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More on PHILIP LARKIN:
‘Deprivation is for me what daffodils were to Wordsworth’
 Although Philip Larkin (1922-1985) read English at Oxford and
obtained a first, he shunned the academic career that so many of his
contemporaries chose and became a librarian. Despite his increasing
acceptance as a poet, leading eventually to the offer of the Poet
Laureateship, he rejected this and remained as librarian at Hull
University, over 150 miles away from London in the north-east of
England, until his death.
Larkin made his poetry from his observation and experience of the
provincial world in which he had chosen to spend his days. We saw last
week in ‘Mr Bleaney’ that this self-imposed exile was not free of an
element of self-doubt. In ‘Toads’, this deepens into virtual
self-condemnation. It starts, “Why should I let the toad work Squat on
my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?”
After four verses of describing the types of people who seem to be happy
enough living on their wits, it continues: “Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:” Then the reason why: “For something
sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard
luck, And cold as snow, And will never allow me to blarney My way to
getting The fame and the girl and the money All at one sitting.” The
attempted rebellion against economic slavery is belied by the
realisation that his nature itself is enslaved, incapable of casting off
its constraints: “I don’t say, one bodies the other One’s spiritual
truth; But I do say it’s hard to lose either, When you have both.”
The poem has a sullen humour springing from the metaphor of the toad,
which is extended to symbolize the poet’s “spiritual” paralysis as well
as his external yoke. In this we see the influence of Yeats, who was an
early model until he was replaced by Hardy.
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Philip
Larkin |
Larkin’s acknowledgment of his lack of fortitude in the face of
life’s challenges leads to a semi-fatalistic outlook as we find in
‘Dockery and Son”. Here the poet, having travelled up to Oxford to
attend a funeral, finds himself a “death-suited visitant” at his old
College. The Dean informs him that the son of Dockery, who had been
junior to him, is now at Oxford. The poet’s resurgent nostalgia seems
rebuffed by Oxford: “I try the door where I used to live: Locked. The
lawn spreads dazzlingly wide. A known bell chimes. I catch my train,
ignored. Canal and clouds and colleges subside Slowly from view...” Like
Hardy in a much smaller way, Larkin had been a novelist before
concentrating on poetry, and we can see the novelist’s deftness at
description and narrative. In the train he wonders at Dockery’s having
married so young as already to have a son at university. Till now “To
have no son, no wife, No house or land still seemed quite natural. Only
a numbness registered the shock Of finding out how much had gone of
life, How widely from the others.” Then comes the bitter conclusion:
“…Where do these Innate assumptions come from? Not from what We think
truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight shut, like doors. They’re
more a style Our lives bring with them; habit for a while, Suddenly they
harden into all we’ve got And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me
nothing…Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it
goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then
the only end of age.”
This poem starts with an intimation of death and ends with the
actuality of it. In the interim life goes on, dealing different
destinies to different people, not so much according to their beliefs
and values as according to their unconscious sand-cloudlike habits.
These eventually harden into a lifestyle which ends with death. We note
how Larkin’s poetic style, while continuously conversational, never gets
awkward, and even achieves a lyrical quality as his thought becomes
intense and involved.
Larkin’s bleak outlook on life reveals a further influence of Hardy.
The latter’s pessimism arises from his conviction of the indifference,
if not hostility, of the universe to life on earth. In Larkin’s case, it
is his conviction of the inevitability and finality of death. This is
evident even in the early poem, ‘Next, Please’. Here, all life’s hopes
and expectations are seen to be a glittering armada of promises that
take their time to reach us and then pass us by unfulfilled. The only
ship that stops for us is the” black-sailed, unfamiliar” ship of death,
“towing at her back A huge and birdless silence.” It is not surprising
that Larkin is reported to have said, “Deprivation is for me what
daffodils were to Wordsworth.”
A life-affirmative note does, however, arise occasionally in Larkin’s
poetry. In ‘Wedding-Wind’ the bride cannot get over the exhilaration of
her wedding night. This seemed to have been symbolized by the wind that
had roared and wrought havoc through the night. In the morning, still
“All is wind Hunting through clouds and forests, thrashing My apron and
the hanging cloths on the line. Can it be borne, this bodying forth by
wind Of joy my actions turn on…Shall I be let to sleep Now this
perpetual morning shares my bed? Can even death dry up These new
delighted lakes, conclude Our kneeling as cattle by all-generous
waters?”
This poem is Frost-like in its vivid depiction of nature in motion.
The wind becomes a symbol of the regenerative and unsettling power of
fulfilled passion. There is a note of excited anxiety as to whether such
exhilaration can be borne indefinitely.
Yet, what wins through in the language is the anticipation of a
passionate marriage and a dismissal, for the time being, of the fear of
death. Thus, this poem is another excellent example of Larkin’s mastery
of poetic gusto.
For all Larkin’s protestation about not belonging to a tradition, we
have seen that his poetry, while representing a break from the studied
difficulty of Eliot’s poetic style, is very much a part of the poetic
tradition. Not only does it revive traditional verse forms, it harnesses
as the vehicle of a distinctive poetic style that is both conversational
and lyrical, linking plain speech with figurative expression. In fact
Larkin, at his best, and as some of the above examples show, seems to
achieve that desirable synthesis between bareness of style as upheld by
Regi Siriwardena and metaphorical richness as commended by FR Leavis.
The disappointment one has to voice about Larkin is his lack of a
positive vision or evaluation of life. This he might accurately have
stated that he disbelieved in rather than a tradition.
He lacks the compassion of Hardy and the deprivation he bemoans seems
to be merely that of l’homme moyen sensuel, vide his comment in ‘Toads’
that he could never “blarney his way to getting the fame and the girl
and the money.”
He appears to be himself a victim of his poetically skilful evocation
of disenchantment with life and obsession with death. He cannot offer us
the prospect, like Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea, of being undefeated
though destroyed.
If Eliot said of Tennyson that he is the saddest of poets, Larkin can
be said to be the most depressed. Like Tennyson, too, he is technically
accomplished. It is a pity that his craftsmanship could not have been
directed more positively, that he could not bring himself to be able to
do what Auden urged Yeats to continue doing after his death through his
poetry: “Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With
your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice….In the deserts
of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
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