Veertig vensters op Leonard Cohen

Frank Kazenbroot

Title	Wees lief voor deze ziel. Veertig vensters op Leonard Cohen [Gentle This Soul. Forty Windows on Leonard Cohen]
Author	Frank Kazenbroot
Country & Year	The Netherlands 2018
Publishers	Bernemedia, The Netherlands
Pages	160
Notes	ISBN 9789089722645
Summary	"Leonard Cohen is Frank Kazenbroot's great source of inspiration. In his book ‘Gentle This Soul’, Kazenbroot opens forty windows on the spiritual and religious power of Cohen's poetry. He follows the poet-musician from his birth in 1934 until his death in 2016. Cohen remained faithful to the Jewish tradition in which he was born, but he also studied Christian, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. In the writer’s view, Cohen followed a mystical path and shared his experiences with his audience through his songs. In his powerful texts, motifs from those old traditions are interwoven with the experiences of a man of modern times. Secular and religious language go hand in hand in his songs through which themes such as love, sex, loneliness, pain, mercy, brokenness, God and desire begin to live again. Cohen's famous songs are analyzed: Suzanne, Hallelujah, Anthem, You Want It Darker. This book also highlights lesser-known songs. The song ‘the Window’ from 1979 has been given an important place in this book. It unites beautiful music with mystical poetry. The invitation from Cohen to be gentle to the soul of a broken human being has become the title of this book. Frank Kazenbroot (Schiedam, 1958) studied theology, lived for 18 years as a monk in a Roman Catholic monastery and lives now in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He works in a prison as a pastor." Photos by Wim van der Hulst.

Thanks to Frank Kazenbroot for the information.