Heteronyms, Personas or Irving Layton Masks

Abstract

The controversial and polemic Canadian Jewish poet from Romenian ascent, Irving Layton, strived a battle related to his artistic and personal identity that resembles the one faced by Portuguese Poet Fernando Pessoa. Not only religious and family features play important parts in his writings but also intimate and personal experiences give the hybrid tone as well as unique to his modern and defying poetry. The doubt that comes up to readers is who at last is this multifaced author, this group of voices who brings to the surface trivial, pretty and disturbing things. The way he can in some verses deal with so different elements while in other parts can create a mass of ideas who seem to be fossilized by centuries. From his staring full of lust to one of his literature students to the suffering due to his ethnical-cultural and religious connection to the victims of the Shoah, everything that comes up in the poems is a result of his heteronyms, personas or just masks to hide the man behind the poet or both at the same time. This is what I present here.