Irving Layton

[Fljotsdale]

Thanks, Anne and Lizzy.

No. I haven't looked at icecreamtruck's link yet. But I will.

[jarkko]

From the Montreal Gazette
http://www.canada.com/cityguides/montre ... 48&k=88482

ALAN HUSTAK, KATHRYN GREENAWAY of The Gazette and MARK, The Gazette
Published: Thursday, January 05, 2006

* * * * Irving Layton, the flamboyant poet who died yesterday in Montreal at age 93, once described himself as "a quiet madman, never far from tears," who wrote poems to cause trouble.

As he put it: "The sparks fly / I gather each one / and start a poem."

"There was Irving Layton, and then there was the rest of us," his long-time friend, poet, novelist and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, wrote The Gazette in an email from Los Angeles yesterday.

"He is our greatest poet, our greatest champion of poetry. Alzheimer's could not silence him, and neither will death."

The author of more than 50 books of poetry, Layton died at Maimonides Geriatric Centre on Caldwell Ave. in Cote St. Luc, where he'd been a patient with Alzheimer's disease for the past five years.

Although arrangements have not been completed, the funeral is being planned for Sunday at Paperman and Sons, 3888 Jean Talon St. W.

Once described as being both "the Picasso and the Mae West of poetry," Layton will be remembered not only for his often erotic verse but also for his abrasive ego, outrageous opinions, entertaining love life and bitter feuds, as well as for being a provocative, stimulating teacher.

Layton was born Israel Pincu Lazarovitch in Tirgu Neamt, Romania, on March 12, 1912. His parents changed the family name after they immigrated to Montreal in 1913.

Young Irving was raised in the Plateau Mont Royal district. He went to Baron Byng High School, then to Macdonald College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, where he took a BSc in agriculture. He later wrote of that experience:

"The college's single agitator, single poet and single Jew, I was too absorbed in my messianic dreams to realize what an outlandish figure I cut among the simple-minded Canucks from Quebec's farms and middle-class homes."

In 1936, when he was 23, he married Montrealer Faye Lynch and they moved to Halifax, where Layton became a Fuller Brush salesman. Before long, though, he walked away from both the job and his wife.

He enlisted in the Canadian army in 1942 but was not sent overseas. He was discharged with the rank of lieutenant.

With the war over, Layton went back to university and in 1946 earned a master's degree from McGill in economics and political science. He also became a card-carrying socialist.

Layton didn't start to write poetry until he was in his 30s; he once explained that as a schoolboy reading Wordsworth and Byron, he "naturally thought that in order to be a poet one had to be either English or dead, preferably both."

Layton's first collection of poetry, Here and Now, was published by First Statement Press in 1945.

For the next couple of decades, he taught English literature in Montreal, at the high school level and at Sir George Williams College, now Concordia University. One of his high school students was Irwin Cotler, today Canada's justice minister.

"As I remember it, I learned very little about physics, chemistry and math and a lot about philosophy and literature - the humanities," Cotler said yesterday. "He was an inspiration to me then, and he remains so today. He was a mentor, a colleague, a friend."

In 1946, Layton married Betty Sutherland, a sister of actor Donald Sutherland. The couple had a son, Max, and a daughter, Naomi.

He and Sutherland parted amicably several years later when Layton became involved with an Australian expatriate, Aviva Cantor, who became his soulmate for the next 25 years. Layton celebrated Cantor - and her pubic hair - in his poem The Day Aviva Came to Paris.

In it, he wrote, Parisians

"... leaped as one mad colossal Frenchman from their cafe Pernods

Shouting, "Vive l'Australienne!

Vive Layton who brought her among us! ..."

He and Cantor had a son, David. Six years ago, David Layton laid bare his painful memories of growing up "amid the mad gods of poetry" in a book called Motion Sickness.

In the 1950s, Irving Layton became one of Leonard Cohen's mentors, and the two remained close after Cohen became internationally famous.

"I taught him how to dress. He taught me how to live forever," Cohen once said of their relationship.

Layton's reputation as a poet became firmly established with his 1951 collection The Black Huntsmen. Once he hit full stride, he became amazingly prolific, producing almost a book a year between 1951 and 1991.

In 1959, Layton won the Governor-General's Award for his collection A Red Carpet for the Sun, Some of his other notable volumes - all published between 1953 and 1968 - are Love the Conqueror Worm, Balls for a One-Armed Juggler, The Laughing Rooster and The Shattered Plinths.

The books display what Montreal critic Joel Yanofsky called "the righteous zeal of an Old Testament prophet and the bravado of a streetwise brawler."

In 1969, Layton quit Montreal in a blaze of invective, "squeezed out by French-Canadian nationalism," and went to teach English literature at York University in Toronto. During the 1970s, he raged against the onset of age and had an increasingly complex marital life.

His relationship with Cantor ended, and he married one of his former students, Harriet Bernstein, a rich Toronto movie publicist. They had a daughter, Samantha. The marriage had a nasty ending, which Layton chronicled in his book The Gucci Bag.

Poetry was always Layton's prime focus, but he also wrote two books of essays and reviews, one with the apt title Taking Sides. He also edited a landmark anthology of Canadian love poetry, Love Where the Nights Are Long.

As he grew older, his view of human nature darkened.

"The Holocaust is my symbol," he said. "If you read today's poets, you'd never know the kind of barbarous world we live in. aMan forgets what a terrifying monster he can be. I want to keep reminding people how close they are to disaster."

In 1976, Layton was invested as an officer of the Order of Canada as "a prolific poet whose work has won him renown in Canada who is also widely known elsewhere through translation."

Chastened by his years in Toronto, which he described as "a godforsaken place where people know only material success, and nothing of love," Layton returned to Montreal in 1978.

In the 1980s, Layton was the subject of a National Film Board documentary, Irving Layton Observed.

The Italian Nobel committee twice nominated Layton for the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1993, he became the first non-

Italian to win the distinguished Petrarch Prize for Poetry.

In later years, before Layton went deaf and slipped into what he once called in a poem "the bewildered ghost sounds" of dementia, Anna Pottier, an aspiring wrestler, shared his life.

In the end, though, he had to depend on lifelong friends like Montrealer Musia Schwartz.

"He was an incredible creature. It's unbelievable, a shock, that he's gone," Schwartz, who knew Layton for more than 50 years, said yesterday.

Layton is survived by his two sons and his two daughters.

- - -

MISUNDERSTANDING

by Irving Layton

I placed

my hand

upon

her thigh.

By the way

she moved

away

I could see

her devotion

to literature

was not

perfect.

Reprinted by permission of

McClelland & Stewart. Ltd.

- - -

In his own words

"It is as dangerous to overestimate the goodness of people as to underestimate their stupidity."

"My neighbour doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants to be envied."

"When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you."

"God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw the creature He had made in His own image."

"If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets."

"Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope."

"Everything except writing poems and making love ends up by finally boring me."

"Blake was right; praise is the practice of art. Joy, fullness of feeling, is the core of the creative mystery. My dominant mood is that of ecstasy and gratitude. To have written even one poem that speaks with rhythmic authority about matters that are enduringly important is something to be immensely, reverently thankful for - and I am intoxicated enough to think I have written more than one."

"Idealist: a cynic in the making."

- - -

In the words of others

"Irving Layton was the Montreal magnet for me . ... I felt about him as I had not about any other Canadian writer, a kind of awe and surprise that such magical things should pour from an egotistical clown, a charismatic poseur. And I forgive myself for saying these things, which are both true and untrue."

- Al Purdy

"Irving Layton may well be for the historian of Literature ... the First Great Canadian Poet."

- Robert Creeley

"When I first clapped eyes on the poems of Irving Layton, two years ago, I let out a yell of joy ... for the way he greeted the world he was celebrating, head up, eyes propped wide, his gaze roving round a wide perimeter - which merely happened to see some sights that had never been disclosed to me so nakedly or so well."

- William Carlos Williams

"He rages like an old prophet, and like an old prophet he strikes fire out of rock and calls together in those sparks visions of past, present, and future that we may know ourselves anew, as if for the first time."

- Eli Mandel

"Ours has always been a mutually rewarding friendship; we complement, support, like and generally listen to each other."

- Leonard Cohen

"I remember what Irving Layton said about the essential characteristics of a young poet: arrogance and inexperience."

- Leonard Cohen

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

[Tchocolatl]

Excellent translation, Anne! thanks a lot.



I like so much what LC said about Layton :

"I taught him how to dress, he taught me how to live forever," Cohen once said.

Source : http://www.cbc.ca/montreal/story/qc-layton20060104.html



"Hommage de Leonard Cohen
Le chanteur Leonard Cohen, l'un de ses amis, a dit à l'annonce de sa mort: « Il y avait Irving Layton, et il y avait les autres, ajoutant, « C'est notre plus grand poète. La maladie d'Alzheimer ne l'a pas fait taire, et la mort ne le fera pas non plus »."

Source : http://www.radio-canada.ca/arts-spectac ... layton.asp


***
On Sunday January 8th :
For people who are interested to watch this tv show about Irving Layton, check these links :

http://www.cbc.ca/onstage/

http://www.cbc.ca/onstage/feature5.html

[Fljotsdale]

Thanks for posting that Montreal Gazette article, Jarkko.

I'm afraid I only thought of Layton as a friend of Cohen. Now I see thare was MUCH more to him than that. I shall have to look for some of his poetry.

[PhilMader]

re: Stephen Marche literary obit. on cbc.ca

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/layton.html

Anyone who can write such an uninformed narrow literary obit on Irving Layton is a frightful liability to Canadian literature. As an example, nowhere is it written that Layton was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature by Italian nominators.

As usual the CBC has a way of cutting its own throat, and, by proxy, that of Canada's and that of Canadians. In my opinion, this review only contributes to an image of the CBC as growingly deficient, with a hope that it again and soon becomes a vibrant broadcaster of the people and for the people of this country.

The CBC ought to hang its head in shame
for web publishing at the first announcement of Layton's death such a cartoonish, contemptuous, grotesque literary obituary. of one of Canada's greatest internationally renown
modern poets.

[Tchocolatl]

At least the guy is fan of Leonard Cohen :

"This is even more remarkable since Leonard Cohen turned that “fugitive distress” into the kind of poetry Irving Layton surely wanted to write, i.e. the kind most likely to be found in a French woman’s bedroom in the 1970s."

More seriously. It is sure bitter. Did you read my two (three in fact) previous links from CBC also? The French (Radio-Canada) one seems much more friendly despite all the provocative lit. about the FC. He was the same with the EC, though, and if some people are vindictive and can not see the artist in the enfant terrible. What to do? (What to do, what to do?) We are leaving in a democracy, I supposte that if Irving Layton had the right to write what he wrote, this guy, Stephen Marche has the same rigth to write what he wrote. People are not stupid they can understand all this, all what comes from both of those guys ("bad" and "good" ) and more.

For me, I see it like this : for a provocateur like Layton was, it is a tribute.

Second, think about it : what would have happen of this talented guy would he have lived in Romania - I mean if his parents did not decide to leave their native country for the "new world"? Much more bad things, including, maybe, nothing at all. So.

[Kevin W.M.LastYearsMan]

I was really sad to read about Layton's death. Granted, I became aware of his work through his association with Cohen, but I've always loved his stuff too. I see Irving's influence in some of Cohen's poetry.

I agree with Phil that the first obituary that I read from the CBC didn't do him justice. (Not that any would.) But it did seem like the guy took the tabloid-celebrity route as his angle. But the writer may say that he was just giving a fuller portrait of the man than just his work. Even so, I think that maybe he should have balanced his negative impressions with more things from people who thought well of him, of whom there are many.

Luckily there was other, more thorough, biographical and career information in other obituaries that have been posted here. There were a lot of insightful comments made in them and about them.

Arrogant or not, Irving Layton was one of those people, like Cohen, who I could just sit and listen to him talk, or read articles about, and be completely engrossed in what he was saying.
And as I've mentioned before, his reading of, "Death of a Ladies Man", especially the way he read the ending, was one of the most poigniant things I've ever heard.

"What Cohen is doing is trying to preserve the self..."-Layton

I think the same thing should be said about old Irving. He will be missed.
Kevin

[Tim]

You may prefer the CBC's story on the funeral - with quote from Leonard and picture. I can't think of anything to say that Leonard and all of you haven't said better already.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national ... 60108.html

I'll quote the text here, but the pictures are at link above.

Family, friends mourn poet Irving Layton
Last Updated Sun, 08 Jan 2006 16:26:29 EST
CBC News

Legendary bad-boy poet Irving Layton was remembered in Montreal Sunday as a maverick genius by friends and family who gathered to lay him to rest.

Layton, 93, died Jan. 4 at a Montreal residence for seniors; he had been battling Alzheimer's for some time.

The author of more than 40 books of poetry and essays is widely considered one of English Canada's pre-eminent poets.

Many of Layton's former students attended the funeral, including Federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, media innovator Moses Znaimer and singer and poet Leonard Cohen. They all spoke at the gathering.

"That which Irving loved the best, his work, will survive him, no doubt. Generations to come will learn these verses and they will transcend any positions, any political strategies, any literary strategies. They're here, they're written in stone, and they'll be read for a long, long time," Cohen said in his eulogy.

Cohen also read from Layton's poem The Graveyard.

The various speakers remembered Layton as flamboyant, audacious and one-of-a-kind – a great poet who transformed the Canadian literary landscape.

He was honoured as a teacher, colleague, mentor, poet and friend, a man whose doors were always open to artists and writers. Layton was named to the Order of Canada in 1976.

Layton spent much of his life battling the British hold on the Canadian literary scene and railing against the status quo. He was known for his provocative and sensual poetry, and also for his brash, larger-than-life public persona.

"Irving Layton felt the injustice around him. His poetry was a means of conveying that message of injustice and of mobilizing us in that struggle, and never to acquiesce in conventional wisdoms of the time or the political correctness that would pass for conventional wisdom but to be a voice for the voiceless," eulogized Cotler.

Layton married five women, each marriage ending in divorce. He leaves four children.

[Kevin W.M.LastYearsMan]

Good article, Tim. that was much more respectful than the other one I read from the CBC.
It was good to read that Leonard could make it to the funeral and say some kind things. It's always sad to know that a friend who was burning with life is no longer with us. It's also impossible to do that type of person justice in a eulogy. I had a friend of that sort die when he was 21, so I know how difficult it is to be expected to say something that would measure up to the memory. Looking back, I realize that was probably more something that I thought I owed to him rather than an expectation from others.
Just look at it this way: If you believe in any sort of afterlife, he's hanging with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, my friend Cory, and all of the rest of the greats.

Kevin

[Tchocolatl]

You are creating your own negative energy around this : one dark article and many good ones and you focus on the dark one. You even did not notice about the special tv show I did bring here. Sincerely I think it is an injustice to Irving Layton. Just too bad. Again I prefer the words of Cohen. Dear Mr. Cohen :

"That which Irving loved the best, his work, will survive him, no doubt. Generations to come will learn these verses and they will transcend any positions, any political strategies, any literary strategies. They're here, they're written in stone, and they'll be read for a long, long time,"

[PhilMader]

Tchocolatl, you are correct. One should not emphasize the negative and, truth is that the CBC has posted a number of other articles and multimedia items that are a credit to Irving Layton.

Still the points I'm hoping will not elude are : 1. the article referred to was the FIRST AND ONLY CBC editorial reaction found on the FRONT PAGE of CBC.ca, at the announcement of Irving Layton's death 2. Still influential although not as strictly observed as it used to be, is "De mortuis nil nisi bonum": with regard to the recently deceased, you've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Was this tradition observed, then, at the outset of the announcement of decease by the CBC? No. It wasn't. We are talking about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada's national broadcaster, not some fluff from Nowheresville, Canada.

In addition, CBC.ca dropped the ONLY link to Irving Layton on its FRONT PAGE after ONLY TWO DAYS. This is a national disgrace. The avian flu has been a feature on the front page of CBC.ca for months now. I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be but why couldn't CBC.ca leave the link to Irving Layton for at least a week after his death?

I think you know what I'm getting at now. Like Rodney Dangerfield would say, " I can't get no respect". Well, in the case of Irving Layton, he's got respect from the CBC, but NOT THE PROPER RESPECT DUE.

I'm putting this one "to bed" now. I think my point has been clearly made.

[Anne]

I am not trying to be contentious, but there are two links to Layton stories from the front page right now on cbc.ca.

[Tchocolatl]

I'm not trying to be contentious to, but. Look at that :

"NB A change in the program schedule: Sunday January 8th, OnStage has a repeat broadcast of our Words and Music presentation on the life of Irving Layton: Irving Invectus, by Jason Sherman"

This change of schedule seems to me a recognition, and it looks like respect too.

You know, PhilMader, this article you are talking about was... provocative, shocking. In a sense, it is a tribute to the persona and to the poet. Not for the dead body, the corpse, nor for this person sick from Alzeimer disease. It was a tribute to the man and his words written in stone that survive him and transcend even death. It is maybe what he would have like the best when he was alive strong, young and healthy. A kind of tribute to his manner and spirit. I repeat.

Anyway, you are correct : poets never receive the due respect they deserve.

You put it to bed. I go for the lullaby. The subject is sleeping thight, now. Everything is calm and this calm is surrended by this particular peace that can be found only during the night. Let say it like this OK?

[PhilMader]

Thanks Anne for leading me to :

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2 ... neral.html

yes, Anne, this coverage by the CBC is a an inspiration....of the numerous tender and greatly appreciative things said at his funeral.

[PhilMader]

I realize this forum is not meant for politics and nor should it be but sometimes there are mitigating circumstances. Irving Layton was a man who, with the pen, fought against injustice. I'm sure he would approve of what's below.

I'm appending this note from the Green Party of Canada, a scandalous victim of injustice in this Canadian federal election.

Again, my profound apologies.

http://www.info-greenparty.ca/petition

http://www.info-greenparty.ca/petition/forwardmsg.asp