Take This Waltz...where?

[Tchocolatl]

[cdb]

This link might help those who'd like to see the poem and the lyric side by side without flicking between pages and CD booklets.

http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/waltz.htm

[Tchocolatl]

Yep. If we are to classify subjects, I propose that we open a Take this Waltz section. Maybe we can enter sub-sections for every song. It is a half-joke. As I agree that it is much more comfortable to navigate with the news section as it is now, and the bla-bla-bla - as interesting it can be - in Everything else.

And also, click on the image above, if you want to be directed toward an interesting review of the song.

[O'Kane]

The bit of 'Take this Waltz' that always stuck with me is this:

'there's an attic where children are playing,

where I've got to lie down with you soon,

in a dream of hungarian lanterns. . .


and there's a bit I can't remember, but the key line is 'take this waltz, with it's 'I'll never forget you, you know'.

That sounds like the ardent earnestness of an adolescent watching his/her first love break up. Which is an interesting contrast with the evocation of maturity, and the necessities of maturity, in the opening lines of the verse.

I suppose it all comes down to the LC line about how love is the world's excuse for being ugly.

[Tchocolatl]

I bring the all piece here, O'Kane, cause your memory seems to play trick with you. And, OK, also because it is one of my very favourite.

Not that I feel it does matter in regard of the feelings the song bring to you as it is often very personal.

As for me "ugly" is certainly not the word I would have choose for that piece. I find it so beautiful, it is almost painful.

***

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years

There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz ...

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is

[Fljotsdale]

My word! That was some analysis! Just read it.

I want to take bits out of it and quote 'em at you, because they are so good, lol!
But since you can all read...

[Tchocolatl]

One of my very favourite analysis also, this one. I would like you to bring your preferred bits.

[Fljotsdale]

Ok, dear.

This is one bit, Tchoco:

Despite its poeticism, it never collapses into sentimentality or awkward over-earnestness, and this is largely because Cohen sings it. The song needs the grind of this voice, its earthy rawness, its edge of ironic intelligence. He sets the piece low in his register, which we decode as an expression of intimacy with perhaps a trace of resignation — the ambivalence again. He delivers many of the words with that characteristic fall-off that collapses song into speech. Cohen's stubbornly vernacular pronunciation consistently collides with — recontextualizes — the poetic diction of "Take This Waltz." He sings, "where the doves go ta die," "Ah'll never forgetcha, y'know." Or he sings as he speaks, speaks as he sings, for this piece remains at once a song and a poem: a song that won't be beautifully sung and a poem that refuses to be beautifully spoken

And this is another:

The waltz doesn't simply repeat the dream of a magical Vienna, the dream of a beautiful beloved; it understands its own role in the making of the dream. Each verse, then, each excursion into the territory already mapped by the conventions of love poetry (borrowed and reconstrued by Lorca, by Cohen), is interrupted by an increasingly defined expression of the thing it is. This waltz. Take this waltz. This waltz — "with its very own breath of brandy and Death" — is not always beautiful, is sometimes ungainly. It has quatrains which aren't, it has lurchingly abbreviated links. And still, it is itself, an embodied thing, a sung gift

[Tchocolatl]

Thanks Fljots! You stressed some very interesting parts. A real pleasure to read this.

This review is so delicious I wish similar reviews (taking into account music and words) could be done more often.

Although, if I can put my two-pence, I see the meaning of word "beautiful" in a different way than she does.

For her, I guess that "beautiful" means the aesthetic usually called "beauty" by the rules in force in art at the moment she wrote the review. OK. But then in the same time she touches the very beauty of how he masters the art of "showing things in 3 D (so to speak)", and she is left with no word to express how beautiful it is - so she had to wrote pages and pages . This song is about the pain of a broken heart in many ways it can suffer, and it shows all the wounds, we can feel the pain - and it is made so beautifully as long as pain can be considered beautiful. And I think it could be, even if it is hard. Like whatever is part of life.

[Fljotsdale]

Yes. Beautifully 'unbeautiful'. Actually, I get the impression she knows that, and loves the song to bits.

[Tchocolatl]

I also have this impression from the first to the last line.

[dperrings]

This is my first post

i am posting what i think the song means. i would like to know if anyone else agrees.

my comments are added inbetween the lines of the song

Take this Waltz by Leonard Cohen

Now in vienna there’s ten pretty women
attendees at the service
There’s a shoulder where death comes to cry
people consoleing each other
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows
a church for a funeral service
There’s a tree where the doves go to die
a crucifix
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning
a women who died to young
And it hangs in the gallery of frost
the casket
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
this life that they once had together
Take this waltz with the clamp on it’s jaws
clamp-- no way to communicate now with the departed

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
he is remembering her and he wants her right their on the chair in the sitting room with the old copies of magezines.
In the cave at the tip of the lily
the flowers
In some hallways where love’s never been
in the hallways of the building
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
in bed with each other
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
a walk along the beach
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take it’s broken waist in your hand
the waltz or dance that they did together ended so it is broken

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With it’s very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging it’s tail in the sea
he is remembering there relationship and morning it and the lose of her life

There’s a concert hall in vienna
she was a singer
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
the audience
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking
her fans
They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
a picture of her that he is looking at which is hard to look (he has to climb to it) at now
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
and he is crying
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it’s been dying for years
the memory had been fading as time went by

There’s an attic where children are playing
they talked of having children together
Where I’ve got to lie down with you soon
memories of being with her / whats to be with her again
In a dream of hungarian lanterns
a dream
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I’ll see what you’ve chained to your sorrow
whats to know why see killed her self
All your sheep and your lilies of snow
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With it’s I’ll never forget you, you know!
he wont ever forget her

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz ...

And I’ll dance with you in vienna
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise
? still have not gotten this one
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
loosing himself in her memory
With the photographs there, and the moss
mementos
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
my guitar and my cross
And you’ll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
she slit her wrists
Oh my love, oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now. it’s all that there is.
all he has to give her is the memory of what they had.


David Perrings

[johnny7moons]

I've just read the article linked above - or tried to... can anyone explain to me the meaning of, "Cohen re-members the love song, the love song, by performing the ambivalence of its multiple voicings, its polyphonic traces of supplementarity, by reading contingency with his body" ?

[dperrings]

I tried reading that article and got absolutely no where with it so sorry i am of no help.

david perrings

[tomsakic]

... can anyone explain to me the meaning of, "Cohen re-members the love song, the love song, by performing the ambivalence of its multiple voicings, its polyphonic traces of supplementarity, by reading contingency with his body" ?

Ha! That's the good one. It doesn't mean quite nothing, johnny7moons. The author has probably read the work of Jacques Derrida too much. "Performance", "supplement", "contingency", "body", "multiple voicings", "ambivalence", and "polyphony" (which is the term which comes from Bakhtin) are typical words of Derridian analysis. The good (and meaningfull) example of Derridian approach to Cohen is Stephen Scobie's "The Counterfeiter Begs Forgiveness: Leonard Cohen and Leonard Cohen", from 1993 Red Deer College's Leonard Cohen Conference. Scobie tells how "decentering" in Derridian meaning is at work in Cohen, because he intentionally destroys his authorship and authorial voice, from The Energy of Slaves, till Book of Mercy, where he gives up from his voice, surrendering totally to G-d. Also, Scobie explains Derridian use of "supplement" in approachable way in his article, and uses it on Leonard's work very appropriately. There's no harmful force in his writing.
Charlene Diehl-Jones's article was given at same conference, and it's typical example of terrorizing with theory ("therorizing"). I must admit it's one of rare texts in the Canadian Poetry issue and Scobie's 2001 Writing Leonard Cohen reader I didn't read til the end, and that was two years ago, so I maybe should give it another try. [The other text I never finished was some kind of Freudian analysis of BL, which was way too much for me also. There's nothing worse in theory than when people write uncomprehensible essays full of terms from Lacan or Derrida.)