Marianne Ihlen

Marianne Ihlen
Born (1935-05-18)18 May 1935
Larkollen, Norway
Died 28 July 2016(2016-07-28) (aged 81)
Oslo, Norway
Nationality Norwegian
Other names Marianne Jensen
Marianne Stang
Known for Relationship with Leonard Cohen

Marianne Ihlen (18 May 1935 – 28 July 2016)[nb 1] was a Norwegian woman who was the first wife of author Axel Jensen and later the muse and girlfriend of Leonard Cohen for several years in the 1960s.[4] She was the subject of Cohen's 1967 track "So Long, Marianne", in which he sang that she "held on to me like I was a crucifix as we went kneeling through the dark".

Early life

Ihlen was born on 18 May 1935 in Larkollen, Norway, and was raised in Oslo.[5] She was the creative one of her family and wanted to become an actress. Her parents were opposed to that career choice; she lost courage and did not pursue that path but ran away.[6]

Relationships with Axel Jensen and Leonard Cohen

She fell in love with Norwegian writer Axel Jensen when they were both teenagers.[7] They married, against her parents' wishes.[5] The pair left for the Greek island of Hydra in 1958, where Jensen, already a poet and novelist, was going to write.[8] There, they had a son, Axel Jr., and, she said, she became Jensen's "Greek muse"; she sat at his feet while he wrote and she carried the groceries up from the harbour to their home. Their home was simple with an outside toilet and electricity for only one hour in the evening and one hour in the morning. Otherwise, they used paraffin lamps.

Jensen abandoned Marianne, and their son, to live with another woman.[9] According to Marianne, she met Cohen, for the first time, shortly after she returned from a trip to Norway, only to learn her husband had abandoned her.[10]

After they met in early 1960, Cohen and Ihlen began living together on Hydra;[11] later that year, Cohen drove her to Oslo where she finalized her divorce from Jensen.[12] For the next few years, Ihlen became Cohen's muse, inspiring him to write several songs on his first two albums, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) and Songs from a Room (1969). The back sleeve of Songs from a Room features a famous photograph of her at Cohen's typewriter, draped in a white towel in their simple home in Greece.[5]

From a window in that home, Ihlen once saw a bird perched on a newly-installed telephone wire and remarked to Cohen that they looked like musical notes; she suggested he write a song about it. Bird on the Wire was the result, one of his most successful songs, with the opening lines:[6]

Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried, in my way, to be free.

Cohen wrote So Long, Marianne, when the pair broke up. According to Cohen biographer Jeff Burger, "When he left he suffered a nervous breakdown, and it was soon after this that he started to put his poetry to music.".[13]

Later life

Ihlen married Jan Stang in 1979, worked in the oil industry, and lived in Oslo. She bore three daughters during her second marriage.[4] In 2013 she told Norwegian newspaper Nordlys that she had been happily married for 32 years.[7] She developed an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and spent time painting.[5][6]

Illness and death

She was diagnosed with leukemia in late July 2016.[10] Her close friend Jan Christian Mollestad contacted Cohen to tell him Ihlen was dying. Leonard Cohen penned a poignant final letter to her, writing:

Well Marianne it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.
— Leonard Cohen, [14]

She died aged 81 on 28 July 2016, in Oslo.[15] Cohen followed her shortly after, dying on 7 November 2016.[16]

Legacy

Kari Hesthamar, an award-winning Norwegian journalist, won one of her awards for her 2006 documentary on Ihlen. Ihlen's own memoir used Hesthamar's research.[8] In 2012 Hesthamar wrote her own biography of Ihlen, "So Long, Marianne: A Love Story", which was translated into English in 2014.[17]

In 2014, in a review of Lana Del Rey's sophomore album, "Ultraviolence", Alexandra Molotkow compared Del Rey's persona of surrender to Ihlen's account of her search for independence.[18] Molotkow described Del Rey as an artist, fully in control of her career, who, paradoxically, had chosen a performing persona as a weak and helpless female, who sought to surrender to powerful men. According to Molotkow, who had just read Hesthamar's recently translated biography of Ihlen, even though Ihlen had the reality of the fantasy Del Rey shows in her videos, of the woman socially and economically reliant on a man, Ihlen has described how she became fully independent.[19] According to Molotkow, Hesthamar's book is:

"... the story of a remarkable woman who was a muse – who has, until now, appeared in history as a man’s idea – and how she found herself. Often, the book reads as a caution against giving up your power."

Notes

  1. ↑ Although some sources give her death date as 29 July, other sources and family members and friends state that she died on the afternoon of 28 July.[1][2][3]

References

  1. ↑ Jan Christian Mollestad, Facebook, July 29, 2016 (mirror)
  2. ↑ "Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohens norske ekskjæreste, er død" [Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen's Norwegian ex-lover is dead]. Aftenposten (in Norwegian). 29 July 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-08-22. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  3. ↑ Lopes, Mário (6 August 2016). "Até já, Marianne: Leonard Cohen despediu-se da sua musa dos anos 1960" [So Long Marianne: Leonard Cohen has taken leave of his muse of the 1960s]. PÚBLICO (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 2016-10-10. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  4. 1 2 "I kveld ser hun gamlekjæresten igjen" [Tonight she sees her old boyfriend again] (in Norwegian). 2012-08-29. Archived from the original on 2016-08-29. Retrieved 2016-08-06. Jeg traff ham kolonialhandelen. Han sto i døråpningen og jeg var inne og handlet. Så inviterte han meg ut for å sitte sammen med han og de andre. Jeg fikk gåsehud. Han var så vakker, så søt, så oppmerksom og så annerledes enn andre menn. Han var gammeldags, minnes Marianne Ihlen.
  5. 1 2 3 4 McGillis, Ian (12 August 2016). "Marianne Ihlen: More than Leonard Cohen's muse". Montreal Gazette. Archived from the original on 2016-08-20. Retrieved 2016-08-14.
  6. 1 2 3 Davidson, Phil (13 Aug 2016). "Obituary: Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen's muse". scotsman.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-22. Retrieved 2016-08-14.
  7. 1 2 Lasse Jangås (2013-10-23). "...og her er Marianne fra "So long, Marianne"" [...And here is Marianne, from "So long, Marianne"] (in Norwegian). Nordlys. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
  8. 1 2 Alex Beam (2014-11-20). "From Greece, with love". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 2015-07-07. Retrieved 2016-08-06. The rest is history. Cohen and Ihlen embarked on a 10-year long love affair/shuttle romance that found them in Oslo, Montreal and/or New York, depending on circumstance. Cohen jokingly called Ihlen his “Greek muse,” as he launched into a decade of creative fervor, culminating in the ultimate breakup song, “So Long, Marianne.” (“We met when we were almost young. . . ”)
  9. ↑ Ahmed Rashid (2012-11-15). "Why I love Leonard Cohen". New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 2016-11-11. She was Marianne Ihlen, a former Norwegian model who ran away to the Greek island of Hydra with a Norwegian writer who soon after left her and their son.
  10. 1 2 "So long, Marianne. Leonard Cohen's final letter to his muse". As it happens. 2016-08-03. Retrieved 2016-08-05. When Marianne came to Hydra after giving birth in Norway, her husband was not there. There was only one shop in town. And she came in there with her little basket, with her little baby and she was crying to this Greek lady. And then in the doorway, she was just seeing the silhouette, was a man who was calling to her and said 'I know that you're Marianne, and I know what's happened, come out in the sun and have a glass of wine.' And that was Leonard and he took such good care of her.
  11. ↑ "Leonard Cohen's muse Marianne Ihlen dies at age 81". Toronto Star. 2016-08-05. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
  12. ↑ Harvey Kubernik (2015). Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows. Musicroom. ISBN 978-1-78323-816-3.
  13. ↑ Jeff Burger (2014). Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-61374-761-2. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
  14. ↑ Collins, Pádraig (7 August 2016). "So long, Marianne: Leonard Cohen writes to muse just before her death". the Guardian. Retrieved 2016-08-14.
  15. ↑ "In Memory Of Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen's Muse". Cohencentric: Leonard Cohen Considered. 3 August 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  16. ↑ "Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter of love, death and philosophical longing, dies at 82". Washington Post. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
  17. ↑ Kevin Courtney (2014-08-06). "Leonard Cohen's quest for something higher". Irish Times. Retrieved 2014-08-06. And it brought him to the Greek island of Hydra, a haven for poets, writers and artists. One of those was a young Norwegian writer, Axel Jensen, who had moved to Hydra with his wife, Marianne Ihlen, and their infant son. Abandoned by the volatile and capricious Jensen, Ihlen met and began a relationship with the fascinating young Canadian writer with the gentle, measured personality.
  18. ↑ Alexandra Molotkow (2014-06-20). "Lana Del Rey and the fantasy of surrender". Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2016-08-06.
  19. ↑ Kari Hesthamar (2014). So Long, Marianne: A Love Story. Translated by Helle V. Goldman. ECW Press. ISBN 978-1-77090-501-6. Retrieved 2016-08-06.

Further reading

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