"You Want It Darker" (Leonard Cohen) - Lyric Interpretation

First, may I say, it is absolutely staggering to me that a song lyric of this depth even exists. I have fairly strong opinions regarding my interpretation of this set of lyrics, but I'm hoping to get input from other folks before sharing them. For me, the song conjures up connections as disparate as Elie Wiesel and "The Poseidon Adventure". Opinions? Thoughts?

If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord

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
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame

They’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame

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

Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord

 

It is brilliant as is the entire album. Did it miss the deadline to be considered for the Grammy this year? If so I hope it gets album of the year next go round.

It goes without saying I suppose that it is addressed to god and a mediation on mortality

 

Okay I'll be the first one - to me lyrics are at their best when they defy interpretation - when they reach a level of meaning through poetry that is beyond what we could say with ordinary speech. And these definitely fit the bill. So yeah, they are clear to me and I can't tell you what they mean. There are levels of meaning in every line. on a superficial level I think he's writing about being ready to die, and putting his life in context of having had it pretty good compared to others, but really even that degrades the meaning just saying that much. Are the million candles in a Russian Orthodox Church and did the love never come to the people who put up the candles or did it never come to Jesus himself or were the candles simply too bright? You have to let the music of the words tell you.

 

"A million candles burning for the help that never comes" is the line that brought Elie Wiesel's story of rabbis in Auschwitz putting God "on trial" for His inaction during The Holocaust to my mind. I feel like Cohen is putting forward a similar charge for all the horrors that continue (even seem to intensify) in 2016.

Part of what I love about this song is that it doesn't seem to question the existence of God, but seems to question the requirements and actions of God.

 

Actually listening to this now. Read the lyrics before I put it on.

I'm haunted right now.


I'm not sure I have the courage to listen to this and Blackstar back to back.....

 

I don't have a fully worked out reading of this song yet. It's been a little too sad to contemplate for very long since Cohen's death. I've actually had some trouble engaging with the whole record for more than a couple of listens through. It's a powerful work, just a little too hard to think about right now. But that will come.

In the meantime, here are some comments I made about the song before Cohen passed with some revisions and additions. They're a start:

First, it's worth knowing, as has been noted in many of the reviews and in many of the apprecieations of Cohen that have come out over the past month, that "Hineni" is Hebrew for "here I am." It's a common phrase in the Hebrew scriptures used in response to a call or command from God. The paradigmatic instance is Abraham's in Genesis 22 (the binding of Isaac), which happens to be one of the Torah readings for Rosh HaShannah (the first of the Jewish High Holidays, celebrated this year shortly after the song was released). It is also the first phrase and the title of a key piece of the High Holidays liturgy, sung by the chazzan just before the musaf Amidah. In the prayer, the chazzan presents himself to God in order to pray on behalf of the congregation, asking for collective forgiveness. He expresses dismay at his own unworthiness, his own sinfulness, and prays that these faults not be imputed to those on whose behalf he prays. The background vocals and the cantorial voice that come in near the end of the track are by Montreal’s Cantor Gideon Zelermyer and the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir. This was Cohen's synagogue in his youth, and he had an ongoing email correspondence with the cantor (a relatively recent transplant to Montreal) for some time before he recorded the track. You can read about the story of how Cohen came to ask Zelermeyer to contribute to the track here:

Montreal cantor collaborates on Leonard Cohen's new album »

You can hear a solo rendition of the Hineni prayer here along with a translation:

A Chazan Sings: Hineni - High Holiday Cantorial Classics »

These connections link the song with "Who By Fire," another complex and restive nod to a piece of the Jewish High Holidays liturgy.

Also: "Magnified, sanctified/Be Thy Holy Name" is taken from the opening line of the Kaddish, a prayer used to mark the end of significant section of liturgy in a Jewish service--its most famous version being the slightly truncated one given to mourners to recite at a service, and which has become a prayer of praise and affirmation recited specifically in mourning.

So, the question is, under all the allusive pressure of the above, what do we make of the statement (or is it the accusation?) of the song's title and refrain phrase? This feels like a clearer, end of life version of the idea expressed in an early Cohen song from his second album, "The Butcher," a sense that the world is made dark by its creator, and here the singer adds that His creatures are the agents of that darkening, acting it seems on a divine command. The singer seems to be saying that he's been forced under the pressure of the resulting darkness to give up or give in, to say, both "I'm out," and "I'm here, I'm ready to go." I've done my part for whatever light or dark there is in this world. I've acted under certain assumptions, but without any clear sense of what it meant that I acted one way or another. It feels as though the singer is here pushed through the unease expressed in "The Butcher" to a kind of unacceptable acceptance. The darkness of the stark track with whatever half-light the cantorial cadenza at the end does shed, another candle in the dark, swallows him as the heartbeat of bass and drums stops and the organ and choir fade to black. It feels clearer to me the more I listen, not clotted up the way "The Butcher" is, although that doesn't make it easy to take.

The song makes me a little desperate to listen to songs like "Come Healing," which express something more hopeful in the face of pain, where "troubled dust" conceals "an undivided love," and the broken heart below teaches a broken-hearted God. But of course, as this song prods and reminds us, even the healed limb finally dies. What's left is the painful reality of a spirit, hopefully a healed one (but where else does the healing leave us, anyway?) having to say, "hineni," I'm ready to go. Then it goes, as it will ready or not, saying anything, or not.

There are lullabies for suffering, but this isn't one of them. The hardest thing in the song, and I think it's the source of its power, is the tension created by its stark expressions of both refusal and acceptance. I've heard a lot of sentimentalizing about this song since Cohen's passing, but I don't think the song carries that at all. On the other hand, it's not exactly tragic either. There's something stubborn in it, a stubborn insistence that for better or worse (I'm not sure it's an affirmation), the singer will sing what it's like to be him right up until he passes into the silence and the dark.

L.

 

As Leonard was one to write and rewrite and revise his work, I wonder if these compositions were recent or some he'd been working on awhile.

Up until the end, Cohen remained a master of his craft.

 

I am definitely under the impression that much of his work on the last three albums was him finishing off things he had partially completed. In fact I'm almost positive he has said as much. In his final interview he touched on this even reciting part of a piece he was sure he wouldn't finish. The few lines were beautiful, as you'd expect.

 

Thank you for chiming in sir, I was hoping that you would.

I am somewhat surprised at how much our interpretations of the song (as incomplete as they may be) align. Cohen here is, I think, no less committed to his God than he is in "Going Home" or "Show Me the Place". But he is calling into question (or perhaps simply lamenting) God's chosen modus operandi. But acts of mass violence and genocide, are, as the lyric states "written in the scriptures" - Man is not only "granted permission to murder and to maim", often he is punished for failing to do so when so ordered.

 

If "Dear Heather" was nearly called "Old Ideas" because of the vintage of some of the material, and "Old Ideas" WAS called "Old Ideas", how many old ideas could Leonard have left in the sock drawer for his final two albums? I ask rhetorically - I do not know.

 

I'm reminded of the conversation Leonard had with Dylan. Cohen asked Bob how long it took him to write I and I. "15 minutes" was Bob's reply. Leonard's response to Dylan about Halellulah was "a couple of years," although it was actually 5 years and 80 verses. Leonard and Bob were each other's favorite from what I can tell.

Truthfully, it wouldn't have mattered to me how long he took to write material. The results were singular and well worth the wait.

 

So here's what could very well be the non-sequitur of the century, but here goes:

"The Poseidon Adventure" came out in 1972, when I was 8 years old. My guess is I first saw it on the "ABC Sunday at the Movies" in 1974 or so, when I was about 10. It made a huge impression on me (so much so that I bought and read the novel), and it has (apparently) continued to resonate with me. So when I first heard "You Want It Darker", I was reminded of Gene Hackman's character in "TPA" - Reverend Scott. In particular, his death scene - where despite being a man of religious conviction, he calls God to task for his apparent blood lust on this terrible New Year's Eve, where so many apparent innocents have died. Scott never questions God's existence, just his methods and his requirements.

Here's the scene (below). My apologies if this is just the nostalgia-induced rantings of a 10-year-old who never quite grew up.

 

It's a haunting song made even more powerful by realizing it was Leonard Cohen's final artistic statement before passing. Leonard Cohen poured his soul into this album in a way I don't really hear on his prior two albums.

I'm just very grateful he shared it with us before moving on.

 

One of the most haunting lyrics in my collection; amazing and spine chilling. Much of the album was produced whilst he was in agony with back pain and other unwanted visitations which only adds to the impact of the song. RIP

 

I'm not surprised, myself.

And I think you're right in your parenthesis that it's more than questioning or trial (as in the Wiesel episode). I don't sense anger in the song, and it's too certain of the terms of the predicament about and the only action left to the singer to be ambivalent either. The lack of anger and of self-sacrifice makes it different from the Poseidon Adventure clip--which I saw when I was 10, by the way, and it imprinted itself on my mind just like it did on yours. But it's true that a sense of decisive surrender does connect them. It may seem strange to say, but the film clip is, I think, more affirmative than the song. It affirms the Hackman's character's self-sacrificial heroism--he may question the Christian God's requirements, but he more than fulfills them in imitating Christ's sacrifice. The positive action of Cohen's song is more muted and less immediately useful to us. It's found, I think, only in the act of composing and recording the song itself. It's not a hallelujah, broken or otherwise, but he stands before the Lord of Song with what's left to sing at the real end-game, the last relationship over, at the brink of relation itself.

L.

 

I agree with the differences you raise between Scott's viewpoint and Cohen's, well said. The anger and heroism of Scott are absent in "You Want It Darker". In fact, I hear echos of Isaac's line in "The Story of Isaac" regarding his seemingly imminent sacrifice at his father's hand - "He knew I would not hide" (another way of saying "Here I am"?) I hear humbled but saddened reservation in the singer - a life spent striving to spread light and live in light, when all the time the Creator insisted on greater darkness.

 

I'll add, that my initial impression of "I'm Leaving the Table" was that of a (mostly) a love song. But upon further review, I'm thinking of it more and more as a sister song to "You Want It Darker". It seems the tread in similar waters (a few romantic inferences aside).


I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game
I don't know the people
In your picture frame
If I ever loved you or no, no
It's a crying shame if I ever loved you
If I knew your name

You don't need a lawyer
I'm not making a claim
You don't need to surrender
I'm not taking aim
I don't need a lover, no, no
The wretched beast is tame
I don't need a lover
So blow out the flame

There's nobody missing
There is no reward
Little by little
We're cutting the cord
We're spending the treasure, oh, no, no
That love cannot afford
I know you can feel it
The sweetness restored

I don't need a reason
For what I became
I've got these excuses
They're tired and lame
I don't need a pardon, no, no, no, no, no
There's no one left to blame
I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game

I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game

 

In addition to the thoughtful and insightful comments by everyone- I'd add this:

The construction of some of the lines lead me to interpret some of the meaning to Be that he is disbelieving that HIS God would allow these things from happening to the world and himself.
i.e. "IF you are......I'm......implies conditional assumptions and his choice to do different and to have different outcomes.

Two other song lyrics come to mind whenreading these- God by John Lennon and Van Morisson's Rough God Riding.

 

The "If"s do raise some interesting questions, but Leonard's whole body of work makes me think that the common notion of "MY God" vs. "THE God" is not a concept that Leonard even entertained (nor did he ever entertain the concept of God being, well, just a concept, as Lennon asserted).

While there's plenty of tongue in cheek going on in "Going Home" (Leonard assuming the role of God, to set Leonard the composer straight), there's no room there for questioning God's ultimate authority:

"But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn't have the freedom
To refuse."

"I want him to be certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision
That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
Which is to say what I have told him
To repeat."

And, from "Show Me the Place":

"Show me the place where you want your slave to go
Show me the place I've forgotten I don't know
Show me the place where my head is bendin' low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go."

Yet another song "You Want It Darker" reminds me of is Bob Dylan's "Solid Rock".

Leonard says:

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame.

Bob says:

For me, He was chastised, for me, He was hated
For me, He was rejected by a world that He created.

While Dylan's meaning seems fairly straightforward, the Cohen lyric raises the question (to me) - has God been vilified by Man - in other words been blamed for the world's ills (for Christians he was certainly crucified both BY humans and while "in the human frame" of taking on human form), or has Man's actions in the name of God caused that vilification?

 

Very interesting stuff and your last two points (quotes) are excellent illustrations of these concepts.
Made me think of an early Dylan work, from With God on Our Side:

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
That if God's on our side
He'll stop the next war

Read more: Bob Dylan - With God On Our Side Lyrics | MetroLyrics

 

This Dylan guy sounds good. I bet he has a future in music.

 

The vinyl came out today. I'm very happy with mine. It's Bernie Grundman cut, I can't tell who pressed it but it's a shockingly good record for such sparse music. Very pleased.

 

I've been thinking about this since you wrote it. I think you're right that this is an Issac song. In Genesis, Isaac doesn't say "hineni," but he does ask his father one probing question ("where's the ram for the burnt offering?"). He doesn't say anything in response to his father's answer ("God will see to the burnt offering"), but his silence then and later through the binding itself and the raising of the knife suggests he accepts it at the same time that it invites us to wonder what he was thinking (we know what he did--or didn't do). I'm no scholar of this material, but I do know that the Rabbis spent a lot of urgent time and energy trying to understand that silent acceptance. "The Butcher" and "The Story of Isaac" both suggest in their ways that Cohen felt a similar urgency at one point, and I think that urgency emerges here again in a clearer, starker way. He doesn't unravel the mystery of Isaac's acceptance, but he acts out a version of it. And he speaks Abraham's words, too. It suggests a very firm grasp on all sides of the predicament--including the fact that it can't be escaped, that its problems can't be solved.

"Predicament" is a word Cohen often used for the human condition in interviews. It's a very rich word, suggesting not only a condition, a state of existence, that is elementally real and difficult, but one that has been dictated (proclaimed, commanded, made known) before.

Written in the scriptures, not an idle tale.

L.

 

I am continually astonished at Leonard's ability to craft a line of 6 to 8 words that holds up to intense study and is open to multiple interpretations.

Dark, humorous, self-deprecating, sensual, spiritual, full of humanity. His work remains a treasure for the listener and reader.

 

My soundtrack for today's run was a double bill of Leonard's final two.

It occurred to me that between the two albums there are three songs that mention, or indirectly suggest "the table":

"Did I Ever Love You?" ("Did I ever leave you, was I ever able? And are we still leaning, across the old table?")
"Leaving the Table" ("I'm leaving the table, I'm out of the game.")
"You Want It Darker" ("If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game.")

"You Want It Darker" appears unquestionably directed to "My lord". The other two songs, at first glance, seem to be directed towards former lovers. But they just as easily could be songs addressing a higher power (with some romantic window dressing added after the fact). The table - apart from a place to eat and a place to play poker - is a place of negotiation. It occurred to me that, perhaps, these three songs touch on Leonard's lifelong "negotiation" with a higher power. The higher power that he vows to serve as a slave in one song ("Show Me the Place"), but appears to call "the butcher" in another ("Amen"). And it seems the negotiation is over, despite the lack of a "treaty", if you will. Leonard, it appears, has given up.