THE AESTHETICS OF EVIL IN LEONARD COHEN’S “A BALLET OF LEPERS, A NOVEL AND STORIES”
THE AESTHETICS OF EVIL IN LEONARD COHEN’S “A BALLET OF LEPERS, A NOVEL AND STORIES”

Summary/Abstract: "Leonard Cohen’s posthumous volume “A Ballet with Lepers, A Novel and Stories” (2022) is actually his first volume, preceding his prose and poetry, as well as the lyrics of his songs. One may assume that this volume should uncover the very young Cohen’s outlook and announce his early literature and music texts. That is why its being so atypical for Cohen comes as a shock.It brings to the reader an aesthetic of the ugliness, a misanthropist’ s world of the wicked, the wretched and the shocking. Cohen does not love or like his characters, and they are so dark that one cannot say that he can really empathise or identify with them. His characters are actually a ballet of lepers. His image of the old age is dementia in all that it has more scabrous, more violent and more antisocial. His children are far from innocent or pure, they are not likable, and the least one can say about them is that they are revolting. Cohen does not feel pity for his characters, he gives them the freedom to do whatever their sick fancy urges them to do. The title “A Ballet of Lepers” is extremely appropriate to the novella: all the characters are both wretched and wicked.The stories, written (mostly) between 1956 and 1960, were also previously unpublished. They are: “Saint Jig”, “O.K. Herb, O.K. Flo”, “Signals”, “Polly”, “A Hundred Suits from Russia”, “Ceremonies”, “Mister Euemer Episodes”, “The Shaving Ritual”, “Lullaby”, “A Week Is a Very Long Time”, “The Jukebox Heart”, “David Who?”, “Short Story on a Greek Island”, “ive had lots of pets”, “Strange Boy with a Hammer.” The short script for a play is titled “Trade”. Their themes can be enumerated as follows:- Spirituality and religion: a mixture of mythologies, mystical traditions of Judaism- Sex, desire. Cohen explores the psychological side of sex, and the deeper spiritual and emotional states.- The human condition: there is vulnerability in his characters. "

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