CELEBRATING LEONARD COHEN - THE COLLECTIONS OF AVIVA LAYTON, ANJANI THOMAS, & MORE

Aviva Layton Collection

All of the items in this auction from the collection of Aviva Layton hold treasured memories of her dear friend. They include gifts, correspondence, photographs, Leonard’s “magic writing” cap, books and artwork. Aviva Layton met Leonard Cohen in 1954 when she was living with fellow poet Irving Layton.

“He’s the real thing,” Irving said when he told me that someone called Leonard Cohen would be visiting us that evening in our cramped little basement apartment on Montreal’s Ridgewood Ave. I’d been with Irving long enough to know that his calling someone “the real thing” meant that he was a genuine poet, the highest compliment he could pay anyone.

I ran to the door when the bell rang, eager to meet this real poet, only to open it to a plump young Jewish boy (he was 20, I was 21) dressed in a heavy dark three-piece suit. It didn’t take more than a few minutes, though, once Leonard started talking, to realize that I was in the presence of the most magical man I’d ever met - and ever would meet. From that moment on, Leonard became a constant in my life. Over the years, Irving and Leonard remained intimate and treasured friends, equals despite their considerable age difference. They wrote many poems to and about each other, as well as poems about their mutual experiences of meeting other writers, such as Norman Mailer and Alexander Trocchi. In that charged atmosphere, it was fascinating to see Leonard’s trajectory.

The last time I saw Leonard was about three or four weeks before he died. As he had done in the past with every album, he played me his latest one, You Want It Darker, nodding in time to the beat and listening intently to every note. “My doctor told me I only have a few weeks to live” he told me when it came to an end. Like an idiot, I didn’t respond to his remark, refusing to acknowledge its implications. Instead, I kissed him and said goodbye as I’d done a hundred times before as if we’d be meeting again soon. That, of course, didn’t happen.”

The Collections of Cork Smith and Nancy Bacal

The items from the collections of Viking Press editor Cork Smith and Leonard Cohen’s lifelong friend and editor Nancy Bacal in this auction include poems from two volumes – The Spice Box of Earth published in 1961 and Selected Poems 1956-1968 published in 1968, with many variants from the published versions as well as some revealing memos and correspondence from Viking Press in relation to Cohen’s novels The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

The Spice Box of Earth contains some of Cohen’s most romantic poems - which in hindsight are clearly inspired by Annie Orsini, nee Sherman, and their relationship. Cohen was in an intense romantic relationship with Annie during 1959 / 1960 prior to his departure for Hydra. The Aviva Layton collection in this auction contains a series of photographs of Leonard and Annie with Irving Layton and Aviva at a camping trip in the Laurentians, and also contains a chapter from Annie’s memoirs, unpublished at the time of her death, which sheds light on the genesis of these poems.

The poems from Selected Poems in this private collection are also highly valuable manuscript versions of some well-loved poems “MARITA,” “A Person Who Eats Meat” (often recited at early Cohen concerts) and “The Reason I Write.”

The letters and correspondence in this private collection provide a more personal insight into the witty exchanges between Cohen and his publishers at Viking Press during the lengthy, and sometimes torturous, back and forth regarding final manuscript versions being dispatched from Cohens’ residence on the Greek island of Hydra. What’s clear is that Cohen was sometimes rather desperate for money to keep “blackening pages,” and yet there is an interesting reference in a letter from 1963 where he declares “No money problem--I sold old MSS junk to University of Toronto for $3850!.” Cohen lists off fellow writers and critics who might be able to provide testimony for the value of his novels, at the top of the list his close friend and poet Irving Layton. These letters also provide some insight into Cohen’s daily life on Hydra with Marianne Ihlen “living brilliantly on tip-toe beside me,” and his indulgence in drugs and alcohol as sources of inspiration.

The Collection of Anjani Thomas

“Most items in this collection come from 1999-2010 when Leonard and I were dating. Leonard loved giving gifts, and there are several beautiful pieces of jewelry including bracelets he bought for me in India when visiting Ramesh Balsekar. He enjoyed making hand drawn greeting cards for me, including a moving poem about us that he wrote by hand in honor of my 50th birthday. There are numerous books, and special edition art prints he signed for me. Perhaps the most unusual item is the notebook we shared containing snippets of Leonard’s verses in the works, a poem for me, and a list of our bets and debts. We used to bet on any number of things and the stakes were ridiculously high but I never collected on them. This is the only notebook of Leonard’s in private hands outside of the Cohen Family Trust Archives, and I imagine those will never be available for purchase.

I moved back to Los Angeles right about the time Leonard escaped (as he described it) Roshi Sasaki’s zendo in Mt Baldy. Leonard called me out of the blue to sing on Villanelle For Our Time. After the session we ate at Lew Mitchell’s, a great Chinese restaurant in Beverly Hills that Leonard was fond of, now sadly closed. Knowing that I loved to eat as much as I loved to sing, we started going to lunch weekly, usually ending up at his house to talk, meditate, listen to music, and watch old movies. We were spending so much lovely time together that it felt a serious relationship without the sex. Despite his charisma, attentiveness, and relentless pursuit of me, it did not escape me that Leonard was twenty-five years older than me. I trusted our connection as longtime friends and collaborators, but I was holding out for love, and when he finally declared his feelings for me that hurdle dissolved.

One day I picked up his guitar to sing a few songs I’d written using the sacred names of God in Aramaic. He made me play Kyrie five times, saying it was the most beautiful song he’d ever heard, and insisted I record them. He bought the studio time to do it and spent several days designing the artwork for the cover. Music was our muse, and we worked without compromise in service to her, sending drafts of our work back and forth to each other like some would share fine wine. The many pages of song lyrics offered in this auction really give a sense of the intense working dynamic between us. Leonard was rarely content with his writing, so it wasn’t unusual for him to send me twenty or thirty versions of a lyric with one word or line changed.

You may wonder why I am parting with these precious things. The truth is, I’ve lived with them going back forty years, carrying them through a dozen moves across the US and Europe and back. Leonard is so deeply ingrained in my soul that he’ll never be far apart from me. I feel it’s time that others who loved his music, writing, and art have an opportunity to own something that is imprinted with his awe-inspiring energy and giftedness.”

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