Between the Hummingbird and the Handcuffs: Leonard Cohen’s Avian Symbolism of Liberating Wisdom

Allan Showalter

A Guest Post By David Peloquin

“There’s a tension between the hummingbird and the handcuffs. We all live somewhere between the two.”

Leonard Cohen

Introduction

As readers of Cohencentric know, Allan Showalter has offered a number of posts that follow the evolution and use of Leonard Cohen’s icons through the years. Thoughtful interpretations on these designs were scarce until DrHGuy began to gatherer the icons together for closer investigation. Most importantly, he sought out and correlated many direct quotes of Leonard Cohen musing about the images and their inspiration.

The album cover for Leonard Cohen’s 1992 album, The Future, introduced the iconic imagery of the heart, the open handcuffs, and the hummingbird. Dianne V. Lawrence originally designed the avian component for the 1979 album Recent Songs (see Leonard Cohen’s Hummingbird: A Guest Post By Dianne V. Lawrence). The hummingbird symbolism evolved and the new design for The Future, which included Dianne V. Lawrence’s original hummingbird, was conceived by Leonard Cohen and realized by artist and designer Michael Petit. This icon became one of the most familiar in Leonard Cohen’s language of symbolism. The inner cover of his last album, You Want it Darker (Design by Sammy Slabbinck), is graced with a hummingbird in flight, indicating that his iconic spirit bird was still close to his heart as he neared the end of his life.

This discussion offers a perspective on Leonard Cohen’s hummingbird symbol. It has no pretense of conferring any one specific meaning, and is certainly not meant to imply that it is an exhaustive treatment. As in all true art, Leonard’s elusive hummingbird will survive any attempt to capture or cage it. We will never learn its secrets through forensic analysis. Rather, as is always the case with Leonard Cohen’s work, we are invited to personally experience the numinous hummingbird for ourselves.

The Presence of the Hummingbird

Allan Showalter’s investigation has shown that Cohen’s icons were often repurposed for various settings.1 The hummingbird has made many appearances in Leonard’s poems, album covers, and even his merchandise since its introduction on Recent Songs. Yet, throughout all its many incarnations, one central theme has been consistent from the beginning: the presence of the hummingbird is always accompanied by intimations of compassion, wisdom, and liberation.

A true symbol points to what is beyond thinking, beyond words. As Cohen has said, “These things cannot be explained; they have to be embraced.” Cohen’s work as a poet centered on creating art that could open directly to inner landscapes of the spirit, although he often followed unusually dark, twisted, and painful pathways to get there.

Many poems and images in Book of Longing, published in 2006, are drenched in Buddhist sensibilities and reflect on Cohen’s long involvement with Zen. The next consideration is such an example. I chose a poem from the book that, to my knowledge, has not received any serious attention. More to the point, it offers one of the deepest meditations on Cohen’s use of the symbolic hummingbird that I have found.

This book will begin to speak

The art works in Book of Longing that includes poems or script are listed in the index in italics. The poem/artwork below appears on page 119 of Book of Longing, and is listed in the index as: this book will begin to speak. For our discussion, I will use this first line as the title of the poem.

The poet-artist offers here an image from what appears to be a page from his working notebooks. The hummingbird reference that has most keenly engaged my attention is contained within this poem. We note that Cohen crossed out the word “pages” and wrote “agent” as a correction above it. Here is the poem with Cohen’s own correction:

This book will begin
to speak
when the hummingbird
comes back
to the red flower
to murder the red flower.
Speak! agent of Death
Speak to the one
who loves you
the one who has failed
at love
the one you seek out
with your blurred needle

Manjushri: Bodhisattva of Liberating Wisdom

Note the image of the seated figure that appears on the right hand side above the poem, this book will begin to speak. The image is likely from one of Cohen’s personal collection of seals, or printing stamps (“chops” as he called them).

Seals are made of wood, ivory, or metal blocks. They are inked and pressed to paper. This image, though somewhat crudely wrought, can be identified as Manjushri, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of Liberating Insight. This bodhisattva is most often depicted sitting on a lotus with the flaming sword of meditative, discerning wisdom (prajna) above his head. Manjushri is a familiar figure in the symbolic imagery of Zen, and images of him are often found in the meditation halls of Zen monasteries. The seal may seem simply decorative or arbitrary, but Cohen has carefully chosen the presence of Manjushri for this poem.

This more detailed image of Manjushri clearly shows the same identifying flaming sword. The bodhisattva’s eyes are lowered in meditation. His left hand holds the stem of a lotus flower. The stem leads to the lotus blossom, which supports the book of Prajñāpāramitā: The Perfection of Insight. This canonical scripture is central to Mahayana Buddhism. Contained within this collection is the well-known Heart Sutra: “The Heart of Perfection”.

The sense here is that Manjushri’s flaming sword of meditation cuts through all entanglements and illusion to reveal the transcendent wisdom of the Prajñāpāramitā. (Prajñā translates as wisdom, and pāramitā as transcendent.)

Buddhist icons are rich in complex symbolism, and we cannot hope to completely explore this numinous symbolic figure in a short treatment. What is important to our discussion is that even a superficial commentary on Manjushri is enough to show that the theme of Liberating Insight correlated with the presence of the hummingbird are key to any consideration the poem.

In the poem, the hummingbird:

comes back
to the red flower
to murder the red flower.

Damien Keown, scholar of Buddhism and author, informs us that: “the [lotus] plant is used throughout Buddhist literature as a symbol for purity.”2

The “red flower” of the Cohen poem is the Buddhist red lotus, symbolic of the original nature of the spiritual heart (hrdaya), which is love, compassion, and purity. In Buddhism, a person in an unawakened state of ignorance cannot return to (nor remember) the original state of purity and wisdom of this primordial heart. Note that the hummingbird of the poem “comes back to the red flower.” In the language of symbolism, this informs us that the avian spirit bird is associated with the original, primal, compassion and wisdom of the heart, and that the symbolic hummingbird is there at the origin, at the source. As Cohen declares in the song Come Healing, the heart is covered with a “troubled dust.” This dust conceals the natural, pure, condition of the heart. The Buddhist assessment of the unawakened human heart is that it is occluded by greed, hatred, and delusion. And yet, beneath the veil of these shadows, the heart is always and already pure and undefiled.

The referents for the book that “will begin to speak” ” are both Book of Longing and the Prajñāpāramitā: the book of Perfect Insight that sits on the lotus flower of Manjushri. Both books are “pages of Death” in the sense that they both deal with the task of cutting through the illusions that veil the heart. Cohen was very generous with his worksheets and notebooks, and in this example, we see that “pages of Death” would work perfectly well for the sense of the poem. The striking of pages and substitution of ‘agent of Death’ points directly to the red flower: the troubled heart. By changing one word, Cohen has made the poem personal: it is personal for himself, and also for a reader who takes the poem as a serious meditation.

And when will this “agent of Death” begin to speak?

This book will begin
to speak
when the hummingbird
comes back
to the red flower
to murder the red flower.

And here we come to the key aspect of the flaming sword of inner discernment. The poet, having submitted to life-giving meditations on Manjushri, has awakened to the insight that the life-giving hummingbird is to be invited to murder the illusions of the troubled heart that keep it a captive of ignorance.

Speak! agent of Death
Speak to the one
who loves you
the one who has failed
at love
the one you seek out
with your blurred needle

The hummingbird offers Life through Death. As with all spiritual paradox, this can only be truly understood by going through the paradoxical process personally. The insight of liberation here is that Book of Longing is a collection of pages of Death and pages of Life. The Sufis say that when the Angel of Death approaches, it is horrible. When it reaches you, it is bliss. This life-death reconciliation is the price of admission into the awakened life, which is a major theme in Leonard Cohen’s work. The illusory heart of ignorance, covered with the “troubled dust”, must die in order for the original purity of the heart, always and already liberated, to shine with compassion and understanding. And here is the deepest address of this poem: it is the Awakened Heart itself that sees through the troubled dust. When the meditator submits fully to the symbolic sword of liberation, the small, illusory self is seen through and all entanglements and illusions dissipate like smoke.

The deathblow to the illusion is delivered by insight,
and the insight is gained through meditation.

The red lotus flower in the poem is a variant of what Cohen often refers to as the ‘sacred heart’. He is pointing to the sacred heart of every human being, which is sacred whether it is awake or asleep to liberating wisdom. Our present world has little use for the wisdom of old, and there may be a terrible price to pay for ignorance, as the line from the song Everybody Knows intimates:

Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

And so we live, as it were, somewhere between the handcuffed sleep of ignorance and the liberating wakefulness of the hummingbird. Leonard Cohen spent his life devoted to exploring the inner world of spirit, and expressing it with his many gifts. His iconic spirit bird companion had an important role to play in his flights into the interiors of the heart.

It is always best to give the poet the last word. At his last press event, shortly before his death, Leonard Cohen offered an unfinished “sweet little song”. Once again, as he had so many times before, he steps aside and points to the poem as the window to wisdom. Here is the hummingbird verse from that poem: one last invitation to engage the sacred heart:

Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see
Listen to the hummingbird
Don’t listen to me.

Coming Soon: Listening to Hummingbirds

The conversation on Leonard Cohen’s spirit bird will be continued shortly in a new, soon to be posted essay; Listening to Hummingbirds, by David Peloquin, and illuminated with photomontage works by Martin Ferrabee.

Posts In The Listening To Hummingbirds Series

Part 1: Steer Your Way
Part 2: Rescuing The Heart
Part 3. If Your Heart Is Torn

 

 

Allan Showalter’s fascination on this aspect of Leonard Cohen’s work is contagious, and I credit him for the initial inspiration for this post on the hummingbird icon. Thanks and deep gratitude to Dianne V. Lawrence for her recent illuminating post on Cohencentric, and for her sublime original art that gave Leonard’s spirit bird life. Special thanks to Damien Keown, the Buddhist scholar and author, whose work has been indispensable in researching all things concerning Buddhist practice. Any errors in this regard are my sole responsibility.

David Peloquin is a lifetime artist, writer, and musician. He is an internationally known interpreter of music of the sea, and has produced numerous albums and spoken word projects. He is an independent Herman Melville scholar focused on symbolism in Moby-Dick, Mardi, and other works by the author. David teaches insight meditation in seminars, talks, and in private instruction. His work draws from the well of the all the great wisdom traditions. For the last ten years, he has offered numerous public presentations on spiritual themes in the songs and poetry of Leonard Cohen. His workshop/concert program, Songs of the Unified Heart: The Music and Poetry of Leonard Cohen, is designed to engage audiences new to the work of Leonard Cohen, as well as those who have been inspired for decades by The Golden Voice of one of the great spiritual poets of our time.

David can be contacted at: [email protected]

 

Other Posts by David Peloquin

I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted Feb 19, 2018.

_____________________________

  1. See, for example, Leonard Cohen Album Logos: More Best Of Leonard Cohen Album Identifies Six Icons [↩]
  2. Dictionary of Buddhism, 2003 [↩]

Leave a Reply