to write this, I’m not willing to purchase a Shrek DVD for verification, but the YouTube clips that follow are congruent with my recall of the movie.

Hallelujah plays in this embrace-free scene from Shrek:

That final scene featuring the ogre-on-ogre embrace has different music:

Sort of changes things, eh?

No kidding, I really thought The New York Review of Books had fact checkers.

1. Leonard Cohen: Several Lifetimes Already: Shambhala Sun, September, 1998 [↩]
2. Note: While it has little to do with the issue at hand, interested readers are welcome to review my own post on Dan Chiasson’s essay [↩]