Who Wants It Darker? Cohen and Theodicy

If this is so, then Cohen would seem to be acknowledging human responsibility for at least part of the darkness of the world. We are not blind puppets. WE kill the flame of life in others with a free will. Man is a wolf to man, according to the proverb. A man who accuses God …

The Hebrew Bible offers us many sharp debates between humanity and God: between God and Job, between God and Moses, and between God and Abraham. Very much in this tradition is Leonard Cohen’s song You Want It Darker from the album of the same name (Cohen; 2016). In this song, Cohen takes a dialogic, even agonistic approach to the problem of evil and its relation to the divine. The divine-human dialogue here is one of mutual confrontation and accusation yet proceeds in strange harmony of interchange and mutual identity. Each speaker is, from some standpoint, entangled in the other even as each defines its own stance. Divine and human standpoints merge in their difference in a tense yet powerfully poetic form of play. This poetic play may be, for Cohen, the one language adequate to register the complexity of our entanglement with God and God’s entanglement with us. I will proceed to illustrate this by a close reading of the song.

We begin as follows: “If you are the dealer, let me out of the game/If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame/If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame, you want it darker we kill the flame.” Here, we have a dialogue between ‘I’ and ‘you’ in which ‘you’ does not speak. ‘I’ addresses ‘you’ as absent, yet every absence is a presence of the one not there. Plus, the form of the dialogue is interrogative. ‘I’ is addressing questions to you which ‘you’ is, presumably, not answering. The questions seem to be a mix of humility and challenge. Are these questions challenging? Are they confrontational? Might ‘I’ be rejecting ‘you’? Is ‘you’ being provoked to a response? Cohen has referred before to the ‘holy game of poker’ in ‘Stranger Song’ (Cohen; 1967), and here we seem to be addressing the dealer in that game, the one who hands out the cards. As the game is holy, the you here would seem to be God. If God, the holy one of Israel, is the one dealing the cards, then ‘I’ declines to play. ‘I’ folds and hands in his cards. We may think here of Ivan Karamazov, who declines his ticket to the world to come in protest against the suffering of children. Yet we are in the game whether we wish it or not. In the divine/human game, even refusing to play is a move in the struggle. The game is the entire context of our actions AND of our inaction. We play the holy game of poker regardless. Yet ‘I,’ on the assumption of ‘you’ being a healer, also puts his need before the other. ‘I’ is broken and lame. If ‘you’ are the healer, then I am needy, and indeed, ‘I’ may be lame and unable to walk on my own. God, perhaps, sustains the very possibility of the human stance of protest; we are in the game whether willingly or not, for whether we affirm or reject the cards given, we do not deal with them.

A protest may be groundless, indeed foolish, in the face of divine glory and salvation. Who would stand in judgment of God and bandy words with him? Who would put his lameness above the one who heals? This thought is intensified. If ‘thine’ is the glory, ‘mine’ must be the shame. Now, we have possessives in place of personal pronouns. Something belongs to ‘I’ and to ‘you’. This is, at this point, unshared and perhaps incommunicable. What one must be, the other is not. If glory belongs to ‘you,’ shame belongs to ‘I’. They do not share glory, and they do not share shame. It is a contest for who possesses which, and the form of the question implies that ‘I’ knows the shame can only be his. If the glory of ‘you’ is final, then the protest ends in abasement for the person who lost the contest. We might think of an athletic contest here or a trial where one wins and one loses. We are surely meant to think of Job or of Jacob wrestling with the angel. If one interlocutor is justified and glorified, the other is abased.

Yet, what does the contest concern? This will emerge gradually. We get here, even in the agon between ‘I’ and ‘you,’ a peculiar unity and harmony. ‘I’ labels himself by the divine pronoun when addressing ‘you’ as another. Identity is here asserted in difference. ‘He who’ is confronts another ‘I am’ in the human interlocutor. Plus, I and you co-operate, knowingly or not. ‘You’ want it darker, yet ‘we’ kill the flame. Here, we get the first clear reference to a collective. Is ‘we’ the human we? Is it the divine plurality evoked in the first verses of Genesis? Is ‘we’ a collectivity formed of ‘you and I’? If so, both operate in synergy. One wants it darker, and the other kills the flame. To anticipate, if we take ‘we’ as the human collectivity then a darkness in the human images a darkness in God and, indeed, responds to this darkness. As the one demands more darkness, the other provides it. If this is so, then Cohen would seem to be acknowledging human responsibility for at least part of the darkness of the world. We are not blind puppets. WE kill the flame of life in others with a free will. Man is a wolf to man, according to the proverb. A man who accuses God must also accuse himself before God for the darkness HE has brought into the world. Yet God is also the one who wants it darker. Why? If finite humans bring forth darkness out of their blindness and cruelty, why does God not only permit but also WANT this darkness? One thing to note is that ‘I’ here does not seem to distinguish himself from ‘we’. ‘I’ as is responsible for ‘we’ as ‘we’ is for ‘I’.

We then get a chorus: “Sanctified, glorified be thy holy name/vilified crucified in the human frame/a million candles burning for the help that never came/you want it darker…” There is much to ponder here. The first line comes from the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. In life or in death, the name is glorious and sanctified. Yet this is not all. God has a name, and Adam does, too. Indeed, like God, Adam names as he is named though, unlike God, he does not name himself. The glory of the name is reflected in his name as he is in the image of and likeness of God. Yet, in the ‘human frame,’ the name is vilified. It is slandered. This may refer to destroying someone’s good name of course but when we add ‘crucified’ the image gets even darker. The frame here may be the cross of Christ as well as the human body or even the skeleton. We may also think of a picture frame which surrounds an image. This frame, the body or its skeletal structure, surrounds the image of God, whose name is sanctified in the courts of heaven but blasphemed on earth. God in the human, God in the neighbor or stranger, God as Christ even, is slandered and put to death. When we see the flame, we snuff it out. When we see God in the human frame, we reject the vision in the most final and irrevocable way: by slander and murder. It is not only divine help that fails to come for the burning candles but human help as well. Perhaps we ‘sanctify’ the holy name when we address its glory but refuse to see it in the weakness and need of the other. We cannot see God in the picture frame, the God we ‘sanctify’ while at the very same time, our violence and pride blasphemes its image.

Then we get the conclusion of this chorus: the speaker says, “Hineni, Hineni, I am ready, my lord.” ‘Here I am” (hineni) is uttered by a number of biblical characters, most memorably Abraham when he is called to sacrifice his son Isaac. Hineni puts one radically at the disposal of some other, here God. When one is called one answers ‘here I am’ in expectation of something being asked. This was the stance of Abraham when he was called to leave his family and its gods behind and follow God into an undefined open futurity. This futurity is openness to a question that is yet to be asked. To that extent, we might even consider this a stance of trust and faith. One says ‘Here I am’ to the other before one even knows what the summons or the question is about. Of course, one COULD put the emphasis in ‘here I am’ on the I. This turns acceptance of the other into a challenge: here ‘I’ am, but where are ‘you’? I am here, but you are absent! As for ‘I am ready,’ it is the response of Isaac to Abraham. The singer is ready for something in connection with one he names ‘lord’. This might, on a personal level, be Cohen’s own looming death. This might also be readiness for a new revelation or a renewed faith. Every poet is ‘ready’ in this sense for what new, what other, the muse may bring. The poet, like Abraham, is open to surprises! Of course, one might also be ready for a fight like the patriarch Jacob! ‘Here for what’ and ‘ready for what’ are left suitably undefined, for these states are existential and universal, not private and particular. We are here for something undefined and ready for something undefined. We are not, say, ready for dinner!

Cohen told us the story of Abraham and Isaac in a song by that name. (Cohen; 1969) It is apposite to what we are saying here. The typical reader is shocked by the story of Isaac’s sacrifice but this reaction may well be hypocritical. The Hebrews knew well that many people were quite willing to sacrifice the firstborn to those gods who demanded it. In the Story of Isaac, Cohen sets this murderous will toward our own children in the context of the Vietnam War, just as Wilfred Owen had, before him, situated the story of Isaac in the context of WW1. When an ideology like communism or capitalism is at stake, we can’t wait to sacrifice Isaac to whatever Baal demands it. We build altars “to sacrifice these children.” We did not, like Abraham, see either the heights or the depths. We were not there before, the song says, when Abraham experienced the terrible ascent of Mount Moriah yet also saw, with trembling hands, the beauty of the word. We were not tempted by demonic evil or transcendent good. Our altars are built in the name of ‘schemes’ which are not ‘visions’. WE sacrifice Isaac to base utilitarian projects grounded in the lust for power or even greed for acquisition. Something in US responds to the darkness of killing the child. Agamemnon had ‘no choice’ in the killing of Iphigeneia, yet he fell to it with a will.[1] This hatred for one’s own ‘generation’ is powerfully conveyed by Owen in his poem ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’. When God offers the lamb in place of Isaac, the divine gift is rejected. When asked to sacrifice the ‘ram of pride’ instead of his son Abraham, he refuses: “But the old man would not so but slew his son/ and half the seed of Europe one by one.” (Owen; 1967) Communities put up signs saying they love their children, but where collective egotism is at stake, there is plenty of evidence that we do not.

We continue: “There’s a lover in the story, but the story’s still the same/there’s a lullaby for suffering and a paradox to blame/it’s written in the scriptures and it’s not some idle claim/you want it darker we kill the flame.” The ‘story’ here is presumably the story of Isaac, though it may be the story of the Jewish people as well. This story, like many good stories, has a lover. This may be true in a couple of senses. Abraham obviously loves his son, and indeed, it is in the story of Isaac that the Hebrew word for love is first uttered. Yet if we take the word ‘lover’ as implying an erotic relation, the lover is God who loves Israel, his bride. Here we are in the erotic space of the Song of Solomon.  The story, however, is the same. Again, we may take this into consideration in a couple of ways. “The story’s still the same” may indicate the abidingness of the covenant and, indeed, the perpetual, always renewing relevance of the story of Isaac. How often do the generations repeat such archetypal narrative patterns unknown to themselves? However, Cohen hedges here by inserting the word ‘but’. This is lightly but firmly deflationary. Abraham loves Isaac. God loves Israel, yet the story still ends in the flames of the holocaust (perhaps evoked on the cover of the album by the smoke ascending from Cohen’s hand?). I am unsure what to make of a lullaby for suffering’. Perhaps this is the consolation of song that lulls us to sleep, though the sleep may well be that of death.

Yet, there is a “paradox to blame”. This is the paradoxical relationship of light to dark or God to the world. God seems to abandon the world, and the world seems to abandon God. The divorce is mutual, as in Cohen’s 1979 song “The Ballad of the Absent Mare”. (Cohen; 1079) Yet the two remain mysteriously united even in this negation and separation. ‘You’ want it darker, and WE kill the flame. Cohen was probably more fluent in Cabbalistic speculation than I will ever be, but God, we learn from the Cabbalists, contains the polarity of a dark, unmanifest nature and a light-revealed nature. Both natures are implicated in the divine presence in the world. ‘You’ may want it darker as that may be, for us, the necessary backdrop for seeing the light. It is through a crack in the world that the light gets through. It is by passing through the darkness of Mount Moriah that Abraham can tremble with the beauty of the Word. We need not think there is any discursive mediation of this ‘paradox’. It does not have an ‘explanation’: God’s ways are not justified by any immanent reason. Here the Jewish standpoint turns against, say, Hegel’s optimism that freedom and reason must emerge from finite evil. Cohen offers us the paradoxical truths of experience over speculative mediation. Still, as there is dark, there is light, and it is against the darkness that the light shines. There is terror and horror, and there is the beauty of the word: there is the dark, unmanifest God, even the demonic God, and the God of light. Each side of this polarity is essential to the other. Perhaps ‘you’ wants it darker because only by pushing deeper into the darkness can the light fully emerge. This, perhaps, is what is ‘written in the scriptures’, though the singer gives us no clear answer.

We then get the following stanza: “They’re lining up the prisoners, and the guards are taking aim/I struggled with some demons they were middle class and tame/didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim/ you want it darker…” Our attention is drawn immediately to the second line as it is so arresting. What are the demons referred to here? I suspect they are the kind of demons that haunt a middle-class careerist like Eichmann. Eichmann had no visions, only schemes. They were schemes of the most banal and ordinary sort concerning social status, career, and the simple moving around of trains. Perhaps these are Cohen’s demons as well, centering on the banalities of fame, temptation, addiction, or money. These demons are tame, though; under the right circumstances, they may be just as deadly as open villainy. Yet the speaker, ‘I,’ confronts the dark thought that if God has indeed withdrawn from history and from his chosen people, then everything is permitted. If there is no judge, no standard, no authority, if there is no judgment, then humans are responsible for nothing and no one outside their own will. This will may be good or it may be tyrannous as the subject pleases. We may enhance the flame or kill it, but it is answerable only to ourselves for what we do. Is the speaker wondering whether he has restrained himself from murder and mayhem for nothing? If God does not care, why should he? Certain existentialists, of course, are prepared to confront the necessity of this total freedom and its implications. Sartre, for instance, told us long ago that existence radically precedes essence. The speaker, though, seems noncommittal. Does he desire such permission? Does he merely note the fact of it? Does he hold to the good in spite of it? We are not really told.

The end of the song is simply the beginning. The discussion turns back on itself. We get the first verse repeated. The repetition may be for emphasis or to underline the irresolvable nature of the discussion. We end with the same questions we demand. Do we continue to play the game? Are we broken and lame? Is the glory ours or the shame? Is it even a competition between ourselves and God? Must one win only at the other’s expense? In the end we are left waiting for the help, or the love, or the word that has not yet come. We are here, ready for the world to come, whatever shape it may take.

 

 

References

Cohen, Leonard. Recent Songs (Columbia Records, 1979)

Cohen, Leonard. Songs From a Room (Columbia Records, 1969)

Cohen, Leonard. Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia Records, 1967)

Cohen, Leonard. You Want it Darker (Columbia Records, 2016)

Owen, Wilfred. Collected Poems (Chatto and Windus, 1967, London).

[1] Cohen sings: “I will kill you if I must I will help you if I can”. He then reverses the line: “I will help you if I must I will kill you if I can.” The violence that is first accepted as a harsh necessity later becomes the default choice. The man who regards killing as a regrettable necessity will come to regard helping as a regrettable necessity once he is sufficiently habituated to violence. He will only ‘help’ when he comes to the limit of his power to harm.

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