MADRID - Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen wonSpain's prestigious Prince of Asturias literature award Wednesday for a body of work of "immutable merit," the jury said.
The jury decided by majority vote to confer the 2011 award for letters on 77-year-old Cohen for his writings.
Cohen's writing "has influenced three generationsof people worldwide throughhis creation of emotional imagery in which poetry and music are fused in an oeuvre of immutable merit," the jury said in a statement.
"The passing of time, sentimental relationships, the mystical traditions of theEast and the West and life sung as an unending ballad make up a body of work associated with certain moments of decisive change at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century."
