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Once again, after a mere thirty years, I come across someone who thinks an 'access' of some emotion ought to be 'excess'. Which it isn't, but you might have to read French literature to know this. As in, I first encountered the construction in the translation of Claudine at School, where she has 'a sudden access of stupidity.' What was the French original? Probably accès, because Larousse will give you the medical definition of 'sudden and transient disorder, usually violent.' But English is quite happy to follow, because there it is as definition no.2, literary, 'an attack or outburst of an emotion.' (Really, there's a point where 18th century French reads exactly like 18th century English, because both were modelling themselves on Latin; and then alas the vernacular took over and I could no longer read French writers.)
Good, that's settled. Now back to the conundrum in Cohen's Here It Is: what's the meaning of 'list' in the line 'and here is the love/ that lists where it will'? Always assumed it was a variation on 'the wind bloweth where it listeth' (which is the Gospel of John, surprise surprise, because I thought it was OT: mind, read the whole chapter and it's very much John being umm transcendental John again.) But list there, which this keyboard keeps rendering as its cognate lust, just means 'pleases', 'as it will', which thus turns Cohen's line into that rhetorical device whose name I've forgotten, saying the same thing twice. (Tautology, and you wouldn't believe the googling it took to find that.) Ergo it must be a different list, but which one? Lean to one side? Surely not itemize? Or did Cohen simply misremember, or misunderstand, John?
Good, that's settled. Now back to the conundrum in Cohen's Here It Is: what's the meaning of 'list' in the line 'and here is the love/ that lists where it will'? Always assumed it was a variation on 'the wind bloweth where it listeth' (which is the Gospel of John, surprise surprise, because I thought it was OT: mind, read the whole chapter and it's very much John being umm transcendental John again.) But list there, which this keyboard keeps rendering as its cognate lust, just means 'pleases', 'as it will', which thus turns Cohen's line into that rhetorical device whose name I've forgotten, saying the same thing twice. (Tautology, and you wouldn't believe the googling it took to find that.) Ergo it must be a different list, but which one? Lean to one side? Surely not itemize? Or did Cohen simply misremember, or misunderstand, John?