ACCORDING TO KEITH SPICER, the essayist and bon savant chosen in the mid-1980s to head the Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, our destiny ought to be articulated by poets, not the professors, politicians or hectoring new-wave singers who brought this country to the brink of disintegration. So I found it entirely appropriate to seek out the wit and wisdom of the man Northrop Frye described as “the best English-language poet in Canada”—the self-styled literary colossus, Montreal’s Rabelaisian superman of letters, Irving Layton.
The author of fifty-four books translated into seven languages, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Layton lists his favourite recreation as “polemicizing,” a search for ways to perpetuate his inelastic faith in himself as a bon vivant, freethinker and Olympic-grade lover. His seventy-eight years have not slowed him down exactly, but instead of being a freelance firecracker attempting to explode every social shibboleth within range, he has become a verbal cannon, aiming big salvos at big targets.
We meet at the Hostaria Romana, a downtown Montreal pasta joint he describes as having “exquisite food, served as if the guests were royalty.” The spaghetti Bolognese turns out to be mediocre, but the conversation is wonderful. “Civilization has never been in greater danger,” Layton begins, characteristically ignoring the dubious comforts of understatement. “But I don’t regard that danger as a menace or a bad thing. On the contrary, with danger, you have the possibility of change and hope, an opportunity to do something different. Everything becomes negotiable, because there’s the possibility of doing things in a fundamentally new way. Too often in the past we’ve drawn back and resisted the opportunity for genuine improvement.”
Unlike most Canadians, who tend to blame everything from the Maple Leafs hockey team’s perpetual losing streak to the clouds of locusts chomping on Alberta’s barley fields on the lousy politicians in charge of our destinies, Layton shrugs them off as being irrelevant. He puts down Jean Chrétien as never having had the character, stamina or personality required by Canada’s precarious situation. “You’ve got to have not only the right man but the right moment,” he explains. “This is the right moment, but we don’t have the right man.” Quebec premier Robert Bourassa he praises as a “cool-headed economist who understands that the most important thing is to feed and clothe people, so you can’t go wild with your nationalism. “
Only Pierre Trudeau earns the poet’s broiling wrath. “He thinks he’s a visionary,” Layton begins winding himself up. “But a certified visionary must understand the elements he’s working with, and Trudeau ignores the French-Canadian fact. He always struck me as being very opinionated, highly dogmatic and, above all, arrogant. His pit-bull attitudes are based on his inability to listen; he feels so superior to everybody because of his training as a Jesuit and his observance of the catechism of Angry Anglohood. In short, his temper and his rooster masculinity militate against his ability to govern.”
Partly because he has travelled and read so widely, Layton views Canada’s perpetual constitutional crisis from a worldwide perspective. “I see the quest for independence, whether it’s in Quebec or Eastern Europe, springing out of the alienation of the individual from a world he never made. I see modern man as being alienated from God, from nature and, finally, in this last stage, from himself. We feel afraid, forlorn and comfortless, seeking a touch of warmth, like lost sheep plunging back into a flock that follows no direction.” Amen.
That’s a mild rant for a rainy Tuesday noon hour, but Layton is just getting started and turns less forgiving with every slurp of pasta. “I can’t help feeling,” he glooms, “that we’re now in a situation analogous to the fourth or fifth centuries, during the fall of the Roman Empire, when the barbarian hordes were knocking on the gates. Those barbarians were external. Ours are internal, in the sense that they’re our own citizens who have shaken off the restraints of civilization. It’s even true of the arts. Will we ever see another Milton, Shakespeare, Racine or T.S. Eliot? Forget it. That kind of greatness is gone forever, destroyed by technology and the forces of so-called education. If you want great poetry today, don’t go to the poets who are all busy writing their sweet little lyrics, God bless them. If you want great poetry today, go to films and music.”
Curiously, Layton’s pessimism excludes the future of Quebec, because he feels its society is firmly rooted in a distinct history, religion, language, literature and memory. That’s where the grievances and the difficulties come in, he believes, because English Canada lacks such unifying anchors. This doesn’t only mean English Canada would have a tough time facing the determined collective will of French Canada, but that those of us outside Quebec are much more open to the destructive forces of the modern world. “Menaced by the Anglos, the French Canadians pull in,” he explains, “because they feel they’re protecting something valuable against the onset of mediocratization and homogenization. English Canadians don’t have much intellectual baggage whatsoever. None at all, really. So they have very little to protect and not much will to fight back.”
The third glass of Pinot Grigio has turned lukewarm between us, and Layton grows silent for a few precious nanoseconds as his audience—the bevy of gathered waiters, who stand around like cashiered hedge fund managers—agree with him.
But the poet ends on an up note. “I have two deities,” he confides. “My main deity is chance; the other is love. I’m a great believer in chance. I was born circumcised, which gave me the vanity and egotism of a saviour, and made my mother favour me. I was the only one in her brood of seven who attended high school, because our family couldn’t afford the fees. She felt that if I turned out to be the Messiah, I should know the English language, history and so on. I’ve been a great believer in chance ever since.” Layton hints that Canada may be salvaged by just such a confluence of good fortune.
I can’t resist. “Surely,” I plead with him, “as a putative Messiah, you can save this country.” His eyebrows shoot up, not sure whether I’m joshing. “I don’t think I can save it,” he replies, sadly shaking his great mane of grey curls.
Then he quickly recovers his customary triple-A chutzpah. “I shouldn’t be overcome by such modesty all of a sudden,” he snorts. “Maybe after I’ve had another drink …”
—1997