Excerpt from the chapter 'Levels and Time', from the book 'Rhythm in Modern Poetry' by author Eva Lilja
No. 55
By Leonard Cohen
You need it/ so you can take/ your slippers off the deck/ We who own you have ruled the world/ we don't like the way you dance/ And she said, I for myself/ am happy with the world/ She grabbed the collar of an executioner's jacket/ and said again/ with all her small, trembling voice,/ I for myself am happy with the world/ I don't know whether I want to kill him or not
LEONARD COHEN: THE ENERGY OF SLAVES, NO. 55
You need her o O 0
2 so you can get ooo O>
your boots off the bedspread o O oo Oo
4 We who have always ruled the world O oo O o / O o O jambe
don't like the way you dance o O o O o O jambe
6 And she said, I for one o OO / O o O >
am happy with the world o O ooo O
8 She siezed the lapel of a cut-throat o O o O o / oo Oo
and said it again o O oo O
10 with all her little voice trembling, o O o OOO o
I for one am happy with the world O o O / o O ooo O troke
12 I don't know if I want to kill her or not oo O oo O/ o O oo O
o OO o OO / o OO o O bakaiai
(Leonard Cohen, No. 55, The Energy of Slaves, 1972)
I must begin with the messy pronouns. I will suggest that the speaker is the 'you' of the first two-line groups and the 'I' in line 12. The other self here, a woman, could be the 'she/her' of lines 1, 6, 8, 10 and 12 as well as the 'I' of lines 6 and 11. Who then is the 'we' of line 4? Perhaps just as the line says, 'We who always ruled the world', a superior character, who is apparently somehow connected to the woman of the story. 'She' and 'we' together form an enemy of the hooligan protagonist; of the whole hostile society.
The story of this poem is about a man who calls himself a 'cut-throat' and lives with a woman who represents the social order. She declares that she is loyal to 'the world' - perhaps the middle-class order. The man becomes very irritated and broods over her murder. The latter may or may not seem ironic. Here we have a class conflict as much as a gender conflict. The poem focuses on the psychology of the male character.
There is a strong tendency towards iambic reading in most of the lines (1. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9). Line 11 also alternates, but there is a fall. Then there are passages that oppose any tactile, such as the baccaias of lines 6 and 12 and the molos of line 10. But it is also possible to read through the tactiles, at the cost of distortion.
Many lines in this poem coincide with the phrase, but we also have the more common case of two phrases in a line (1. 4, 6, 8, 11 and 12). As a whole, the stanzas and the extensions cooperate:
1. 1-3: One direction forward. Extension target: 'need her'.
1. 4-5: A forward direction in iambic tactile. The initial choriambi is common in iambic verses and does not disrupt their forward movement. Extension target: 'don't like'.
1. 6-7: A forward direction. The last line has a vague iambic tact. Extension target: 'happy'.
1. 8-11: Here we come to the emphatic core of the poem and the rhythm is nuanced. The molos of line 10 'her small voice trembling' oOOOo divides the poem into before and after – as a kind of extensional mark for the poem as a whole and also for the stanza.
1. 12: A forward direction. We have here two possible readings that have to do with semantics and rhythm. The line is ambiguous and can be understood in two ways, but both possible readings are directed forward, with the anapests ooO or the rising bakaias oOO. This line effectively closes the poem. The goal of the extension: 'kill her'.
The narrative cooperates with the rhythm of the poem – we have narrative structures on both these levels. According to Aristotle’s poetics, every story has (at least) a beginning, a climax and an ending, and every Hollywood film follows this rule. The same kind of movement can be found in the flow of rhythm that builds to a climax and then subsides. In this way, a piece of music, for example, tells a story about going somewhere, finding something and then relaxing (Kühl 2003: 59). The same emotional pattern – with variations of flow – exists in poetry and in any kind of rhythmic context. Here, I must assert that the molos of line 10 forms the climax of this poem and plays an important role in the structure of the poem as a whole. The molos stands firm – a point of equilibrium:
1. 10 with all her little voice trembling, o O o OOO o
The line presents the girl as a fragile person, yet she is brave enough to challenge the man. From this line, the reader is given a hint of what holds this odd couple together. From the perspective of the protagonist hooligan, the phrase also expresses resentment and contempt for the girl – or perhaps for the entire middle-class establishment.
Based on direction, rhythm and narration cooperate. Much of the rhythm here moves forward at the level of the phrase and the line. As we have already said, iambic tact is the dominant rhythmic motif of this poem – within the framework of free verse, of course. Likewise, the story about the irritated hooligan moves quickly forward to the evil resolution(s) of the last line. The flow of events discards insignificant details to focus on the important moments. There is a rush in both form and story.
However, the forward movement reverses with the repetition of lines 6-7 in line 11:
1. 11 I for one am happy with the world O o O / O ooo O
This sentence appears twice with different line breaks. The syllabic stress ratio of line 6 shows a low number, 1.5, which makes it sound like an important statement. The repetition of line 11 is the only falling passage in this poem. The falling direction moves more slowly and takes longer than the rising iambs (Tsur 2017). So, in different ways, the girl’s line is essential,
Repetition breaks the direct movement by going back to the first occurrence – in poetry the end rhyme is the simplest example of this common poetic structure (Jakobson 1960: 358). Repetition facilitates reading, as it creates and approximates the gestalt, which is found here in lines 6-11. What is between the occurrences will be retained in the reader’s mind.
Irony characterizes Cohen's songs and poems, and this is what we are dealing with in this poem as well. It permeates the entire poem. The last line also allows us to understand the entire poem, if the rhythmic motifs support the irony.
'Irony' is defined (at least) as two layers of meaning, which fight each other. You say something but at the same time you signal that it can be understood in the exact opposite way. This can be done in various ways, using so-called ironic markers; that is, something in what is said sounds inappropriate and the reader has to look for a different saying than the natural one (Booth 1974: 49-76). Rhythm can function as an ironic marker.
There are many ironic markers in this poem before the crucial last line. The first is found in line 3, where the matter of the bedspread seems too simple to form a basis for a serious relationship; this is a euphemism that signals an ironic marker. The lines of the next stanzas 4-5 use an iambic tact. However, its utterance sounds a bit unusual. I have already noted that we cannot be sure who the speaker is. However, I suggested that the 'we' of line 4 alludes to the despised middle class. In this free verse poet, the surprisingly concentrated iambs of lines 4-5 surprise the reader. Moreover, they do not cooperate well with the content of the utterance. In general, the iambs here are too emphatic for the utterance and, therefore, form the ironic marker. The strong tactility antagonizes the despised middle class, and here we have two layers of meaning – a punishment of the hooligan on the surface level and a punishment of the nasty 'we'-speak in the subtext.
Line 8 is the beginning of the poem's most nuanced section, abandoning the iambs for a rising ionic oo OO at the very end '…of the cut-throat' (this figure repeats the ionic at the end of line 3, 'off the bedsperad' oo OO, for a kind of rhyming effect). This clinging figure emphasizes the protagonist as a murderer – or is this irony? Perhaps the subtext gives the bedspread as his only victim.
Line 12 can be read in different ways – either directly or ironically, and the rhythm chosen here establishes the true meaning of the entire poem. It can be interpreted with galloping anapesta or with emphatic bakaiai – and of course perhaps with something in between.
12 I don't know if I want to kill her or not oo O oo O/ o O oo O
o OO o OO / o OO o O bakaiai
The bakaiai reading takes the situation seriously – the man is really thinking about cutting the girl’s throat – whereas the anapest reading turns the whole thing into a joke. As in lines 4-5 where a repeated tactil overpowers the letter-wise statement, which evokes a subtext that contradicts the factual meaning of the sentence. The bakaiai type of gestalt, involving the two stresses put together, underlines what has been said, lowers the ratio of syllabic stress and slows down the tempo, while the anapest does the opposite. Galloping anapests suppress letter-wise meaning as well as nuanced meaning, because they enhance the hypnotic qualities of the serial rhythm. The whirling and toying dervishes first listen to their own bodies. In German, the weak parts of an anapest take up very little time and are together shorter than the strong syllable of the figure, something that introduces distortion (Tsur 2017).
The girl’s trembling voice (1. 10) does not use irony – its emphatic molus also gives the rest of the piece a bleeding heart. This molus makes the protagonist a living, sensitive person, not a murderer, and this means that line 12 should be read with ironic anapaestes. The forward direction dominates the rhythm of the poem as a whole, but, more than that, the two stanzas (1. 6-11) form a circle with the help of repetition.
All levels of rhythm – phrase, line, stanza, and the entire poem – are of course important to the impression of a poem, but the line and its approximate length of three seconds represent its main category. Three seconds constitute the length of short-term memory, the amount of time possible to hold it in mind simultaneously (Pöppel 2004).
Every model shapes itself within this limit. When the reading of a poem comes to an end, it will be back-structured (Tsur 2012a: 302). Well, it may take a number of revisions before a poem emerges in its true glory. Gestalts are formed within the interval of three seconds to be projected into stanzas and the entire poem. I have spoken here of form, but of course the whole process also takes place when speaking of meaning.
/Eva Lilja, 'Rhythm in Modern Poetry', Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023
/Translation: Gazeta Express
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