Marianne Ihlen
| Marianne Ihlen | |
|---|---|
Ihlen shortly before her death in 2016
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| Born |
Marianne Christine Ihlen 18 May 1935 Larkollen, Norway |
| Died | 28 July 2016 (aged 81) Oslo, Norway |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Other names |
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| Known for | Relationship with Leonard Cohen |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Partner(s) | Leonard Cohen (1960–67) |
Marianne Christine Stang Ihlen (18 May 1935 – 28 July 2016) 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. 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".
Ihlen was born on 18 May 1935 in Larkollen, Norway, and was raised in Oslo. 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.
She fell in love with Norwegian writer Axel Jensen when they were both teenagers. They married, against her parents' wishes. The pair left for the Greek island of Hydra in 1958, where Jensen, already a poet and novelist, was going to write. 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. 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.
After they met in early 1960, Cohen and Ihlen began living together on Hydra; later that year, Cohen drove her to Oslo where she finalized her divorce from Jensen. 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.
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:
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