His island home: Searching for Leonard Cohen on Hydra
Looking for Leonard Cohen’s house on the Greek island of Hydra can be frustrating but, thankfully, as a consolation prize there is the Leonard Cohen memorial bench.
The point of our visit to the Greek island of Hydra recently was simple. We wanted to see Leonard Cohen’s house or at least the house where he lived when he was having his longish sojourn on the island.
He was there for seven years from 1960 to 1967. I must admit that we found it a tad claustrophobic spending just a day there, but it was a different time then, I guess.
Our visit to Hydra, one of the Saronic islands, was sparked by watching So Long, Marianne on SBS, a series about the Canadian songwriter, singer, poet and novelist’s time on Hydra and his relationship with the woman who was his muse during those years.
The Cohen connection has always been there but there are also Australian connections
If you haven’t watched it yet you can see it anytime on SBS On Demand. It’s a bit of a soap opera at times but worth watching for the island scenery and ambience and for the Chelsea Hotel episode at the end.
My wife Sandra and I have been interested in Hydra for a while. The Cohen connection has always been there but there are also Australian connections. The central one is, of course, that the writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift, who lived and wrote there and they were friendly with Cohen. Johnston wrote his classic, My Brother Jack, while on Hydra.
Anna Torv is rather brilliant as Charmian Clift in the TV series and Noah Taylor is superb as George Johnston. They were part of the artistic community there. Clift is currently in the news again with the re-release of one of her Greek novels, Honour’s Mimic, the story of a relationship between a middle-class Australian woman and a Greek sponge diver. Hmmm.
I had not read anything of Clift’s until I got home and was inspired to pick up her Hydra memoir, Peel Me a Lotus. It’s a brilliant book. She’s a gorgeous writer and Hydra really comes to life in that book. It’s so vivid.
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It’s got me fired up to have another crack at Hydra. We return to Greece next year and will head to Hydra again, a little more inspired than we were.
The Leonard Cohen connection might be the most famous one, but so many artists have visited and lived there over the years. Henry Miller, for one, who eulogised its “wild and naked perfection”.
I’m about to read Miller again with that in mind.
I grew up on Leonard Cohen. The first book of poetry I fell in love with was his The Spice-Box of Earth, published in 1961 when he was on Hydra. It’s lyrical (that’s no surprise) and quite accessible. Then I got into his music, although I could only ever dip into it because, let’s face it, he could be a tad depressing at times.
In So Long, Marianne, the series and title of a famous song of his, Cohen comes across as, well, flawed. Like Johnston and Clift, who drank too much and misbehaved on their paradise island.
While living on Hydra, Cohen wrote his first novel, The Favourite Game, and another poetry collection – Flowers for Hitler. He also began writing his second novel, Beautiful Losers, there – and that’s a very weird book. It was all the rage when I was in my late teens. I tried to read it again recently but it was just too odd and a bit unsavoury.
Still, Cohen was our primary reason for visiting Hydra and I have been reading up on the island since returning home. I’m intrigued by how many artists loved the place.
Our own Charles Blackman for one. I’m friendly with Blackman’s son Auguste, who happened to be on Hydra just before us. He stayed a few days, which may be a better idea than a day trip. The island is just 75 minutes by fast ferry from Piraeus Port, which is on the outskirts of Athens, so it’s pretty easy to get to.
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Among other artistic connections there is Jeff Koon’s huge Apollo sculpture, perched on a hillock just a five-minute walk from the harbourfront. It’s a 9.1-metre spinning sun sculpture and hard to miss.
Other artists have worked on the island, including the British painter William Pownall. Laurence Durrell and another painter, John Craxton, also spent time here. It was famously the setting of the 1957 film Boy on a Dolphin, which starred Alan Ladd and Sophia Loren.
We arrived for our visit mid-morning and now that I have read Clift’s memoir I can see how perfectly she described the atmospheric little harbour.
There are no cars on Hydra, which is an attraction in itself
In mid-May the tourist season seemed to have already begun and the cafes were crowded and smoky (there is a lot of smoking going on in Greece). There were donkeys with suitcases strapped to them heading off up the laneways beyond, taking people to their accommodation. There are no cars on Hydra, which is an attraction in itself.
The island has a rich maritime history and that story is told in a little museum on the waterfront near where one alights from the ferry.
We wanted to walk to where Leonard Cohen lived and we hunted around for a map of some sort. I managed to purchase one but it was lacking any salient details. I bought the Lonely Planet guide to Greece when I got home (too late, of course) and found they have a few pages on Hydra, which will help on our next visit.
Maybe there was a tourist office that could help? We couldn’t find one and we asked a couple of people, who just shrugged.
We found out later that the people who now own Cohen’s former residence aren’t keen on visitors. It was once listed on Google Maps, but no longer.
The only Cohen remnant we managed to find was The Leonard Cohen Memorial Bench on Hydra, installed shortly after he passed away in 2016. It is located on a coastal track and is a 10-minute walk from the harbourfront.
Sitting on the bench one gets a gorgeous view of the sea. There’s a commemorative plaque and on the bench itself words from a Cohen song: “I came so far for beauty.”
Indeed. So did we. Maybe next time we will linger longer. And, who knows, with a bit of research we might be able to discern which house was Leonard Cohen’s.
So long, Marianne can be streamed for free with ads on SBS On Demand in Australia.