So, I’m reading a fascinating book of interviews with Joni Mitchell. In one interview from back in the early 70s she talked about receiving a reading list from Leonard Cohen and then becoming disillusioned when she discovered that he lifted lines wholesale from some of the books he recommended. Her example is supposed to be a line written by Camus, *“walk me to the corner, …” * (Leonard Cohen’s line is “walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme.”)
Closest I can find is:
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
which isn’t even close. Is it my Google-fu, or was Joni trippin’?
A songwriter lifting a line for a song lyric from a book he liked is “disillusioning”? Aren’t songwriters, poets and creative types generally kind of expected to do exactly that as part of the creative process?
The Beatles took lots of lines from this circus poster and the songwas brilliant.
I think she has her illusion meter set way too high.
Sorry, I obviously misunderstood. I have grave doubts that a poet of Cohen’s stature would lift anything from an author so famous as Camus, and I also doubt that Camus ever wrote anything that translates so lyrically into English. If it’s anywhere in Camus’s works, however, I expect it’s in the song to be recognized.
I know artists/writers appropriate other people’s ideas all the time. But in the interview Joni doesn’t say, multiple times, that Leonard Cohen (and Bob Dylan) borrowed heavily, or echoed, or was derivative of, or was even channeling by way of Ramtha. She specifically used the word ‘plagiarized’. Unless I’m missing something, I just don’t see it. :dubious: