Foto Tunes

Leonard Cohen’s iconic 1967 song/poem "Suzanne" blends the everyday with the sacred. It describes a platonic, spiritually charged friendship with Suzanne Verdal, a Montreal dancer, and weaves it with the city’s religious iconography and Christian mysticism to explore themes of unconditional love and salvation

.Here is the breakdown of its meaning:

The Real-Life Inspiration

The song was inspired by Cohen’s close, platonic friendship with Suzanne Verdal, the wife of a sculptor. The lyrics are a literal recounting of their time together: Verdal would invite Cohen to her apartment near the Montreal harbor, serve him Constant Comment tea (black tea with orange peel), and they would walk around the city together.

Merging the Profane and the Sacred

The genius of the song is its juxtaposition of bohemian daily life with profound religious symbolism:
" And the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbour ." from Suzanne by Leonard Cohen is a reference to Bonsecours Church in Montreal.
Jesus the Sailor: In the final stanza, Cohen likens Jesus to a sailor who walked upon the water and viewed the world from a "lonely wooden tower" (a metaphorical reference to the cross and the weight of his spiritual sacrifice). The stanza suggests that to truly understand profound, cosmic love, one must be willing to be vulnerable and "travel blind".

Click here for more views of this church in 2014.