‘Take This Waltz’ was written deep into the nervous breakdown. It took me 150 hours to do the translation of the poem [Pequeno Vals Vienés by Federico Garcia Lorca]. It was hard to adapt so you could sing it in 3/4. The official translation – well you couldn’t sing that. So I had to get permission from the [Lorca] estate to do my own translation. And I was sorry that they gave it to me because when I started the thing, I didn’t realize I had taken my first step on a walk to China. [Interviewer: You must read Spanish pretty well.] No, I don’t. I met a Costa Rican girl who helped me with it, and I had other translations that people had done, but they weren’t rhymed. His poem is rhymed. Then I went to Paris to record it, then I broke down and went to a monastery in New Mexico for two months. I thought, ‘I don’t have to do a record anymore, I’ll be a monk!’ It’s good to have these places to go. When I came out I started the record again.
Leonard Cohen
From Leonard Cohen’s Nervous Breakthrough by Mark Rowland, Musician, July 1988.
Cohencentric published several posts about Leonard Cohen’s Take This Waltz being based on his translation of Pequeño Vals Vienès by Federico García Lorca:
- “When I started the thing, I didn’t realize I had taken my first step on a walk to China.” Leonard Cohen On His Traumatic Translation Of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Poem For Take This Waltz
- “Lorca is one of those rare poets with whom you can stay in love for life.” Leonard Cohen On Federico Garcia Lorca
- Video: The Original 1986 “Take This Waltz” By Leonard Cohen
- Compare Leonard Cohen’s “Take This Waltz” To A Conventional English Translation Of Federico García Lorca’s “Pequeno Vals Vienés”
- “I wrote this next song under the inspiration, under the fatherly guidance of Federico Garcia Lorca, the great Spanish poet. He never came to Helsinki. Doesn’t matter, ’cause I’m here now.” Leonard Cohen Tells 1988 Helsinki Concert Audience 5 Things He Knows About Finland
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 26, 2018.