leonardcohenforum.com

Good afternoon,

I have realized there are two poems that may have had an influence on Leonard Cohen poetry (surely there were hundreds or thousands more, but just to signal two of them).

A few days ago I was reading Walt Whitman's "O captain my captain" and I found these verses (the final verses):

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

How not to think about the song "Democracy":

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

I thought the verses "O mighty Ship of State" looked like "Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!".
But the foundation of these verses are deeply rooted in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife!
And safe from all adversity,
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness, and love, and trust,
Prevail o’er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

(H.D. Longfellow: "The Launching of the Ship")

Another influence on Leonard Cohen:
Today I have watched the film "Cold Mountain", a movie set in the American Civil War. There is a scene in a church were the parishioners sing a hymn untitled "I'm going home". This appears to be a 19th century hymn. In fact, this is a hymn from the Sacred Harp singing, a tradition of sacred choral music that originated in New England and was later perpetuated and carried on in the American South. The name is derived from The Sacred Harp, a tunebook first published in 1844. The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers were any of the informal groups participating in four recorded Sacred Harp singing sessions in Alabama in the 20th century.
The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers sung the hymn "I'm Going Home"; this appears in the 1965 record. "Presenting Another Fa Sol La Music Album".
There is another song untited "Going Home". The song “Goin' Home” is based on Czech composer Antonin Dvorák's Symphony No. 9, specifically the Largo movement. The song was written by William Arms Fisher, who was a student of Dvorák. Fisher arranged and adapted the theme from Dvorák's Largo and wrote his own lyrics.

It is not a coincidence that the hymn and the songs have the same title, and probably it is not a coincidence the similarities between Logfellow's poem and Cohen's song, and the similarities between the verses "O shores, o bells!" and "O mighty Ship of State!"

Probably those verses had an influence on Leonard Cohen when he wrote his work.

I did not know those verses. I saw "Cold Mountain" with English subtitles and I saw the hymn was untitled "I'm going home". When the people in the church was starting to sing, the English subtitles appeared: "I'm going home, by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers", so I did a Google search and the source of what I have written above is Wikipedia. The same is to be said for William Fisher's song.

As I said, probably this was an influence on Cohen's work, but all this makes me (and you, I hope!) think about.

Hmmm, maybe (maybe not!) -- seems a bit of a stretch, but who knows? Of course, as you alluded to, Leonard was very well-read, etc., and the words/ideas of others certainly may occasionally have influenced his own work in some way or another (either consciously or unconsciously!). From time to time, he did seem to have borrowed and/or paraphrased the words of other poets/writers in his own poems and songs (but again, how much of that was deliberate versus unconscious is hard to say, and in some cases it might actually just be a coincidence!).

Thank you for the suggestions -- it's always fun to stumble upon a poem or a song that reminds one of the work of another, whether it is a case of direct influence or not.

I tend to think that such things can be impossible to determine with certainty (unless a person specifically and consciously borrows from another): just think of how many words and how much music and how much art of all sorts one reads and hears and sees in one's life (and of course, some people are exposed to much more than others, depnding on how they live their lives)! We are almost constantly being bombarded with sensory information, some of which we are consciously aware, but much of which we aren't (especially after the fact, when we have all but forgotten it). All of the things that we experience settle into the various corners and crevasses of our minds, becoming a part of the conglomeration of elements that make us who we are. Undoubtedly, morsels of what we have read and heard and seen will appear in a new form, infusing our own thoughts and ideas and creations, whether we realise it or not. Now, that is something to think about!

Cheers!