LAYTON AND NIETZSCHE

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$\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia$

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LAYTON AND NIETZSCHE found it abhorrent because it implied no end to pain, suffering and death. His Dionysian faith however assured him that by the same token life, creativity and joy could also recur eternally. If Eternal Recurrence is ground for a necessary pessimism it also offers the potential for boundless joy. But the question remains: how can a man so sanctify every moment that he might want to live it again and again? Nietzsche's pessimism led him to despair of mankind in general : the many seem incapable of more than endurance, passive suffering. (Layton expresses his compassionate contempt for the massenmensch in "For Mao Tse-Tung ..." (1958) and numerous other poems; he differs from Nietzsche only to the extent that he puts out the call to all men to become "creative sufferers" though without much hope of response.) "The few", those to whom Nietzsche directed his message, might learn to live the "good life". To these he held up the ideal of the Übermensch. (This figure is named in several of Layton's poems; in others he appears in various guises, notably as Layton's persona in "Beach Acquaintance" ( 1967) and as the more subdued figure in "A Dedication" ( 1964 ). ) The Übermensch is not a man of the future, the goal of evolution. And certainly he is not a supernatural saviour or superman. (Layton ridicules these misconceptions in "Paging Mr. Superman" (1958).) Nor, though he has appeared in history (Socrates, Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe are Nietzsche's examples), is he the product of history or of anything but himself. The Übermensch creates and recreates himself through self-knowledge and self-discipline. He is a passionate man who learns to control his passions; a man of reason who trains himself to act rationally as if by instinct ; a suffering man who takes joy in life whatever the cost. He exults in the will-to-power which pukes so strongly through him driving him to "cultivate" himself, to strive continuously toward higher modes of being. He is strict with himself and ruthless toward anyone or anything which threatens to inhibit him or restrict his freedom to change and grow. Thus he grows from weakness into strength, from sickness into health, from cowardliness and slavery into boldness and freedom. ("Out of infirmity, I have built strength ..." writes Layton in "There Were No Signs", "... Almost now I know Who I am./ Almost I have the boldness to be that man ") The Übermensch is a Yea-sayer. Nietzsche's formula for greatness is "amorfati" — the joyous affirmation of one's own existence and of the life-force in eternity. (Layton, praising the flame of life as it passes through him writes: " 'Affirm life,' I said, 'Affirm/ The triumphant grass that covers the worm;/ And the flesh, the swinging flesh/ That burns on its stick of bone.' " ("The Swinging 48
LAYTON AND NIETZSCHE Flesh", 1961 ) ) The Übermensch is a Dionysian. His self-realization is a continuous process of self-discovery and self-overcoming. His achievement is not to be judged in moral or utilitarian terms; rather, like a work of art, he is valued for his wholeness, his integrity and grace — in a word, his style. ("It's all in the manner of the done," says Layton, "Manner redeemeth everything:/ redeemeth man, sets him up among,/ over, the other worms, puts/ a crown on him, yes, size of a/ mountain lake,/ dazzling more dazzling!/ than a slice of sun" ("It's All in The Manner", 1954).) "The most spiritual men are the strongest," claims Nietzsche. 8 And the most powerful life is the creative life. It is not surprising therefore that of the types of men with the mark of the Übermensch (the hero, the philosopher) Nietzsche favours the artist. The Dionysian artist "creates himself", as Nietzsche said of Goethe, through his art, and he delights in the process however painful and selfdestructive it may be. He is thereby most like a god — like Dionysus — overjoyed with his continuous recreation of himself in the universe. Dionysus the eternal creator is god the eternal artist. The human Dionysian poet is therefore both the creation and the analogue of the divine artist, since he recreates himself and the world in every poem he writes. This final vision of the Dionysian artist was implicit in Nietzsche's earliest book. In an ecstatic passage in The Birth of Tragedy he wrote : "Only as an aesthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity.. .. Only as the genius [e.g., the poet] in the act of creation merges with the primal architect of the cosmos can he truly know something of the eternal essence of art.... He is at once the subject and object, poet, actor and audience." (To realize how closely Layton parallels Nietzsche even to this conclusion one need only read his "Like a Mother Demented" ( 1968), a poem in which man's dilemma and the irony of the whole cosmic drama implied above is made tragically clear.) Τ I HE PERSONA in Layton's "The Birth of Tragedy" 7 is Nietzsche's Dionysian artist. I HIWith the accent on "birth", on becoming, the poem explores the creative process on three interconnected levels—the natural, the human and the cosmic. Happily engaged in the writing of his poem the poet delights in his ability to give meaning to the life-and-death process which he observes in his natural surroundings. ( "... In me, nature's divided things/ . .. have their fruition.") He pays tribute to Apollo and Dionysus ("the perfect gods") whose spirits assist and reward his strivings. He exults in his own growth, sacrificing his 49
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LAYTON AND NIETZSCHE

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