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不过，我觉得所有艺术家的命运都是被误解。因为创造者的想法很难为人所理解，人们得到的从来都是创造的结果，从结果看过去那么一切皆有可能。最广泛的喜爱，也许建筑在最大程度的误解之上。比如说科恩那首著名的《Dance Me To The End Of Love》，一向被视作是一首甜蜜的情歌---许多人对科恩的诟病也来源于此，认为他空负诗人的头衔，但是只是写了一系列爱来爱去的情歌而已。如果你了解了科恩的身世，也许想法会完全不一样了。科恩出生于1934年，来自一个犹太人家庭。9岁那年，父亲因病去世。次年，他看到一张集中营的照片，受到了极为深重的刺激。在写这首歌的时候，科恩所想象的是在集中营的焚尸炉前，人们在演奏弦乐四重奏。处在绝大的恐怖之下，因此美有了一种别样的激情，别样的甜蜜，达到了完美的程度。
科恩自己在接受访谈的时候曾经这么说过：
II's curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that's why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.
