mobanmarketA collection of more than 50 love letters written by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen to the woman who inspired ‘So Long, Marianne’ has sold for $876,000 (Dh3.2 million), with many going for more than five times their pre-sale estimates, Christie’s auction house said on June 13.
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The archive of letters from Cohen to Marianne Ihlen chronicles their 1960s love affair and the blossoming of Cohen’s career from struggling poet to famous musician.
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The top letter, in which Cohen wrote in December 1960 about being “alone with the vast dictionaries of language,” fetched $56,250 compared to an original high estimate of $10,000.
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A 1964 letter, in which Cohen wrote “I am famous but empty,” went for $35,000, Christie’s said.
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Cohen and the Norwegian-born Ihlen met on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960 and she became the inspiration for several of his best-known songs, including ‘Bird on a Wire’, ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’, and the 1967 track ‘So Long, Marianne’. Ihlen died of leukaemia in Oslo in July 2016 at age 81.
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Cohen, who was also suffering from leukemia, died in November 2016 at the age of 82.
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The letters were sold by Ihlen’s family. The buyers were not revealed.
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The top lot in the five-day online auction was an Italian bronze bell dating from the 15th or 16th century that hung in the Hydra home that Cohen and Ihlen once shared. It realised $81,250 compared to a pre-sale estimate of up to $12,000.
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The bell is believed to have inspired the lines, “There is a crack, a crack in everything” in Cohen’s 1992 release ‘Anthem’.
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