Layton's legacy lives

DEBORAH WEISS

At an evening celebrating the life of the late poet Irving Layton last week, his third wife, Aviva, read from what she considered Layton's "most obscure poem," "Ballad of the Stones."

She described how Layton had written this poem while the two were separated, he in Nice, France, and she in Montreal. One evening, after ingesting "a small amount" of a mind-altering substance, she experienced a hallucination, which is captured by this particular poem. When the two were reunited, they realized that his writing this poem and her hallucination occurred at the same time. Proof, according to Aviva Layton, that "strange things do happen."

The recollection was one of many shared at the gathering celebrating Layton's life and work, held at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal Nov. 1. The poet's children, peers and admirers also spoke.

Layton was born Israel Pincu Lazarovitch on March 12, 1912, in Romania. In 1913, the family emigrated to Montreal, living in the impoverished St. Urbain Street neighborhood later made famous by Mordechai Richler in his novels. Layton went on to write more than 40 volumes of poetry and prose. He was an Officer of the Order of Canada and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature.

The commemorative evening, hosted by B. Glen Rotchin, was organized as part of Jewish Book Month. In welcoming the crowd of approximately 200 people, Rotchin explained that the goal for the evening was to "summon and conjure the Layton spirit" through his poetry. Members of the community were invited to read their favorite Layton poem and share with the audience why they had made their selection. Rotchin noted that, to his surprise and delight, no two people had chosen the same poem. The choices ran the gamut from the irreverent to the serious, from the erotic to the comedic, from the well-known to the obscure. The selections also spanned Layton's long career. As Rotchin said, this was an indication of not just the quantity, but the quality of Layton's body of work.

The first speaker of the evening, Reconstructionist Rabbi Ron Aigen, discussed how his selection, "The Search," depicts the spiritual side of Layton's work and "captures the sense of who we are, as 20th-century Jews." Next, Layton's eldest son, Max, read from the poem "The Swimmer," and shared some thoughts about his father, explaining that Layton believed that, "in a great poem, every word matters." He also recounted the story of how Layton wrote "The Swimmer" in 1944, at Child's restaurant in downtown Montreal. Layton darted into the restaurant, grabbed a waitress's pen and wrote the poem in a frenzy on the only paper available – a napkin. This represented Layton's first major poem and, at the time, he felt he was finally joining the ranks of poets.

MP Irwin Cotler revealed another side of Layton – that of the teacher and spiritual leader. Layton was Cotler's teacher when he was a youngster, at Herzliya, a parochial Jewish high school in Montreal. Layton was "a great teacher, [with] an abiding passion for justice," said Cotler, and also "profoundly Jewish in his expression for universal justice in our time." Cotler described Layton as his "spiritual father."

Among the other presenters were poets Seymour Mayne and David Solway and Quebec MNA Lawrence Bergman, who observed that Layton captured the "dual aspect of experience": the exultation and the fear, the joy and the sadness. This event showcased the poet and the man, the father and the husband, the teacher and the activist. There was a great deal of celebration, of his life and work, and some mourning of his loss. It was clear that the legacy of Irving Layton lives on.

Deborah Weiss is a freelance writer and a PhD student in the department of epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal.

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