Y : \i a Le - vt ‘LIST_OF_ABBREVIATIONS 7 (The following Le # list of abbreviations of the titles of Irving Layton's books, as they appear in this thesis:) », JHERE AND NOw/ 1945 NOW IS THE PLACE/ 1948 ‘THE BLACK WUNTSMEN/ 1951 \CERBERUS (with Louis Dudek, Raynond Souster/ 1952 LOVE THE CONQUEROR WORM/ 1953 4 IN THE MIDST OF MY FEVER/ 1954 ‘ ‘THE LONG PEA~SHOOTER/ 1954 ‘THE BLUE PROPELLER/ 1955 [THE COLD GREEN ELEMMNT/ 1955 [THE BULL CALF AND OTHER POEMS/ 1956 (MUSIC ON A KAZOO/ 1956 [THE IMPROVED BINOCULARS/ 1956 ‘A RED CARPET FOR THE SUN/ 1959 ‘THE SWINGING FLESR/ 1961 SL:BALLS FOR A ONE~ARHED JUGCLER/ 1963 ‘THE LAUGHING ROOSTER/ 1966 {COLLECTED PoEKS/ 1965, ‘TRE SHATTERED PLINTHS/ 1968 [PERIODS OF THE MOON/ 1967 CUISELECTED POEMS/ 1969 ‘THE WHOLE BLOODY BIRD/ 1969 NATL POLISR/ 1971 ‘THE COLLECTED POEMS OF IRVING LAYTON / ‘1971 = sHOVERS AND LESSER MEN/ 1973 "TRE POLE-VAULTER/ 1974 FOR MY BROTHER JESUS/ 1976 ‘THE UNCOLLECTED POEMS OF TRVING LAYTON 1936-59/ 1976 THE COVENANT/ 1977 THE TIGHTROPE DANCER/ 1978 ‘{IDROPPINGS FROM HEAVEN/ 1979 TOR MY NEIGHBOURS IN HELL/ 1979 ‘THE LOVE POEMS OF TRVING LAYTON/ 1980 SIRUROPE” AND OTHER BAD NEWS/ 1081 THE GUCCT BAG/ 1983 1984CHAPTER 1 SCATOLOGY: A LITERARY CONTEXT In Canada ve have no tradition of bravling, : irreverent poets -- no Villons and Riabauds. Only that of a bunch of squares. We need wild- eyed poets to remind us constantly that the sober een of learning or business enterprise come ad go, their voices stlenced by death forever, but a lyric that despair or love gave birth to will last as long as there ore husans left on this plmet to read and respond. We need:chen badly to shout down ° the chorus of voices nov rising from the white sufflered throats of cultivated ledies and gentlenen as these are directed by the + 7 erudite flourishes of the critic's baton in praise of poetic Span, Above all, ve need thea to remind us chat poets are neither scholars nor gentlemen, but creatures with an indiscriminating appetite for life, for ny whom "good taste’ {s soaething to wipe one's unstodgy behind with! ‘Throughout his poetic career Layton has often been criticized for his use of four-letter words, especially those having to do with excretion and excrement. Of the critics and academics who have thus censured him, Layton says they "squirmed ich time [Buch word3] were used 5 if no decent, patriotic, monarchy-loving Canadian ever made love or had 8 bowel movenent...Since I reverenced the body and saw no need for hypocrisy in chese matters Iu sailed with # victousness only outraged virtue can sumon. They even convinced themselves that ay occasional use of four- letter vords offended the sensibilities of this country’s deltcat lumberjacks, aechanics, fishermen, and ferners. One of Layton's fundanent al purposes therefore, in using seatology, is to express his conviction that the body \and its organic functions ate 4pcr8d nd eae they com be igtored oF despised only at great Fisk to the5 . 2 ~ , : i: jos . . ‘ « healch of the individeat ando€ softety. Pare of afgge's obits to in Igyton's view, is co combat the puritanical prejudices itherent the genteel tradition. In this respect, Layton defies compar{son'with other Canadien uriters. ELt Mandel and Seysour Mayne boch sert thet as early as the fifties, Layton responsible for? introducing a change in the Canadian sens{- bility chrough his persistent use of ‘disrespectful verse and trenchant satire.'? Mayne writes, “those who are caught up by gentilicy, and che Genteel tradition have no understanding of the beauty and terror of the ion and destruction; creative process." The creative process entails cr : Poetry, therefore, is not only about the sublime or the exalted, but also about the basicdkeslities. Layton repudiated che genteel tradition in Canada because of its failure to come to terms with such aspects of human experience. In fact he has found fev poets to emulate in either Canada or che United States. His literary affiliations are closer to the Euro- ‘pean prophetic tradition. Mayne points out that Layton was always , to with Jewishness and the Hebraic ethic; and that in sone extent, concern his Later years he identified strongly with the “angry end moralist pro- .. phetic tradition, lynne Francis notes that Layton sees himself as 9 nodern-day prophet; :+:0ne to whom it is given to see deeply into the avila of his day; one who feels driven to use all the talent and all the rage at his coamsnd to e chastise his fellow huasns, to exhort them to end their vays, even though he “is haunt by the morose conviction that human kind will never change. This vocation to prophecy removes Layton from the context of contesporary writing but admits him to s company vhich he prefers, : ‘that of the Old Testament prophets and their . modern counterparts such 2s Blake, Carlyle, Nietzsche, Lavrence md Yeats, It is vith/ (oo such a Line: de in mind that Layton can’best be understood. a Fs E x Fev eritics have seriously examined the function of Layton's "four~ letter" vords. It 18 ay contention that he-mploys scatology for both Literary end moral purposes. I propose to examine these diverse functions first in the light of the literary tradition explored by Jae Num Leé in SWIFT AND SCATOLOGICAL SATIRE; then, on the evidence of Layton’s own work, I shall denonstrate how he extends this tradition into the realm of eschatology. Lee traces the history of scatology in continental writings from ~ (Aristophanes to Rabelats: Ariscophanes employs it as a device of ridicule tn humorous oblique satire, Catullus and Martial main Ly as a device of personal satire, Juvenal as a deans of strongest condemation in attacking person- al and social vices, and Dante as m instrument for denouncing and castigating various sins through full use of {ts conventional association with sin and its pover to nauseate the reader. Rabelais exhibits sore vartety in the use of scatology than his predecessors; in fact, his uses include almost all the ends which scatology has previously served: humorous satire, ridicule, oblique satire, direct denunciation. After ishing the tradition, Lee proceeds to study its English exeaplars froa Skelton to Pope, ss a prelude to his study of Swift. Lee's conclusion is that scetology {s used for non-satirical and satirical purposes. Non- eirical scatological writing is principally found in popular literature and is considered prankish, flatulent, and stercoraceous; satirical seatological writing serves importmt thematic purposes a2 a device of ridicule, condemation, md criticism. Lee divjdes the satirical uses of scatology into four categories: personal satire, socio-political satire, religio-moral satire, and intellectual\sarires, TN utth Lee categories in mind one may"extend the scatologicel tradition beyond Swift to include such writers Swinburne, Rossetti, % Beardsley, 'D.H. Lawrence, Frank Harris, Janes Joyce.” Among sore contemporary writers Leo Marx cites Henry Miller, Faulkner, Selinger, Ellison, Tennessee Williams, Willian Carlos Williams, O'Connor, Burroughs and Noram Mailer.® The scatologicel divension of Layton's vork puts him clearly fin this cradition. . P 3 In his use of seatology for non-satirical purposes Layton's sole Imtention is £0 provoke laughter. He does not, however, write ‘dirty Jokes"; inherent in the rationale of the dirty joke is that the joke ¢ is an attack on the listener: "The Joking level is always the hostile sy be as humour, and amd anal-agressive, no matter how disguised it no matter what the subject of the joke." 9 Layton, by contrast, has a healthy, earthy attitude tovards mality; he writes about it vith a hearty openness. His non acirleal seatologieal poems, though not numerous, are examples of broad wit and bawdy humour. Bovdiness may be expressed in erotic as well as excrenental imagery. Shakespeare's bavdiness, for example, is most often erotics Suift's Ls usually excrenental. Layton's baudiness oscillates between 10 tvo poles. Seatology Ls effective espectally because it is shocking. Layton euploys frankly erotic and excremental diction to fight sexual, cloacal, and verbal taboos. He exposes the genteel reader's ambivalence toverds anality. Mayne writes, "Layton {s taking advantage of the taboo for shock value as well as restoring four-letter words to 9 more healthy and unrepressed expression." 115 4 . 5 Like Layton, Norman Mailer believes thet society suffers from’an | . anal fixation, and that .as.@ result no one speaks publicly of ‘anything 2 e ears . : connected to excretion or excrement unless euphemtsticatly. "The obsession with many of us with seatology is attached té a disrupted | ee within us, within our bodies." oa Man basically suffers from a,rupture with his primal self. Mailer, says Leo Marx, advocates ion andtom, Te balge to restore s sense of proportiol, scLferesed, ven emity. To speak religiously, [latter] tiputes to the use of ob- ete aereeiee commence pees Yee ey eee ete is capable of redeeming basic cultural resources." 14 The non-seticiesl wgés of scatology. are of celetively mfnor incer- . est. Far more common and serious ig scatological satire. In this realm * 8 comparison of Layton's poems with those of other yriters in the tradition may offer sone insights and lead us to @ consideration of that may be called the seatologtesl dinenston of Layton's vision. ~ I have choses‘ exeuples fron the writing of Catulles, Sutft, ses and Miller so that I may compare and contrast them with Layton. Similar- ology. The intention, however, is not to engage’in a detailed account - of che possible influence of these writers on Layton, but simply to | adapt the insights gained from them in order to throw new light on Layton's work. . as veli as ‘pseudo-gentility’. Lee, urites, “Catublus eaploys seatoloay a8 2 weapon of personal satire in attacking indivi-duals of apparently litte public dmpoytance. Though he uses more pru- 4 SS eient Languas than, sci¥ology, vhan Catullus resorts co the Latter, it terized by ini becomes 2 formidable umn ofpcenal site oh trae cone and revolting physical references." --sigtlarieies can be dram between Catullus agd Layton in respect to“their mutual uge of impre~ cation, Note the, folloving example: Catullus Then you shall suffer, with feet tied up And mullet and radishes stuck up your: arse (xv) 16 Layeon tate ehts he'll kiss The clotted black arachole of Saton — see Catullus and Layton both delight in cursing their ‘detractors’ or critics, Exerenental diction is used in‘these poems for shock value: Catullus —1'11 fuck you both right up the Gay Furius, Aureliu For saying I'm not chaste, what brass! : Because my poens aren't. Thus You miss the point; my poetry : Is sivply not the same as ae. But all my verses really ove Their wit end charm and 211 their salt To spicy, merry, sexy flow ' O€ words that even stir uphalt fo ~ ‘And hairy grond-dads - no young crew -~ Whose stiffened loins can hardly screw, Well, read ay poems; If your brass S Insists wy verse makes me like you, T'11 fuck you both right up the ass. 5 yor ane up the Layton Before writing a review ig is advisable to take the eyeballs put of one's arsehole Tt {s also wise fon occasion to renember fy art and englishery do, not consort well togetherCe And that although here's the logical place for the literary castoffs of Britain to acquire status Their behinds at once beslobbered ‘ by spruce anglophiles @. Si imploring to lick soon, ANT Englishamn's piles. “Georgie, Am I Concrete Enough?" «se 1955) “the Poet on His Detractor: Or note the: following po "piss on thea from a great height . t if theytre lucky some drops will fall onsthen and make thea ‘immortal! (ram 1979) Layton has become controversial because of such biting attacks on eritics md foes, These attacks become more shocking when they are replete with scatological imagery. ‘As recently a 1984, Layton wrote @ poem after the manner of Catullus: You, Cat, fell for @ patrician whore who soured the alleyways ‘wfter dark looking for an Bthiop's uv honging bellocks; fascinatingly evil she vas, ‘also witty, for vhen told to her face she Loved cock dearly she: burst out Laughing; "You said a aouthful.' Still, coapered to that broad your uncle's saddled hinself with : in Verona Lesbia's a vestal virgin Listen, that Jerk youp uncle has got himself @ redf lulu 3 .this time one eye is without sight and every aorning she startles him with trumpetings Caesar's legions might envy, so dismal ts her stomach, ‘And her teeth -- it's the truth, man += are dissolving in her mouth Like long icicle: Stoply wearing away from her gu: Like the shoreline of Calabrii That's mot the end of it, Cat Piles ring the darling's asshole . 7 5 Like a mare's halter Anda flaming herp makes penetration a risky business. “EPISTLE TO CATULLUS" (GB 1984) Layton uses scatology in the poem to present the victia in as horrid an image as possible. He comically and satirically portrays the women startling her lover every morning with efplosive ‘trumpetings'. Her . ized in order to accentuate her ugliness sad piystesl disesses are oral ‘diseases. The vigorous rough-talk of tavern-goers ,is captured in the poem, and the vulgarities, so blatantly used, re-create # Catullan manner, Layton rarely indulges in such scatological frivolity. This poea is simply an exercise in coarse vit and humour. Swift uses acatology extegsively in his writing. Unlike Catullus : ‘ however, his use of scatology is rooted in an excrenental vision. The term ‘exeremental vision’, was used in 1954 as the ticle of a chapter in Middleton Murry book on. Swift. Norman 0. Browm in LIFE AGAINST DEATH, Says that the credit for acknovledging the significance of the excfesental theme in Swift belongs to Aldous Huxley. Brown, hovever, denounces Murry's and Huxley's interpretations of Sift's scetology." Even Huxley and Murry, though they face the problem, prove incapable of 9 ing vhatWire is to see, After admitting into consciousness the yspleasant facts which previous criticism had repressed, they proceed to protect them- selves and ussagainst the disturbing impact of the excremantal vision al? by systematic distortion, denunciation, md depreciation."!” Brown fnstaes chat Murry and Huxley adopted 4 aoral and intellectual stance of Superiority and that this clouded their understanding. The excrenental vision is grounded in realism, and in the beli that life and death, beauty and mire, joy and pain, are inextricably bounds For Layton, it ts also # celebration and affirmation of Lite. : In Suite md Scatological satire, Ue writ context of literary tradition, Swift uses scatology slmost alvays for that viewed in the satire. He is never sensational, and in all cases he emphasizes a worel point: Though Swift {s traditional in his use of scatology a satiric device, he is unique im English Literature in the way he uses scatology as a weapon of attack against major targets. In general, while others resort to scatology intermittently, Swift --- without squeasish apology --~ turns Lt into a formidable weapon in a con- statent attack. If he does apologize Lt is to capitalize on our sense of shave concerning our animsl body. No. other English satirist employs this device with so much flexibility or force. His full exploitation of the various possibilities of scatology to serve his diverse purposes is a measure of his artistic skill. Lee describes Suift's seatology as moral mg humanistic: Often Swift not only provokes our boisterous Laughter, but alsb forces our acceptance of the truth of our aminal nature so that ve may not be ashenedlo of our true selves, including our inescapable anality. Tn this respect Swift is a true humanist who. . attempts to free us from our prejudices and the futile denial of our basic nature; the more heartily we can Laugh by mems of scatological , humor, the more completely we accept ourselves ae sortal beings. For such a purpose a tr hunmist does not shy avay from scatol On the contrary, he is almost oblig ated to use it. Brown do not seez to agree Vith Lee's husonistte interpretation of Swift. He says that the angl function for Swift “becomes the de- ctstve weapon in his assault on the pretensions, the pride, even the Lf-respect of mankind."20 Lee says thet Swift exposes the truth about our animal nature so that we may be ashamed of our true selves and Brown argues that Swift attacks mm so he might become ashased of hin- self. The mal function in man becomes s question of guilt and shane. The anal function in man for Layton {s not shameful. Typ humen body 19 revered by the poet and he con write about sexual or excrenental and franknt funetions with equal . "The body is sacred, and this sacranental view distinguishes Layton's excremental vision from Swift's. Both Layton and Suift.hovever, deliberately use the shock of real- fan to deflate romantic idealisa and to expose excessive gentilit suift Nor wonder how 1 tobe ay wits Oh; Geelta, Coclia, Coclia shits Geantaus end Peter Layton You went behind a bush tb piss, Taagine Wordsworth telling thi: About Lucy? And Robart Bridges About his dear.less? “anti-Romantic" (RCS 1959) Both writers hold the premise that order and beauty cone from dung, i.e. chaos. Both exploit the irony of the fact that the good ‘and then inseparable from evil, disorder, and ugliness. \ SwLEE Such order from Confusion spruny : Such gaudy Tulips.rais'd from Durig. (The Lady's Dressing Room) Layton Out of Nature's immemorial dung cone flovers and sterg. (Like 8 Mother Demented) ‘The holy and profane are indissoluble, Swift writes: For the Upper Region of Man, {s furnished like the Middle Region of the Air; the Materials are formed from causes of the widest differences, yet produce at last the same substmce and effect. Mists arise from the earth, Steams, from Dunghills, Exhalations from the Sea, and Smosk from fire; yet all clouds are the same in Composition, as well as consequences: and the Funes issuing from a Jakes, will furnish comely and useful a Vapour, as Incense, from an Altar. ‘Thus far, I suppose, will easily be granted me; and then (t will follow, that as the face of Nature never Produces Rain, but when it {s overcast and disturbed, so Huma understanding, seated in the Brain, aust be troubled, md overspread by vapours, ascending from the lover Faculties, to vater the Invention, and render it fruitful. 2) Just as Leyton reflected the styles of Catullus and Swift in his excremental paems, so did he adapt Yeat's Francis suggests that Layton is fond of the description of himself "He shares a number of the ite concerns with the votion to heroic values, an anti-Christian and anti- bourgeois bias, » consuming passion for vitality and virility, an antinomiel vision of reality." i 7 CRAZY JANE POEMS, excremental ery (s juxtaposed vith2 erotic 4 gery. The central figure, Jane, is an earthy, fertile and heroic individual, while her shadow, the bishop, is the embodiment of constipstion and sterility: \ ‘The’ Bishop has a skin, God knows, : \ Wrinkled like «foot of a goose, \ Nor can he hide in holy. black ~ \ The feron's hunch upon hia back... “Crazy Jane apd the Bishop" ‘The bishop is devoid of sensuality ad of life. He is repressed, wwrink- \ led, old, and sterile. The church does not allow him to marry and’ forbids : him to acknowledge his physical self, Lacking this ‘vholene: or untty, he {s living # death-in-life. Im Yeat's poem ‘Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishgp', Jane's libertine conduct {s denounced by the Bishop. fle instructs her to “Live in ® heavenly mmsion / Nag in some foul sty,” to vhich st repli ‘Fair md foul are near of kin, \ ‘And fair needs foul,' I cried ‘A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent. But love has pitched his mansion in The plece of exctenent. - For nothing cm be sole, or whole ‘That has not been rent. “Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop.” ‘ ‘As fair and foul are interrelated, so are the holy and the profane. Befictingly, love's mansion 18 pitched in the place of excrenent. Note Layton's adaptation of the poat "IE T wed te won't be a ghost : But ae with a tool, A Large upstanding one," I cried, ALL ehrust ond quivering muscle!13 Only such a man, dear Bishop Can make ay heart full. “Crazy Jenny Talks to The Bishop" (FMBJ Oriana ° He is suggesting, Like Yeats, that Jane's heart will become ‘full’ or ‘whole! uhen there is totality in the sexual act. She cannot marry 7 4 spirit or a !ghost', but 2am. Both Yeats and Layton advocate ‘aarrioge’ between the physical and spiritual. Excrement as a sjubol, suggests this duality. It is chaos and disintey ation, and equally creation. Tt 42 both an end-product and the fertilizer vhich stisletes groveh., ei “ Physical and spiritual oneness {s explored by Janes K. Boven in “Consummation, Completeness, and Crazy Jane: Total ity Through Union." “The sense af vholeness groving out of Jane's tecognition that theré ean be no completeness without a total synthesizing of opposites is central....to the poetic structures of the CRAZY JANE POEMS and to 23 Joe's nature as vell.. Francis describes Layton as am Heroic Vitalist and notes thet.his ¢ Henry Miller, Norman closest parallels song contemporary writers Mailer and Ted Hughe: ACh RAE NEEYER Aas MT BSig HEPAT BEE tip pllie, teases s high valoe one Pree EEE EGULALSions PHS" abel eOPatetaded oe tea TSopsteldnats'tooteapt tor thevarse of arotinds te whore systenny abstractions an all fora Of Tepransion: eo conttted to power at s principle of heslth and growh-- pormooel, socinly polletcel ao conatey and he. aes choos vi deateuction a components of th crete, prostie on SIL itvetss tne finely he shores tha Rerote Viceliaes Passion for a'vistie Life om this eetth snd thelr ‘con~ usst’vigorus fepudlation of trasitional Cheietimiey. Rutehing beyond the good and evil of Christian sorsliey. Layton, Like all such writers, is concerned With the gooda and the bad, .the noble of human conduct. ind the life-denying qualities Layton and Miller are similar in several respects. Both writers glorify the body and exalt it as the sacred reality. In TROPIC OF 2 “I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery 25 CANCER, Miller writ belong to the earth! of humanity (Eiviltzattoa] Miller often compares himself to an organ of the body, be se ‘prick’ or ‘big intestine’. "I not only think about food all day, but I dresm 6 about it at night; or, "he feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores”a little wider, I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bull. 2 rams, drakes, St. Bernard's Layton's poem 'Fiesco' is after the manner of Miller: So enlarge that savoury hole “twould lust, for telegraph pole Make misers journey to hold Within te their bags of gold Whole armadas there to sink creas 1976) Q Layton ond Miller both compere the world to ‘cunt'. Tn L'Eavot', Layton writes, "World, you old svelly cunt / {t's been great knowing yqu; | knowing tun, moon, sters, beautiful women / vaves and graves. (emBs 1976) 28 They both share healthy acceptance of Life's ses, and this {a vhy they ‘bounce in the atink': Norge Nailer Miller bounces in the stink. We read TROPIC OF CANCER, that books of horrors md feel happy. It is because there {s honor in the horror and : mataphor in the hidebus. How, ve cannot even begin co say. Maybe it is chat oood is vastly more various, self-regenerative, hearty, ond sly than Hemingvay ever guessed, Maybe aood is not a lavender lady, but a barnaid with full vistons of heaven in the full corruption of her1s beer breath, and an old drunk's vomit is a clarion cali to some mutants of the cosmos Just now squeezing around the bend.29 Matler Ls suggesting that the hideous amd ugly are not necessarily different from the bemutiful . In fact, he says chat there may be \henor in the hideous Good and evil are inseparable, as are chaos and order. Man can transforn ‘raw experience! into pélateble art, but he must not be divorced from reality. Nunerous further parsllel® could be dram between Layton and the above-mentioned writers, but Lt suffices to say that he shares the seatological dimension with many predecessors and contenporaries. f Layton totally affirms man's physical organic condition. D.i. Lawrence writes that it is, "through the recognition and complete acceptance of one's physical organic condition in its totality (that includes the physical, corrupt and shameful as vell os the mental, spiritual and conventionally moral) that freedom and energy in the body and spirit can be achieved. Out of the md rise the lotus amd the saan," 30 Layton's earthiness is steeped in Hebratc vitality aid he ssion- ately celebrates life. He disagrees with those vho regard the excretory organs ss shameful, because in his view they are a natural part of life. He exposes aan's aabivalence towards mality, which stems from the realization that excretory organs are linked to sexual organs; snd he shocks people into an avarenesa of their repressed, puritanical nature.Freud explains am's aversion to the excretory organs as follow: Above all, the coprophilic elements is the instinct have proved incompatible vith our sesthetio idea: probably since the tise when man developed en up- right posture amd s0 renoved his orgen of smell from the ground; further, # considerable proportion of the sadistic elenents belonging to the erotic instinct have to be abandoned. All such developmental processes, hovever, relate only to the upper Layers of the compli- cated structure. The fundamental processes which pro- mote erotic excitation remain alvays the same. Excrement- al things are all too intimately and inseparably bound up with sexual things; the position of the genital organs~-INTER URINAS ET FAECES--remains the decisive and unchangeable factor. The genitals thensélves have not undergone the development of the rest of the hums fora in the direction of beauty; they have retained «thelr animal cast; and so even today love, coo, is in essence as animal as it ever was. 2) For Layton, there 1s no incompatibility with excretory or sexual organs. He argues that those vho express disguat in the bodily functions negate Life. He insists that revulsion with che excretory organs suggests fe of the evolutionary’ proce Im his excremental vision, uhich 2 but one facet of his overall vision, he glorifies am's excretory and sexual organs because they symbolize the polarities of Life and death. For Layton, the excrenental process has sacramental significance. A childhood experience Layton earnestly recounts, involves the ritual Lighting of che Sabbath candles. This event took place in the kitchen where the Menorah was placed on a table that vas covered with a ‘white’ eablectoch. As a child he would watch his Jevish Mother bless the Sabbath candles He vas inspired with the mysticisn and spirituality enanating from the glowing candles, Concurrently, he vss Jolted out of his mesmerized state by the flushing’ sounds coming froavv the toilet which was located next to the kitchen?” For Layton, from then on, the physical and spiritual vere indivisible, and sacred. Im this respect, he extends the scatological tradition to an eschatological level.NOTES ; * ieving Layton, The Laughing Rooster (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), p. 10. 2 wid., p. 10. . . 3 Seymour Mayne, A Study of the Poetry of Irving Layton (Ph.D. Thesis, University of British Coluabia, 1972), p. 113. 4 pid., p. 122. 5 Wynne Francis, “The Farting Jesus: Layton and the Heroic Vital- ists," Contemporary Verse II (No.3, 1978), p. 46. 6 Jac tum Lee, Suift and Scatological Satire (Alhuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971), pp. 21-22. 7 meodor Rosebury, Life on Man (New York: The Viking Fre » 1969), Rosebury approaches the subject of scatology from a scientific Perspective and, devotes an entire chapter to THE GREAT SCATOLOGISTS. 8 Leo Marx, ‘Noble Shit' : The Uncivil Response of American Writers to Civil Religion in America," The Massachusetts Review (Drew University, February 22-24, 1973), p. 739. 9 Gershon Legman,. Rationale of che Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexui Humor, 2nd ser., (New York: Breaking Point, 1975), p. 614. 10 Bawdy Humour: Erotic and Excremental But that is not so; critic ny mind Says Jasper Shittick: ts evenly balanced “Though the world doesn't know it. fon the tyo buttock cheeks Our Pratt's a major poet.” - of my beloved vHe is: if Jasper Shittick Is a Major Critic. (Sutra cP 1971) (The Literary Lifé Lew 1953)19 "seymour Mayne, A Study of the Poetry of trving Layton (Ph>D. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1972), p. 160. Verank Muir, An Irreverent. and Almost Complete Social History of 147, the Bathroom ( London: Willian Heinemann, 1982), pp: 14; Numerous euphemisas*have been used in reference to ‘defecation. ‘The ‘bathroom’ for instance had many appelations: : “The children of Israel went to the'House of Honour! The Ancient Egyptians went to ‘The House of the Morning’ Monks went to the ‘Garderobe' (our modern cloakroom) "The Necessarium’ (later the ‘Necessary House’) or The 'Rerodorter' (literally ‘room at the back of the Dormitory") The Tudors wnt to the'Privy’ ( Place of Privacy) or The Jakes (Jack's Place. Perhaps the origin of the Anerican ‘John'). The Seventeenth Century added "The Bog-house' (this becane a word auch used by build= ers and yas the technical term preferred by most <* architects until the early years of this century). Wien fone expression became too familiar, our more genteel . ancestors found themselves a new one." Victorian society used hundreds of evasive words-and phrases to denote this sacred place. They also had 2 different vocabulary for different and classes. The Aristocracy used ‘lavatory’, the Middle-Class ‘100! the Working Class ‘toilet’, : 13ye0 Marx, ""Noble Shit': The Uncivil Response of American Writers to Civil Religion in America," The Massachusetts Review (Drew Univer- sity, February 22-24, 1973), p. 739. : Mipid., pe 739. - 1 : Sya0 Wun Lee, Suift, and Scatological Satire (Albuquerqu University of New Mexico Press, 1971), p.lL., Vpeney Myers and Robert J. Ormsby (trans.), Catullus:’ The Complete Poens for American Readers (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1970). Vyorman 0, Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Mesn- ing of History (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyap University Press,1959), pp. 179-180. : sen toa Lae, Subtt anf Scatologtsel Satise (AIbuavesdue: 1971), p. 1237 we University of New Mexico Pre; Wipia., p. 122, 20yorman 0, Brow, [ife Against Death: ‘The’ Psychoanalytical Momning of History (Middletown, Conmecttcut: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), p. 179. ‘ . lipid., p. 196. Ryone Peancis, "The Fabeing Jesus: Gayton’ mé the Hérote Vite ist: "Contemporary Verse 11 (No. 3, 1978), p. 49, : 2yanes K. Boven, "Gonsunastion, Goepletencss, and Cray Jane: Totelity Through Union," Research Studies, vol..29 (1971), p. 147. vane Francis, “The Farting Jesus: Layton and the Heroic Vital- ets," Contemporary Verse II (Wo. 3, 1978), p. 46. Suenry Hiller, Tropic of Cancer (London: Soin Calder Publishers Limtted, 1963), p.254. . ‘ rea, pe 69, Poe Tia. pe Se . ror shakespeare, as for Miller and Layton, the ‘pudend’, Ls at once physical and mystical, esoteric and material, “Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy: A Literary and Psychologics! Essay and a Comprehenfive Glossary (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968). | eo ‘In Tropic of Cancer, Miller often compares the world to ‘cunt’. "When J 1 took down ineo this fucked-out cunt of s whore T feel the whole world beneath me, a.world tottering and crumbling, a world used up and pol- 0 {hed Like @ leper's skull." (p. 248). /: a ® Norman Matler, "Henry Miller: Genius arid Lust, Narctestem," dmerican Review, vol.24 (1976), p. 7. o 30k, E, Pritchard, D.H.Lavrence: Body of Darkness (London: Hutchison & Co. Ltd., 1971), p. 25. "al Normen 0, Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoenalytical Meaning of History (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Pres 1959), p. 16% : "Repression weighs more heavily on amality than on genitality._ Psychological and paychoanelytical theorens on the genigal function have become legitimate hypoth 6 in etreles which will not Lister to what Freud has to say about anality, or to vhat Swift had to say." pp. 179-180, 32 ‘ Personal’ interview with Irving Layton, 24 November 1984.CHAPTER IT LAYTON'S SATIRICAL USES OF SCATOLOGY Im this chapter I will examine Layton's satiricnl uses of scato- logy under four thematic categories: personel, ~ socto-political stire, religio-moral satire, and intellectual + Personal, ire . In the tradition of scatology, personal tire Le used to attack reputation. Exeremental diction ts Sbath- and to defome m individual ingly gmployed in these attacks on personel foes. Layton has written In the Catullen manper, Layton's poems are frequently character- ized by invective, impreeacion and vituperation. For example in numer- ous poems, he retorts to women who jilt their lovei Your tits, may they grow red and tight as boils And be without cure from healing serun: That when you hold your babe to give hia suck They spurt thick pus between his toothless gums. “Archilochus Curses the Woman who Jilted Hin! . (PV 1974) To detractors who misrepresent Layton, he writ I would like to take him and beat the Living deylights from his eyes who loosed the daily epirochete that Lives on mob- approving lies May atfother spirochete bring to his brain rot, to his skin crust; and his blackened tool, a loose string ock for all time the nave of lust.23 “For the Stinker Who Called Me an Apologist for Nazi Crimes" (PM 1967) ‘And to critics who misjudge him or fail to appreciate his work, the following diatribe is directed: One day you'll butter your bread with ay excrenent And pour Libations to one another with my staling entlenen, may you choka on both. " "to the Gov-fen's Poetry Avarde Comittee for 1971-1972" | (LLM 1973) Layyon_vicuperetes vith the passton of an 01d Testenent prophet. He inherited this skill from his aother, In the “forevard” to A RED CARPET FOR THE SUN he declares, "Moreover, she had s gift for cadenced vituperation to which, doubtless, I ove ay impeccable ear for rhythm." In an elegy.to his aother, "Keine Lararovitch 1870-1959" (SF 1961), he vweites: "She had loved God but cursed extravagantly his crestures / For her final south vas not water but 2 curse, / A small black hole, # black ynt_in the universe, / Which damed the green earth, sters snd trees in ite stillness / And the inescapable lousiness of groving old. / And T record she was confortle + vituperative, /... "Constipated' people are subject to Layton's verbal abu: . They are the pa fon-less who live without the true thrust and vigour of life. Such people fear Life and death and therefore recoil from the excremental vision, The stench, the mess, the chaos of the destructive cycle offends thea. : "Woman in the Square" (CP 1971), is abour the constipated nature of 2 prim and smartly dr sed voman who has a fixétion with her ‘white’ Blove. “It is hard to believe she ever ate green things / celery,2% lettuce, or the stems of young onions, / it is hard to’ believe flowers grow for her / in the sme innocent way they do for other: Life 18 too mechanical and unnatural. Since she does not eat greens, she cannot relieve her ‘constipation’, Constipation is skin’to sterility as the healthy flow of excretion is to fercility. The allusion to the vIhite glove’ suggests chat the voman's vonb {s barren; therefore, the evening “slides Like a furtive homosexual.” A simtlar theme is evident In the poem, “At Desjardins" (cP 1971). Ao executive and his ‘middle-aged harpy' consume in a death-Like way, their restaurant meal. The waitress gives then some life, in the form of a glass of water, as vell as her best wishes for a ‘quick digestion’ They are ‘aoneyed-louts* and not even worth cursing. "What amorous, / ed poet / could be bothered '/ cursing them? / Look at then. / open: When all s said, / aren't they cursed / enough, uy friends / As is?" He especially exposes the vonan's duplicity: “s hunk of powdered / and perfumed meat, / waiting for him / to clean his plate / and drop dead." Of a ‘constipated’ middle-class lawyer Layton writes: "He's really / do.you see it now? / an inmaculately dressed dung beetle / Ravelling / in everyone's bourgeois shit / nd straining... straining hard / to leave his royal name / lying on top of it, "13" GB 1983) To a Li brarin who tore up his book of poems goes the following torrent of curses and maledictions: "For this act of yours, the ligatures / Pest- corroded, your eyes shall falt / from their sockets; drop on your lac- quered desk / With the dull weight of pinballs ("Letter to 2 Librar- tan" cP 1971) IT. Soete In the forties and fifties, Layton purposefully set out to shock25 his Canadian audiences into‘en avareness hut puritanical md repressive sexual mores ware unhealthy. He described Canadians as being prudish and overly genteel. In"his poems of social satire directed inst Canadians, there is 0 definite mor concern: He irizes che 'puritens' for their aversion to ‘obscene words’, Note the following 1954 recipe for a young poet. In an ironic vein he exclaims: 7 Resolve before ink you try That your books may not remaindered Lie; Think only of kudos and a nane And failing greatness, acquire fone: Aseiduously learn the art to please The pimps in the scadente: Their friendly syrop onthe radio \ May help to sell a book oF (1 wean to give them no offence, 7 For these are pimps vith » difference, dnd allow this ae thetr best excuse-- They pisp, it's true, bud for some muse!) Yes, be wise, plagiarize: above all, Avoid adbiguous vords Like ‘ball! Or ‘ase’ or even harmless ‘cans’: ‘They give offence to puritans, And robust males to whom # virgin 5 Te dearer far than ay sturgeon. Refinenent be your aim to melt the sort Who take their vei they take their port Entirely by Label and repute For critics with «nose of a setter For verse that's dead--the deader the better Or one who because bis heart {s pure Wi11 not affect to use ‘manure’ Instead of that four-letter vord ‘That {8 less often seen than heard “Prologue to the Long Pea-Shooter" (LPS 1954) fig haa broken verbal thboos by exploteing ‘four-letter’ words in iP poetry. He concludes in the "Prologue" that his poetry will be read by26 future generations, even though it is criticized, for its ‘bavdiness', He insiste chat he has brought a ‘lustre’ co Canadian letters which never existed before. Verse in Censda w: “Lacking spirit and a bore, / genteel, dull, and quite anemic," until Layton liberated and invigorated ie. diction and on the Williem Carlos Williams commented on Layton fact that he has “written profusely, pouring out his verses without check. That is che wey to write, correcting oneself in the act of writing, the words, held as it were, in solution, latent, eternally in process of being formed. No constipation here....". "We h: an un- rivalled choice of words; an unusual vocabulary and the ability to us te He uses as auch slang suits his fancy or his need, and no aore. He is not bound by the twentieth century if he does not find its len~ fuage fitting to his purpose, and defies enyone vho vould bind him to thee use. Layton u excremental diction to break verbal and social taboos, and to shock readers into reality. Robertson Davies argues that he jolts the reader into experiencing the subject matter at first-hand: He is so upset with people who see life second or third hand that he writes with savagery and , he employs excrenental imagery which prudish people do not digest... Layton's bavdiness is meant to jolt Canadians out of their dul ine Much of his comment on his fellow-countrymen is invective, ad those of us who share his wish that Canada should wake up from its snuffling, anti- Dionysian sluaber find his vigorous outpouring of scorn refreshing. He seeks to confute the Philistines, not by persuasion but by direct attack and accusation. If he vere only scornful, dirty and abusive, however, he would not be # poet. These things are only his manner; vhat is his matter? [t is a high-colored, abounding delight in the physical world.7 In the "Preface" to THE LAUGHING ROOSTER (1964), Layton claims ai his "birtheighe’ hia abilicy co continually shock and: sting his. audiences: originally going to call the present collection te", but at the Lest moment decided against the blacancy of the advertisement. It's sore fun seeing shocked revievers point out ay veskness for plain speach and honest feeling to their innocent read- ers; to learn from them with the publication of each book of aine how once again I have offended their Victorian notions of decency end good taste. T voulldn't ies that thrill for anything in the world. I've come to expect it as mine by birthright and prerogetive. Layton especially castigetes Canadian philistinism, puritanism, prudery, and gentility. He bitterly attacks tho: people and institutions those Canadians who state “you cannot say shit too often... similarly in "Cenadiana" (BP 1955), he criticizes his countrymen for "bridling’ ae words such as ‘arse’. Re soys, "poetry, ain't for the Likes of these, J curd-faced coofs with the brain of geese, / Who think the stuff, by ez, / Is an old mm's smell from elbow to knees." They are eunuchs, renoved~from reality. These sober blokes need « catharsis Or broken metatarsals Layton prescribes 2 ‘catharsis’ for Canadians, vhich in the excremental idiom is @ purging of the bowels, § relief from constipation; and in the -Greek cl: cal sense, a rele! je of enotion. The two memings for him are interchangeable. It 1s the therapy he recounends for the chronic- ally repressed md constipated. In "Second Thoughts on the Armada" (LR 1964), Layton juxtaposes28 the philtstine and the non-philistine. He writes, that in Spain, "vhere thes ‘3 no Liquor commission / no excited little Baptist / no clem-javed methodist, / no Anglo-Saxon / vith dirty sex on his brain, / T never sav ‘a single drunk." He proceeds to compare the Spanish to Calgarians and Torontonians: back ho : In Cabgary on # Saturday night ‘ the drunks drop like flies - on their moral sidewalks in Toronto seething with alcohol and Baptist virtue They vomit ad fall... . \ He denounces the hypocritical 'vireues' of the soral majority and concludes: that {¢ would be more decent to revive Philip II from ‘immoral’ Spain, than to endure the repr tons of boorish Canadians. i "Never in Rosedale" (FMNH 1979), captures the raucous spirit of @ town in Greece: msthyena 1a a bawdy villege / The fruic and vegetable vendors / Adsontshing their customers / to t: ce care of their tender Little cunts", Layton declares chat never in his most ranpant dreams could this. scene ever take pla “among the creamed matrons of Forest WALL / and Rosedale." The philistine or smugly conventional attitude Lacks exuberance and creativity. In the poems dealing with middle-class morality, the tension between Eros and Thanatos is at mnt. Layton struggles with the polarities of life and death, creativity end destruction, good ond evit. EL{ Mendel writes, "So it {8 with the polarities of Leyton's poetry. The tension of male and female, Literature and prophecy, father and mother, godd and witch, eros and thanatos, love and hate, Hebrew and pagan, thought end instinct 1 are versions of the god's birth, his- 29 Gane aitber tn pérfoction of caseSiéton, hie eabteeh."? the atdate- class, vhow Layton attacks eo vehemahtly, Lack this instinctual tension, In the “Introduction” to LOVE WHERE THE NIGHTS ARE LONG (an ‘antho- * logy of love poems. by Canadians), Layton say: Isolated from one another by the fears and repressions engendered in a materialistic soctety slmost vholly given up to the vorship of money and status; hoodvinkad by egomaniacal poltroons anong politicos md business executives; and robbed of their birthright of joy and Intensity by any prude or long-faced puritan that can shake a finger: at them, Canadians plead for compassion ano other people on earth. Thiv is a cold country in more ways than one. The drag of aiddle-cless mores is strongest here, for the mitigating forces of population, culture, heterogeneity arq not sufficiently present to free the individual from the entangling coils of life- Ly “denying ceeds amd the inhibiting {deologies and customs : of the dominant ethnic groups. He's cayght early and 1” stays crapped till the end of his days. Layton adds, "We prefer the safe, the conventional, the untmaginative-- the dull-plodders whose fires were quenched long go by hapless and thoroughly beaten schoolteacheé# md by repressed parenta who chink sex ts ateictly for the birds, Yer, his is « cold country. Cold with the sow imé frost that hive entered into che bloodstream snd packed ice around the hearts cold vith fear, {gicrace, repression, and dental." To counteract this philistinisa, he offers in his own poems, what Frets calls “s veritable troupe of Dionysim revellers -- satyrs, nyaphs, fauna, inebriates, geublers, rakes and roués, some sodern, some bearing Greek or Roman names all of whom engage” in some form of self- abendon and thumd their no gleefully at respectability, prudery, repressiow, and self-righteousness."© In LIFE AGAINST DEATH, Broun Links excrement with the fear of‘ 30 death, with represtion of instinct, and with the obsession with money. Layton attributes these negative values aost frequently co the aiddle- tobe, 1c is the aeabers of this class vho becoe the prine cargets of his exerenental abuse which may take the form of iaprecetion; in- vective, satize, of irony. Devotion to soney ts characterized as an mal,ceait. Brown writes: “chings which are possested md accumulated, the property and the uni- versal condensed precipitate of property, money, are in their essential nature, excrenent."” Hoarding money becomes on ‘evil' because the action is pre ditated, Thinking and hoarding are akin to constipation, because » spontaneous action is apprehended and analyzed. “Thinking is atcer all only a'seans of preventing 4 Pquandering through action, s0 that thinking {8 only » ‘spectal expression’ of the cendency to eccno- mize and as such hes its origin in anal eroticism."8 Broun says that soney, "reflects and promotes a style of thinking of modern science - and what can be ore rational chan that?" Layton attacks the middle: class precisely because of this tightness, and rationalisn. Accumulating poney amounts to accumulating excresent. This greed for money becomes the symbol of death-in-Life, and the fear of losing this wealth, or of shoring it, results (n withdraval from life. The numerous poems that suggest these theses are extremely rich in excremental diction. One such poes is "Sagebrush Classic" (cP 1971); the Link between excrement and goney {s made, appropiiately, in che gambling, neon- capital of the world, Las Vegas: And Letting fall, "All Life's a gamble T assailed the desert's lush casinos With craps, blackjack, and even keno [By tease Swift slung 1: civilization is faecal.31 So take'a flyer. Which I did. Fickle Or foolish one's luck; though I'd poems to show, Was tanned-handsome, ay movenents deft and slow, Some bunko-artist raked my dines and nickels. ALL's' shit. Luther protesting from = can, Down-to-earth dealer dealing twenty-one, Who clued me into a richer idiom Result? I can curse better. Caliban, 4 Roll those bones. At the end comes fuckface deggh y == Shows # pair of goose eyes on # green cloth. ‘The excremental diction in the pota relates to money and ganbling. Note ee the use of gembling terms such as ‘craps’ and ‘blackjack’, The imege of *, the ‘bunkovartist' raking dines and nickels is reminiscent of » hosrder, “M He is complacent in the sssurance money gives hin, as he yekes towards himself, the ooney that others have gaabled avay. He is equivalent to a bank, sccumulating the wealth in a very coleulated and organized vay. ‘ALL Life's # gamble’ implies chat chance and fate are predominant tn one's Atle, The healthy opie wE1L geble, cish, cake chess, dad ‘live dangerously", as Nietzsche puts it, Luther is shown to ‘protest froa a can’. He plays ‘twenty-one’, a card game; he gambles, and posts his ‘twenty-one! menifestoes on the door of the Wittenburg University. Layton flings his verbal attacks, which are in the form of curses, satire, and invective, as Luther did. Finally, Caliban represents the ugly, deforaed, and brute energy, + which" ts ‘poverful' excrement and the source of nev life. Caltban gambles as he ‘rolls those bones Im "Fortuna et Cupides” {LIM 1973), luck, eros, and desire, mark men's destinies: Appetite and chance, Yuck and desire together make @ man not the foolish Lin of stars in space rule hi his pals nor the conjugation Loe32 on which Lf he ple he can graph his days until he falls from their arching bough Like @ ripe fruit to rot or burn . ° But a man's ball spins merrily nerrily in the roulette wheel of sexuality at Lest come to rest in a gay groove red black black red fifteen or fifty-one to the bored indifferent croupter tt {s ell:one, . scramble your gaable, ramble and ganbol S the appointed groove hole slot is always there waiting for the balls to come tumbling in The bored and indifferent crouplér {s like the hoarder in "Sage- brush Classic", and is so 1ike a 'god', who watches others live their Live In "Fortuna et Cupides", Layton again correlates genbling images with excremental ones. Men gambles until his ‘roulette wheel’ stops spinning. Then he will fall like a ripened fruit and he will return tothe earth that bore hia. In this poem, the ‘appointed: groove hole * slot', of the gambling table (4 symbolic of the womb and tor "Judgement at Murray's" 1% one of Layton's most recent poems con- taining excremental imagery. In this poem he conveys how life is a swindle, a waste, ( excrement) ehrough the protagonist, who herself is physically wasting ova The frail aristocratic women arthritis or cancer devastates stumbles before she sits dow. For now she! safe fron the sharp knives the cold throws at old and young alike. - Seventy years! accumulated spite gravels her Laugh. She knows what she knows. The vords dropping from her loose lips are not meant for the other diners. Therefore ‘thé death she ‘carries inside her Like a foetus, for tHe dark shade nothing will drive from the wall, the vein in her’ forehead throbbing as though about to burst This could be her last chicken leg the smeared plate she'd love to fling‘At the stronzo that keeps staring et her, ‘4 the Last object her eyes Took upon. She has stopped babbling to herself , ‘And T can almost read her thoughts or imagine her reciting then aloud: ‘ “Had the charlatans not fixed on pills to still the wind in ay cancered stomach + T'd make known ny, judgement on the swindle Life {s that weaves weddings and holocdusts quhile God's creatures bark like frightened kongrels in the dark. Yes; poor Emilia who ran off = with a bus, to, spite vour mother ‘for @ vhim. Yes, ay dear adaptable son who'll soon be here to chauffeur me hone . : I'd let, oni loud enough to tear my wasted hams apart and wake your father from his craven sleep." February 2, 1985 . Montreal : The aristocratic Italian woman delivers s.dramaticc monologue on life as she ts dying. Het ‘judgement’ if only she could pronounce it, is that Lifes 9 ‘swindle’. she has gabled and has been cheated out OE 2 happy Life. She left » sunny end exuberant home to live in scold and epressed country. she if wealtpf and unhappy. Mer children Lack warmth and individuality, and her husband is in a deep and ‘craven’ sleep. “He has withdrawn from Life and is complacent: He does not risk or Yagble anything because he does not confront life. she ts dying of cancer and she regrets taking the pills that the ‘charlatans’ or phony doctors’ prescribed to stop the boisterous noises in her stomach, becailée otherwise she would Let loose sll of her repressions and avaken the slumbering sleeper by farting loudly.’ In this excremental image of gambling, loss, empty wind and empty chatter, death over> shadows the persona who meditates on life. : Layton’ uses olfactory imagery to evoke moral corruption. This will be"éxamined sore closely tn the third chapter. However, in the poem7 ry “Westminster Abbey” (PM 1967), the stink refers to money and decomposition. Class distinction’ is carrfed to the grave as Layton describes the ‘monu- ments to such ‘great historicel figures’ Edward the’ Confessor. Quéen, ~ Elizabeth, Earl of Buckingham, John Dryder And there was a stink and for the first time in ay life T saw. clearly what vas meant by the English Tradition ~~ ‘ how it is 2 slice taken out of Death and made homey and negotiable like currency + arway of increasing real estate values by squeezing caskets, urns, busts, menorials’ into every Last avatlable inch of space and I also sf that.this cm go on for ever 3 long as the supply of famous corpses doesn't run oft dnd there was a stink and T eau the Engltshman {2 not passionate and grand and aystical About Death as the Spenterd is but sentinegtal, proraic, and therefore aatter-of-factly # profit by its existence an he does fim lucky deposits of coal and iron in his right Iicele, cighe little island and therb was # vink and I sew the practical English had stationed pious policemen everywhere to keep fire ad flood out md Death in, and bent down to listen : to Thomas Hardy under my feet who inforsed me in « low configentisl whisper « that all the ineurance documents : (since life isa tissue of tronic accidents) on this curious indoor cemetery this spraviing profit-neking ansoleua are religiously kept in some other vault remote from here : Where there is no stink a. G The property owned by the ‘dead inhabitants’, is as lifeless as they are. Profits are ironically aade in 4 mausoleum selling 'death*, snd death itsett ts protected, fron ‘natural dieseters', sich fire or flooding. Life is not to intrude upon the s{lence ond timelessness of Westminster(Products produced without end, / and . _ reduces dictators to the level of excremental objects: 35 Abbey, the eternal bank. With equel vehemence, Layton attacks the North American tech- nological and cxpttaliitic world, chere the consumer is deliberately kept confused, end where he te stripped of individulity. The consumer i frustrated ond brainvashed into believing that he cannot be si {sfted without hostding. Hfis ‘aoneythetsm' ts exptogted in” ‘several poems. In "Homo Oeconomicus" (BFOS 1963), he writes: "a heaven of consuner's bliss / where never the seed of Adam / shall ory for conscience or freedom / but huge coupons to get amd spend / on from everyshere comes up the stench / of technology's 'massennengch", / Not @ wan really, but a tool". Layton lasente that, the asses ave repressed and enslaved. They follow, in an anesthetized fashion, the ‘barked coummnds', or the ~ ‘radio's screech'.. They are devoid of sensuality, creativity, and freedos. Layton fights on the side of love, freedom, smaginstion, individualtey, dignity, md creativity. He feels that Lf those values are in danger, they must be defended. Exerementél diction sboiinds in pens sbout dictators, poltetetans, and totalitarian regimes. In “Nature Sculpeure” (FMat 1979), Leyton "Sir', the turned on Czech said still jabbering ofter the ci of nature's sculpture by water or vind, ich time I relieve myself I turn to see whether I've dropped the face of Lenin or Stalin* ‘There are times, Sir,. 5 oe, % only Rodin excels ae. Similarly, in "Two.Communist Poets" (FMM 1979), he Leninisa strike you now / how do you like its stink / ag ie ‘moves ies wountainous pile of shit / to cover the vorld / and to silence aen of spirit / and independence." In "Malediction" (TD 1978), he curses Hitler's final solution, tn thg style of Catullus: “may the: just eatth expel your reneine / from ita disorgered bowels / Like vomit, Like black excrement." In another poem, "Flora" (BOBN 1981), Hitler is “em atling bag of excrement", Finally, in "Not Wich @ Whimper" (Foam 1979), he ceslizes chat evil WALT alvaya extst, and that he cannot rid'the world of ‘thugs md dtctators': T'a sunbathing Ae this very moment Fidel 1s scratching his balls md farting: : someone 1s having his fingerdails : pulled out. : for political reason : the Russisn goons are railroeding Sheharansky to Siberia . “ and a fly Ls courting sudden death circling ay big toe F : Banc * ’ 0 uncaring sun 7 a2 oS) that generates roses and Lice : c A€ only it were that easy to rid the world of thugs snd dictators Totalitarian leaders are depicted as filthy and evil, because they terrorize and repress the masses vith their ideologies, the media, ~ : and the secret police. Layton's most vicious bombardments are exploded im the faces of these wen. In the: + the reader becomes avare of Potan anbivalence in Layton's use of excremental { gery. He attributes sacranental significance to ‘excrement! when it is used to denote However, wh healthy process yn he describes the nature of evil, or evil men, excrenental syebolisa connotes filth and obscenity. What Layton reflects in his ambivalence, is the confusion thet all hhuaan beings feel towards’ good and evil. Good cannot be understood without evil, yee deep-dovn, a11. hunen beings yearn for a world free of evil; yearn for a return to thé Garden of Eden. IIT, Religio-Moral Satire Layton is a moralist, and his poems serve to rouse in mm an awareness of his greed, avarice, felse-pride, and evil nature.’ His religio-oral satires are instrumental in exposing aam's folly and in deflating his sense of importance. Like Swift, he re seatological setaphor, vhen he wishes to renind him of his evil nature. ces man to 8 Layton explores our duel nature and forces us to see the other side, the dark side which we usually hide or repress. He sees anything that inhibits the cycle of birth, growth, fulflllment, death and ce~ * pteen, as being evil. He frequently uses excremental diction in relation to this theme. He writes, "I love ay Creator because He to that dirt. created ae--or Adsn--out of dirt amd blew the spirit For we this is the central riddle of human existence, and I quarrel im ay writing with both those vho exale the spiric only, and those who would debase us only to earth.’ Bs Exerenent reminds healthy people of their sortality, says Layton in the poen "shit". In accepting death as part of the natural cycle, ”one embraces life more fully: Those who recoil from ‘the excremental vision, recoil from Life. Shit {s vitally necessary: In healthy people a daily reminder of their mortality Of where they cose rom and vhere they're go10g And that aquity 7 te buile into the world since no one's mickpile casts a lerger shadow oe than bis grave . Also the first and Last rungs in Jacob's Ladder The philosopher's stone Michelangelo's nightmare . Beatrice's other face (OFM 1979) ‘Shit’ reminds man of his common bond with all men. Inhibited people do not accept this part of their nature, amd hence, shit becomes 2 ‘eaboo' subject. Layton persistently attempes to break such taboos. In the reface" to CERBERUS (1952), he -clai The best pare of suy man today is the hell he carries inside him; and...only poetry can transmute that into Eréedom, love, intelligence...The {ronic method is to define this "hell by its opposite, the forces high- pressuring us into conforaity or atomic dispersion: or nore specifically ‘middle-class’ morality, suspicious ‘of all enjoyment and neurotically hostile to the release of art and sex; and gentility, the gilded and gelded paeudOrqulture of flourishing bakers and brewers. Numerous poems daprét this "pseudo-culture’, a Life of repr constipation, and sterility. ‘widdle-class {s being dead to the adventure / of sights, sounds and suells; is forgetting Truth / selects for its spokesmen madmen andat 39 epileptics, / never a banker or topflight executive.” (“Definitions" EOBN 1981) He attacks those who deny their natural instincts, "Bla{se Pascal, grown early sick / of genius, turned ascetic / md fastening 2 girdle on / Fitted with spikes of iron / Punctured his erring skin / TE appetite stirred in hin." ("DLscourse on Christin Love" LR 1964) Existentialism is ridiculed in “A Grotesque Pair" (BFOJ 1963), as Layton aimicks Sartre, “(Ho ! he's a wise aan who tells us plainly / The world's absurd Lf flesh is born to die.)" because to hia Layton , dying {s part of the sacced cycle of Life. It is not sbsurd, but perfectly natural. He repudiates Platonic philosophy and homosexuality. For him, heterosexuality brings delights "no faded pederaat ever knew, no / nor Christian anchorite / or monk and inflamed priest / writhing nakedly / in thetr cold religious cells / before an icon of the Madonna / suckling the Babe / on her vhite and rounded breast. (Plato Was m Asshole” Frat 1979) Boredom prevails on "Queen Street (FO 1979), vhere life ts linear not cyclical, and uneventful, and vhere " werchant displays a a new toilet boul / to give the day's politics / meening and Several other poems satirize the church and established religions for their involvement in repressing art, imagination, freedom, and creativity. In "Fiat Lux" (RCS 1959) he yrites, "do not , son, / the Sabbath dishonouring, / switch on the Lights, the black beard said, / for vith « quiver from His bag of cloud / God kills in a Fevenging wrath,” He can be humourous and crude as he spoofs priests for cheir ‘empty chatter or vind’, uhich means their pedantic preaching. In "To The Priest Who Kept My Wife Awake ALL Night, Farting" (NP 1971) »yt 40 he writes, "Some u ® primitive gong, others 9 bell: / This devout / priest does equally vell / To call his parishioners to early Mi By loud insistent opereis of his a Christimity, and cLally the doctrines of St. Paul are de- nounced: ‘The work of an epileptic and of one who was probably impotent The Pauline religion of love More kind, anglosaxon commercialism . has left him with no instincts to be ashamed of. "processed" (cP 1971) “Layton E out to shock Canadims into reality about totalitarimism, comunism, collectivien, and the dengers to the _ ‘ he attempted to shock his countrymen human spirity In the ‘seventis into m avareness that Christianity was responsible for the victim- {zation of Jews throughout history. He sardonically claims, "Your stoutest most selfle: partisans in Europe’/ laboured nearly tvo- thousand years / to twist your Cross imto the Swastika / that tore into our Elesh Like a E{sh-hook." ("For Jesus Christ" FHBJ 1976). In FOR MY BROTHER JESUS (1976) and THE COVENANT (1977), he set out to. reclaim Jesus for the Jews. He renders Jesus as a ft cing and fun-loving Jev, and attributes earthy quelities to him, In restoring Jesus to the Jevs, he syabolically returns him to all of mankind, Because he sets Jesus up as a model for all men to follow, he liberates the repressed puritans. Layton, the prophet-poet renewsthe Covenant with God, by establishing Jesus as the logical successor in the hierarchy of. prophets. In various pot and even ‘breaking wind’: sd of a Jesus vho {e feasting, making love, Sometines when T'm in a church “or # cathedral and [eee the green constipated face of ay brother Jeshua I find ayaelf vondering sloud whether the saviour of all mankind r broke wind <4 only oncMin hie ind Tt he ota troubled 1ife 5 was it a loud noise or loosed smong his adoring disciples one of those depdly SBD's (Silent Bur Deadly) whose divine authorship not even Judas could detect ‘amd pin on him. ‘The. po is not as pointlessly wishes to free Jeshua from the or repression {s' relieved only of emotion. He Liberates Jeaus brings him back to life. In an "Son of Man" (TC 1977) exerenental ss i¢ alght seem. Layton confines of Christianity. Constipation ehrough @ ‘catharsis’ or an outburst frou slL stifling stereotypes md arlier poem about the Hebrew prophets Esekial atd Jereniah, we find a prototype: you are bored-- 1 with priests e it -- sultry prophets nd nuns (what coarse Jokes must pass between you!) Yet cheer up Exekial and you Jereniah ‘vho were once cast into «pits T shall not leave you here incensed, uneasy among alien Catholic ints ° but shall bring you from tine to tine ay hot Hebrew heart . 5 passionate vith you here svhile your own, and stand in aching confraternity. . von Seeing the Statuettes of Exekial and ah In the Church of Notre Dame” (BC aJesus, like the prophets before hia, ts "A Ilfe-loving, feasting, quick-witced Jew / Who Like myself and ay cousin Heinrich / Dangled between your legs 4 Jevish prick...", end therefore Layton reclains him as sane exuberant Jew, “Cove back, long-lost brother, cone back tous. / Turn avay from the scrofulous paintings / by sick guropeans vho have Limned you / As French, Italia, Polack, and Geran / or -- foul parody -- fair-hatred Englishman." ("Seshua" FMBJ 1976), In the poem “The True Picture" (MMH 1979) Jesus is not ‘painted’ a French, German, or English, but as Jevish: I'm going to paint you . With your white robe parted ‘And your circumetsed cock shoving Caught in the fringes Of your telith. — Layton breeks snother taboo. ie paints the picture of a ‘god’ in huaan terms ond to this ‘deity’, he ascribes ual and anal character~ taties. In "Xtanity" (T6(1977) he relates the repressed nature of the followers of Jesus, "the mutterings of beard-counting hysterics.../ The soufflings of joyless aisfits and cripples / fearful of death, / more fearful of life.../ The ‘niserares' of the.doomed dregs / in every Large metropolis of the world? / The hosannshs of the confornist hordes / stinking of money and respectability?” le transforms Jesus into a ‘warrior poet’ in "King of the Jevs": Your hand free from Roman nails and the stink of priestly incense I see you, ay famous brother, curving your sensitive fingers around the deadly grenade ed: Like a pomegranate before you hurl it with shouted curse at the eneni of your beleaguered people“3 And I see you brought to Mount Zion Where Herzl sleeps under mound circled by green Torah: and their jubilant cries, their hallelujahs shattering done and steeple ‘with one thunderous voice acclaim you, 0 lion-hearted Jeshua, warrior poet, king of the Jews. (701977) Layton hunenizes other ‘Christian figures’ and reclaims thea as well, In the poem "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" (TC 1977) he transforms Mary, into the Jevess Marianne, whoa he compares to his mother. He Immediately dispels the Christian notion of the Immaculate Conception, and renders her as human as Jesus. He repudiates che silent madonn: image, and wonders, "What was your chicken soup like? / Your GEFILTE fish", or whether she ever broke wind or cursed, "but did you blow an obscene SHOFAR / and add a loud Judean curse / as ay aother di Mary gave birth, not by divine intervention, but, "with an assist from a lively Judea cock." ‘ Layton "hunanizes' the deities, and equally attempts to deal with man's cemporality, Poems such as "North and South", "A Ronan Jew to Ovid," “Opium”, epitomize man’s existential dichocomy, In these poems, Layton grapples with the fact that man is part of nature and forever attempting to transcend it. He writes thataan isa” “unique thing / in the cosus: a soul / forever tethered to an ai hole." ("Opium Tp 1978), or in "Questions" (CP 1971), that “ain is haemorroide..." the only animal / who sings / and hi In A Romen Jew to Ovid", a Roman Jew addresses the pagan poet of love. Layton intimates that tension exists between the body and the spirit or, sensual pleasure ahd conscience. "She joys in ay revivingry spirit / While I disdain her for reviving it J Tell ay quiv'ring soul hers the blame / And reproving her excuse my shane. " Layton exposes tow a repressed individual desls with tempeation. His body ts willing but his soul, conscience, and sense of morality forbids him to, betray his wife md indulge in sexual plessire His ethics constrain him and therefore his body is in conflict with his soul. In the poem the persona struggles vith mental and spiritual constipation. His Jewish conscience is at war with his pagan sensuality. IV, Intellectual Satire Layton is clever ad humorous in aost satirical poens, but bitterly coustic in poems dealing vith evil aen. Intellectual satire ‘5 opposed to personal, socio-political, or religio-moral satire, is dork and sardonic rather than Light and witty. Aca ies, intellectuals, critics, poets, philosophers, and the Literati, ere algo the subject of Layton's excremental abuse. Of Cmadians, he weiter: "and I say your Bible-belters and yokels / with an M.A. of Ph.D. in Literature / Should be in a theiving 109 or eireas." (the Canadian Epic DFH 1979). Of Pablo Neruda, he asks, “but where vas your shit-detector / when it cane to Stalin / and his evil- soell- ing crew? / His bloodied hands stank to heaven / yet you took the stink into your lungs / and didn't cough once. Or retch. / Why ? Did the Georgian smile / on chat hunan shitpile / fool you?” (Where vas Your Shit-Detector, Pablo?” DAH 1979). Poets vho find haven in the University are criticized for being ‘insulated’ from reslity: Layton writes, “frankly, I am disturbed to4s learn that over ninety-percent of the posts sow writing in this countey sre attached to the universities, I do not think this ts 9 heatehy condition, chough I am at a lose to cay how it might be renedied. Some way mist be found to keep budding young poets tive ad excited in this Large unteamseled world of ours, there to Learn che heardbreaking wemnings of suffering, Joy, lust, guilt, and love: anyway, to experience them at firse hand even {f he never quite makes out vhat che uhole show das up tou! In "More Canadiana” (BP 1955) Layton spoofs the writers vho Pretend to account for the poetic process without having understood or fvverteced (8, “A pated cavsrnocLind, doe /Themeghe tordtion nev styles of love!” Tm "Calibrations" (DMI 1979), "Though quaint schoolaen / dribble fon about ayth sjifbol and archetype / and the aany masks of W.B, Yeats, / bad one-star movies / are the only cultural indicators / worth attending to.” Refjngadte md culture do not necessarily tmprove » man's ae In “Breakdown” (BFOJ 1963) Layton shocks us into realizing chy) knew hia for avcultivated / gentleman, / a lover of operas /, amd 9 Latinist / vo had annotated the De Amicitia / to the acclaim of scholars." His husan nature is still neanderthal: "as ve passed the blind voam sitting elone / on one of the benches / he stopped suddenly before har / and plunged two pins / one into each cheek.” When the woman shrieks from che terror and pain, the "gent Leman’ snnounces chat he does not understand her anger, since his sricestors would have pierced her with Javelins, Husian ature has not been refined, In short, man has progressed only to ore sophisticated forms of descruction. Man'sintelligence has led him to develop nuclear warfare so that he cen self-destruct. In the poem "Sheep" (LM 1959) he describes the yactimontous' nature of ‘fine and sensitive sheep! ‘amazed? No, but look at those fine musician's faces again; More particularily, the ebouy Line of the mouth curving long and thin. Do you sée it ? Would you not say that's the smile You've caught and watched on the face of someone who, while he's too meck to defend himself, Sees through and despises your guile? I'll tell you something else about sheep You haven't noticed, see then as mich as you wish in your sleep They're deither-this-nor-thats, half and halfs if you prefer standing vrapt Like 4 philosopher Their itchy, bulky, dung-matted, grey-dirty fleece yet, look down-what fect! the trim feat of a dancer. And, chere's also this: they're practical, prudent. Or they seem so, yet they also somehow contrive to appesr gullible snd vacant. » Here ogein, is that unsatisfactory, disdain-making quality: that of the half-and-half, the in-between. Sheep, who symbolize people, appear to be ‘refined’, vith their qustcian'’s faces, and tria dancer's feet. However, they are cynical: "They crouch on their mat of dung or with the poise / of a philosopher seek / The rough part of the post which they know well / ‘fo scrape against it thetr purloined fleece and fell; / Staring, verily, staring, wearily Staring, with a mien / silly amd gentle-end cynical ‘Toilet Bowl’ images recur in several poess. In "The Mildeved Maple" (Fiat 1979) Layton pursues his attacks on the literati and their Hivory tover! hones: he, writes, that « “éionysian / at a gathering of WASPS / {8 a fox tn 2 chicken coop, / who vill persuade / joyless ulcers / to leak their griefs / into the manufacture / and sale'/ of 46 \Yboapapes /- md instruct them / how to dLettigntsh poems / f2oa the drippings / of « defective toilet bovt." The toilet bowt is an image of the critic, and the drippings are the critic's reviews. Layton lmplics that the exttie does not experience Lite first-hand, and chet he uses the collet bovl to flush Life and Zealtey avey. In the Last: stance: the eritié "reviewing the COLLECTED POEMS / lets his voice : rise / to a high, revealing falsetto: / So mich dung to clear avay */ 7 befor reaching Layton's /“impressive monument." The critic does not create but he controls. The téchnological invention of the ‘flush ‘ toilet! symbolizes aiddle-class repression. What ve do not-wish to” : fee or acknovledge i.e. the téuth, about ourselves, ve simply flush shay, In Aaterpreting a LiteGory'piece, the ertete gives us but « few ‘drippings’. The rémaining exerenent, he decides not to show. : ‘ ° a Layton exposes those who tend to 'intellectuslize’, because in s0 doing they lack spontaneity, and often disregard emotional consider- ~. ations, Rationsliém does not guarentee hung compassion or understanding. not i a a Nothing can disguise the vileness in sign; not expensive attir education, not refinement, nor culture. Layton intends to shock his reat ye into realizing this as he reveals the hypocrisy in those who misuse their intellect: