<P> Although structured as a love song, "Dance Me to the End Of Love" was in fact inspired by the Holocaust . In an interview, Cohen said of the song: </P> <Table> <Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td>' it'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 . </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> "</Td> <Td>' it'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 . </Td> <Td>" </Td> </Tr> <P> In 1996, Welcome Books published the book Dance Me to the End of Love, as part of its "Art & Poetry" series, featureing the lyrics of the song alongside paintings by Henri Matisse . </P>

Cohen leonard dance me to the end of love