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PHILIP LARKIN:
‘I have no belief in tradition’
It would have been apparent from earlier articles in this series that
during the first half of the 20th century the continuity of the English
poetic tradition ceased to be as dependent on British poets as it had
been previously. The major influences were now provided by an Irishman,
Yeats, and by Eliot, an American who had adopted England as his home.
The authentically British influences represented by Hardy and
Lawrence were of a somewhat secondary nature. Other key influences were
provided by Frost and Stevens, both Americans, and by an Englishman who
opted to become an American, namely Auden. Henceforth, like the English
language, English poetry would no longer be the preserve of the British.
Instead, British poetry became one of the tributaries of the great river
of the English poetic tradition, as Irish and American poetry had become
and the poetry of former British colonies like India and Sri Lanka
eventually became.
In tracing the British connection beyond the first half of the 20th
century, the first poet to strike one as being a significant contributor
is Philip Larkin. But coming upon Larkin after the impact of Eliot and
Auden is to experience almost as much of a culture shock as one received
on passing on from Donne and Marvel to Milton.
Gone are the complexities of Eliot and the eccentricities of Auden in
regard to content and expression. It is as if Larkin has reached back
beyond them to the plain-spoken conservatism of Hardy. However a faint,
if indirect, affinity with Eliot is discernible.
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Philip
Larkin |
Eliot had consistently made reference to the moral and spiritual
vacuity of the contemporary British ethos, eg. “Unreal City….A crowd
flowed over London Bridge…I had not thought death had undone so many...
“Having deplored this in relation to the dignity of England’s past,
Eliot seeks consolation in philosophy and religion. With Larkin we find
that Eliot’s mise en scene has evolved into the suburban ethos of the
post-war welfare state. Unlike Eliot, however, Larkin does not recoil
from this scenario.
He accepts it as his métier, “the main region and haunt” of his
poetry. Rather like Jane Austen, who was content to work within her “two
inches of ivory”, namely the polite society of her day, Larkin was
reconciled to making poetry out of the provincial world in which he
found himself.
In our consideration of Larkin’s achievement, therefore, we would
obviously need to ask ourselves whether, like Austen, he succeeds in
rising above this world and furnishing a valid criticism, or vision, of
life thereby. For, the ultimate evaluation of the poet is no different
from that of the novelist.
Perhaps the best introduction to Larkin’s poetry is ‘Mr Bleaney’. The
latter was until his death the previous occupant of the rented room that
the narrator has now taken. The dinginess of the place is almost
suffocating. “Flowered curtains, thin and frayed…bed, upright chair,
sixty-watt bulb, no hook behind the Door, no room for books or bags – “
The narrator now “lie(s) Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags On the
same saucer-souvenir…” He ponders how well he knows his predecessor from
his surroundings and his landlady’s reminiscences. “I know his habits –
what time he came down, His preference for sauce to gravy…Who put him up
for summer holidays, And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke...” So
far the tone is one of a detached contemplation, but in the last two
verses there is a change:
“But if he stood and watched the frigid wind Tousling the clouds, lay
on the fusty bed Telling himself that this was home, and grinned, And
shivered, without shaking off the dread That how we live measures our
own nature, And at his age having no more to show Than one hired box
should make him pretty sure He warranted no better, I don’t know.”
We realise that the note of uncertainty that has entered is not only
about Mr Bleaney but about the narrator who is, after all, his
successor.
This vague anxiety deepens into a sense of dread with the realisation
that one’s worth is measured by one’s achievement which, in this case,
seems woefully inadequate. What is being weighed up is not only on Mr
Bleaney’s life style but its underlying life attitude of passive
complaisance. The stifling atmosphere of the room has crept over the
poet and he virtually becomes Mr Bleaney, comprehending for himself and
for us the terror of what it really means to be like him, both
circumstantially and mentally. In this sense the poem is a masterful
demonstration of the Keatsian quality of gusto.
The reference above to culture shock could be further understood by
comparing this poem to Eliot’s poem ‘Gerontion’ about an obscure old man
in a dilapidated house.
Despite the superficial similarity of subject, the treatment could
hardly be more different.
‘Mr Bleaney’ is a narrative in which the poet eventually becomes the
character. ‘Gerontion’ is a dramatic monologue in which the character
virtually plays the poet. Unlike Mr Bleaney, Gerontion is haunted by
self-awareness, regrets about the past and fears for the future. Rather
than the hint of anxiety at the end of Larkin’s poem, the whole of
Eliot’s is pervaded by angst.
Its style reflects the troubled ruminations of the old man, it is
patchilly allusive and explanatory in turns, with a verbal density that
is at times almost impenetrable.
Larkin’s style, on the other hand, is plainly colloquial, the imagery
is straightforwardly descriptive rather than figurative and the
intensity of the last two verses is controlled and intelligible.
Thus ‘Mr Bleaney’ also serves as an introduction to the reaction
against the modernism heralded by Eliot on the part of poets like Larkin
and those of his contemporaries known as ‘The Movement’, including
Kingsley Amis and John Wain ( better known as novelists, eg. ‘Lucky Jim’
and ‘Hurry On Down’ respectively.) In place of the complexity,
allusiveness and stylistic innovativeness of Eliot and others, they
sought to uphold the virtues of clarity, simplicity, common sense and
dispassionateness and to revive the conventional forms of stanza, metre
and rhymes.
The poet they chose to be influenced by was Thomas Hardy, not only in
regard to style and prosody but in his empirical, rather than
pre-determined or dogmatic, choice of subject matter, viz. ‘any little
old song will do.”
Larkin himself rejected the notion of being influence by a poetic
tradition coming down from the past, and stated that he had “no belief
in ‘tradition’ or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to
other poems or poets.” For him, the purpose of poetry was merely “to
keep the child from its television set and the old man from his pub.” We
will continue our examination of Larkin’s poetic achievement in the next
article. |
