A TROUBADOUR’S FINAL TESTAMENT

In the final weeks of his life, Leonard Cohen worked furiously through the pain that ravaged his body and the knowledge that his days were numbered to complete his final literary testament – a collection of unreleased poetry, prose, lyrics and illustrations from his notebooks called The Flame. “Nothing gets me high and offers relief from the suffering like blackening pages, writing,” Leonard declared, as quoted by his son, Adam, in his foreward to the book. The volume also contains the text of Leonard’s 2011 acceptance speech for the

Prince of Asturias Award, as well as some of his final correspondence with friends, including a message sent on Nov. 7, 2016, the day he died at age 82. Leonard, of course, didn’t live to see the finished book, and it was his son who conceived of the title, noting the recurring theme of flames and fire in his father’s work. But, as Adam observes, even death failed to extinguish Leonard’s light. “Each page of paper that he blackened,” he adds at the conclusion of his foreward, “was lasting evidence of a burning soul.”