The beautifully devastating final letter Leonard Cohen wrote to his muse, Marianne Ihlen
Every poet needs a muse. For the poet-turned-songwriter, Leonard Cohen, that inspiration was Marianne Ihlen. After the two met on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s, they fell in love in, and Cohen went on to pen some of his most beautiful lyrics ever written.
Perhaps most notably, and most obviously, Ihlen inspired Cohen to write ‘So Long, Marianne’, which featured on his 1967 debut record, Songs of Leonard Cohen. “Well, you know that I love to live with you,” he sings over folky instrumentals. The couple lived together in Montreal, New York and Hydra throughout the decade.
Marianne also inspired the opening track to Cohen’s 1969 record, Songs From a Room. When Cohen had found himself in a depressive slump, Ihlen encouraged him to pick up his guitar, and he penned ‘Bird On a Wire’. Cohen once stated that the track seemed to return him to his duties, becoming a dependable opener for his live shows.
Cohen kept writing to and about Ihlen until her death from leukaemia in 2016. As her friend, Jan Christian Mollestad, recalled in an interview with CBC, Ihlen asked him to contact Cohen. “I went home and I sent him a letter telling him that, unfortunately, it seems like Marianne only has a few days to live,” he recalled, “It took only two hours and in came this beautiful letter from Leonard to Marianne.”
Mollestad read her the poem, recalling that she was “fully conscious” and “so happy that he had already written something for her”. The beautiful email Cohen wrote to Ihlen has since been revealed by Cohen’s estate.
“Dearest Marianne,” Cohen began, “I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand. This old body has given up, just as yours has too. I’ve never forgotten your love and beauty. But you know that. I don’t have to say any more. Safe travels old friend. See you down the road. Endless love and gratitude. Your Leonard.”
Though Mollestad may have remembered the phrasing slightly inaccurately, he recalled Ihlan’s response to Cohen’s words: “When I read the lines ‘stretch our your hand,’ she stretched out her hand. Only two days later she lost consciousness and slipped into death. I wrote a letter back to Leonard saying in her final moments I hummed ‘A Bird on a Wire’ because that was the song she felt closest to. And then I kissed her on the head and left the room, and said ‘so long, Marianne.’”
Cohen’s words are equal parts beautiful and devastating. The Canadian singer-songwriter passed just a couple of months after Marianne in November 2016, but their love was immortalised in his poetry and lyricism.
