So Long, Marianne by Leonard Cohen Lyrics Meaning – Unraveling the Bittersweet Anthem of Love and Loss

You can view the lyrics, alternate interprations and sheet music for Leonard Cohen's So Long, Marianne at Lyrics.org.

Lyrics

Come over to the window, my little darling,
I’d like to try to read your palm.
I used to think I was some kind of Gypsy boy
before I let you take me home.

Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began
to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.

Well you know that I love to live with you,
but you make me forget so very much.
I forget to pray for the angels
and then the angels forget to pray for us.

Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began …

We met when we were almost young
deep in the green lilac park.
You held on to me like I was a crucifix,
as we went kneeling through the dark.

Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began …

Your letters they all say that you’re beside me now.
Then why do I feel alone?
I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web
is fastening my ankle to a stone.

Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began …

For now I need your hidden love.
I’m cold as a new razor blade.
You left when I told you I was curious,
I never said that I was brave.

Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began …

Oh, you are really such a pretty one.
I see you’ve gone and changed your name again.
And just when I climbed this whole mountainside,
to wash my eyelids in the rain!

Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began …

Leonard Cohen’s ‘So Long, Marianne’ stands as a soaring testament to the potent brew of love, memory, and the inexorable passage of time. Cohen, armed with a troubadour’s heart and a poet’s pen, captures in this song a nexus of emotion, aching with the sweet pain of parting peppered with the promise of cyclical reunions.

The song, which remains a beacon in Cohen’s storied discography, is both an ode and a farewell to Marianne Ihlen, Cohen’s Norwegian muse and erstwhile lover. It encapsulates their complex relationship, and like the best of Cohen’s work, it stretches far beyond the personal, touching the universal with its exploration of love’s labyrinthine ways.

The Ballad of Leonard and Marianne: A Love Wrought in Song

At the core of ‘So Long, Marianne’ lies the tangible real-life romance between Cohen and Ihlen, which blossomed in the idyllic setting of Hydra, Greece. Cohen’s lyrics serve as a time capsule, capturing both the tender beginnings and the eventual, inevitable drift apart. The song is an intimate portrait, painted with the brush of Cohen’s lyrical genius.

Through this song, Cohen does not merely narrate his history with Ihlen; he brings listeners into the very room, offering a view through the window of their souls. As he engages in the divinatory act of palm-reading, the metaphor signals a desire to foresee a future together—one that, as history has revealed, would be as transient as the lines on a palm.

A Carousel of Emotions: The Rollercoaster Ride of ‘So Long, Marianne’

‘So Long, Marianne’ is masterful in its emotional dynamism, as it swings from longing to laughter, from devotion to a recognition of human failings. Cohen adeptly intertwines sorrow and solace, crafting a chorus that resonates with the sweet, sad rhythm of life’s own ebb and flow.

The enigmatic beauty of the song lies in Cohen’s understanding that love is not static, but a living thing that breathes with joy and weeps with sorrow. His invocation to begin again implies both an acknowledgment of an ending and the courage to embrace the cycle of emotions that come with a deep connection to another soul.

Unraveling the Mystery: The Hidden Meaning Within

Beyond the apparent tribute to a lost love, Cohen embeds in ‘So Long, Marianne’ a tapestry of spiritual searching and existential questioning. The forgotten prayers and the forsaken angels suggest a man conflicted with his own sense of spirituality and the sacrifices made on love’s altar.

This veiled layer within the song speaks to the sacrifices one makes in the throes of passion—forgetting oneself, one’s beliefs, and sometimes, the very things that anchor us to the divine or to our higher selves. Cohen’s song reverberates with the tension between earthly love and spiritual longing, capturing an eternal human dilemma.

A Melancholic Tapestry: The Woven Imagery of Love’s Labors Lost

The gripping imagery of Cohen’s words in ‘So Long, Marianne’ brings an acute physicality to the emotional landscape of the song. The spider web and stone, the crucifix in the dark, the mountainside and the rain—each element adds to the rich, visual haunting that gives Cohen’s tribute its spectral weight.

In Cohen’s careful construction, every metaphor serves the grander narrative of love clashing with fate. The anchored ankle, the climb for purification, the names left behind—all speak to the yearning for permanence in the face of change, of bonds tested and transformed by time and circumstance.

Echoes From the Ledge: Memorable Lines that Define an Era

Certain lines in ‘So Long, Marianne’ capture the quintessential Cohen—the bard of the bittersweet, the oracle of the undone. Phrases like ‘Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again’ encapsulate the simultaneous mourning and celebration of a shared history.

These lines find their power not just in their original context, but in the way they’ve transcended it to become emblems of universal experience. Cohen’s invocation to start anew in the face of departure, of his own acknowledgment of love’s intricate dance with loneliness, has made ‘So Long, Marianne’ a song that resonates across generations, an anthem of the heart’s complex journey.