\"With my jingle in your brain, Allow the Bridge to arch again\" How are we to understand Leonard Cohenâs plea? Who speaks to whom in this oeuvre spanning six decades? In search of an answer to this question this study considers the different guises or âdemonsâ that the Canadian singer-songwriter adopts. The countless roles assumed by Cohenâs personas are not some innocent game, but strategies in response to the sometimes conï¬icting demands of a âlife in artâ: they serve as masks that represent the performerâs face and state of mind in a heightened yet detached way. In and around the artistic work they are embodied by different guises and demons: image (the poser), artistry (the writer and singer), alienation (the stranger and the conï¬dant), religion (the worshipper, prophet, and priest), and power (the powerful and powerless). Ultimately, Cohenâs artistic practice can be read as an attempt at forging interpersonal contact. The wide international circulation of Cohenâs work has resulted in a partial severing with the context of its creation. Much of it has ï¬ltered through the public image forged by the artist and his critics in concerts, interviews, and reï¬ective texts. Less a biography than a reception studyâsupplemented with extensive archival research, unpublished documents, and interviews with colleagues and privileged witnessesâit sheds new light on the dynamic of a comprehensive body of work spanning a period of sixty years. Published in English.
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