Who Wrote Leonard Cohen’s “The Partisan?”

Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing / Through the graves the wind is blowing / Freedom soon will come…, Leonard Cohen’s hushed baritone washes over somber strings. The singer/songwriter’s haunting performance of “The Partisan” is bone-chilling, like so many of his other darkly-tinged lullabies.

“The Partisan,” however, did not come from his pen, but he did give the song a new life and kept the anthem breathing its words of resistance.

Who Wrote It?

Originally titled “La Complainte du partisan,” the song was written by Russian-born French singer-songwriter Anna Marly with words by Emmanuel d’Astier de La Vigerie, a leader of the French Resistance.

Dating back to 1943 at the height of World War II, the tune became an anti-fascist anthem during wartime. She penned several tunes to help rally the Resistance, performing them over Free French Radio in London where she lived at the time.

“Like so many others,” Marly explained in a 1998 interview (via The Independent), “I had fled Paris when the Nazis occupied the city. In London, I was eagerly following the progress of the war by reading newspapers. One day I read about the partisans in the former Soviet Union where I was born. I was so impressed by how the Russians were defending their country against the onslaught of the German army.”

She wanted to encourage the French to do the same, to resist those occupying the country and began to write songs for them.

Listen to the original “La Complainte du partisan” below.

The Versions

In 1944, lyricist Hy Zaret was the first to translate “La Complainte du partisan” into English, into what is now sung as “The Partisan.” His adaptation took liberties and is not a direct translation of the song, but instead a poetic one.

The song has been covered by many, including singer-songwriters Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie, but the most famous version of “The Partisan” came from Cohen. He recorded the song for his 1969 album Songs from a Room. While he mainly used Zaret’s English translation, he sang a handful of verses in French.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns