Introduction:
Philip Larkin is by general consent one of the most important poets to appear since the war. He is a modern poet of England who has dominated the poetic field of England by his four major collections. He is generally considered as the central figure of the group known as the Movement, who began publishing widely in the mid - 1950s. The virtues of the Movement — a return to a cool tone, tight form and intellectual backbone after some of the romantic excesses of the 1940s — are all exemplified at their most striking in Larkin's work. Philip Larkin was more vehement in his attack on modernism. He declared that he had been influenced not by Pound or Eliot or anybody who was regarded as modern, but by Hardy, Owen, and Rossetti whose poetry he had enjoyed thoroughly. He denounced belief in tradition, a common myth - kitty and casual allusion to other poems or poets which had characterised the modern poetry.
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| Philip Larkin A Modern Poet of England in the Mid-1950s |
His Important Works:
Several of his poems were included in Poetry from Oxford in War - time edited by William Bell and published in 1945. His thirty poems appeared in 1945 under the title The North Ship. His thirteen poems including Wedding Wind, Deceptions, Coming and No Road appeared in The Less Deceived (1955). Some of his poems were published by G. S. Fraser and Ian Fletcher in their anthology Spring - time in 1953. The completed volume of The Less Deceived was at first rejected by Liam Miller. Larkin changed the title to Various Poems on the suggestion of Hartley and it accepted for publication. As he was associated with the Movement, D. J. Enright included some of his poems in his anthology. Poets of the 1950's which he published in Tokyo. Robert Conquest brought out some of them in his anthology New Lines in 1956. He published a selection of his jazz reviews under the title All What Jazz in 1970. Two more collections of poetry came out — The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974).
The Weather and the Landscapes:
The weather and the landscapes in Philip Larkin's poems reveal metaphorically, the responses of an English soul in his time. They reflect contemporary England. The Whitsun Weddings describes the congested, overcrowded England of his time. Surprisingly, a note of joy is heard in the poet's approach to the landscape in Wedding Wind. The new bride waking up in the morning after the night is thrilled by a feeling of joy which she experiences at the sight of the landscape. Her happy mood invests the wind with a joyful force which can overcome all resistance. The thrashing power of the wind carries her happiness like a thread carrying beads. The exquisite lyric Coming again strikes a note of joy. The poet is delighted at the advent of the spring season and the prospect of nature burgeoning radiantly. In his poem Water, the importance given to an elemental presence, like water, is a rare phenomenon in his poetry. This is because he wishes to present things as they are, with his neutral acceptance. In The Whitsun Weddings, there is a comparison between the organicism of wheat and the rigidity of postal districts. In the poem Here, he portrays the city of Hull and its environment. The industrial shadows are rich but the fields are “Too thin and thistled to be called meadows.”
Theme of His Poems:
The most prominent theme in the poetry of Philip Larkin is his melancholy, incurable pessimism. In Dockery and Son, Larkin writes that life is first boredom. He implies the helplessness of man and total impersonal callousness of life to man, over which he has no control and which offers no choice to him. Next, Please portrays our watching of the ships in the sea that approach us with an armada of promises and hopes. But as they pass by we are overcome with terrible disappointment. Arrivals, Departures has a similar theme relating to the incoming and outgoing ships. Larkin's pessimism leads him to contemplation about death. Death has gripped his imagination from his early days. The Old Fools is a devastating expression of the poet's feelings about the approach of age and death. The Building stresses a stoical acceptance of death. It visualises life and death in terms of a hospital. In Aubade, Death itself figures as a subject. Larkin regards love as a supreme illusion. Melancholy impinges on Larkin's view of love. If Mr. Darling is concerned with the invitation of a lover to his beloved and the discovery that the lover's loyalty is frail and that the act of love is repulsive. No Road depicts the impossibility of the fulfilment of love by means of metaphor of a road between the lovers that has fallen into disuse. Nature is represented by Larkin as impersonal and neutral.
Satire, Wit and Humour:
Satire, wit and irony are the redeeming features of his poetry. It is on account of satire, wit and humour that his poems become attractive and charming. The poem Toads blends comedy with universal truth. Toad is an amusing image signifying the heavy and detestable humdrum work sitting tight on our shoulders. He reckons the possibility of peeling the toad away using his wit as a pitchfork. His satire on modern civilization is quite pungent and satirical. In the poem Going and Going, he laughs at the modern commercial civilization. In the poem Whitsun Weddings, he laughs at the fashionable girls, wedded couples, parents and other sections of the society. The whole poem is composed in humorous spirit. Self the Man is a satirical poem about marriage which is contrasted with the bachelorhood. He implies that married man is no less selfish than the bachelor. Larkin's love poetry too bubbles with humour. In Wild Oats, he speaks of his meeting two girls in his workspot.
His Emphasising on Realism and Reality:
Larkin's response to life and experience is characterised by freshness and by poetic integrity. He himself emphasised the way in which his poems derived their basic impulse from his raw feelings about ordinary life, and from what he called uncoated experience. He writes honestly and directly about whatever happens to arouse and hold his interest. Once a subject has established its claim on his attention, Larkin never questions the legitimacy of his interest. Furthermore, Larkin's rhetoric is based on what he called is common word - usage which draws its strength from his experimentation with the real language of men. Like Hardy, Larkin too drew the material of his poetry from the same sphere, namely his own immediate world and the reality of it.
His Disapproval of the Modernisation:
Larkin is a conservative in the profoundest sense of the word. His disgust with urbanization, cheap stores, and foul - smelling roads - all these add up to a tradition of profound conservatism. He shows his scorn for the commercialism and collectivism which are responsible for the moral, social, and aesthetic breakdown. Larkin therefore pays a reverent tribute to rituals which sustain and strengthen a feeling of continuity, solidarity, and worthwhileness in ordinary life, whether social life or family life, in such poems as Show Saturday and To the Sea.
Imagery in His Poems:
Larkin brings out the effected and artificial nature of modern civilization with a cluster of images on the trinkets and trumperies spawned by it. The scrutiny of Coming leads us naturally to the consideration of nature image in Larkin's poetry. In Trees, Larkin imbues Nature with a moralising power. The trees, with their renewal every year, instil in man the hope of his immortality, which is paradoxically blighted soon. The greenery of Nature does not promise eternal youth or revival on man's part but reminds him of the futility of his emulation of Nature. Solar is concerned with the sun which is described as a suspended lion face. The image of ‘lion face’ expresses boundless energy, fierce heat and its reign over the life of the earth. ‘Spilling’ is suggestive of overflowing light. ‘Unfurnished sky’ implies the sky is as clear and clean as a room that is not furnished. Larkin's preoccupation with time highlights its destructive nature. In Triple Time, he seems to lament how we missed many opportunities. He compares the earlier years to “a valley cropped by fat neglected chances.” Larkin's references to death have nothing to do with morbid preoccupation with it. He merely analyses and ponders over the inescapable fact of life. “Days” is concerned with time and death. The approach of death is expressed with sinister vividness by the images of the priest and the doctor with their long coats, which appear like an animated cartoon. It has been noticed that the ship is an extended metaphor suggesting hopes and then death.
His Pessimistic Love Poetry:
Larkin's love poetry is essentially pessimistic. There is hopeless longing for love in some poems while in some others it is cynically dismissed as a lack of a sense of reality. In Broadcast, the speaker makes a sincere attempt to capture the individuality of the addressee. His failure in his attempt strikes a discordant note and disturbs the pervading sense of joy in the poem. In Wedding Wind which bubbles with excitement, the speaker is unable to enjoy herself. In An Arundel Tomb, he admits the overwhelming power of love but at the same time the poem analyses the advantages and disadvantages of such affections. The disturbing quality of sex that is responsible for the disappointment in love is treated in ‘Deceptions’. The poet sympathises with the disappointment and sorrow of a girl who has been drugged and raped. The pain is not only for the girl but also for the assailant. Both of them have been deceived. In Whitsun Weddings, in the wedding party, the children look bored, the well pomaded young men grin unnecessarily, the friends of the bride stare at the departing trains, and the uncles drop smutty comments as the newlyweds board the train in distraction. The fathers of the brides look as though they had never known success so huge and wholly farcical. The mothers seem to share the bridal secret like a happy funeral.
His Monologues:
Larkin's monologues are more psychological than Shakespeare's soliloquies. They are simpler and conversational or colloquial. Larkin has followed the example of Browning in most of his monologues. Larkin's poems often take the form of dramatic monologues which seem intended to reveal Larkin's own thoughts and feelings because he is speaking out of his own strong conviction . In these monologues the speaker is Larkin himself. In his monologues Larkin gives his own view on his favourite theme, his belief or attitude to religion and prevalent social customs and fashions. The basic theme of these monologues is death. Among the monologues of Larkin the most important is Next Please in which he expresses his view and human beings are all labouring false promises and hopes. For this he uses the symbol of ship which is coming towards the author who is standing on a hill. The ship is the symbol of death and it is black in colour. The only reality in human life is death. Life always ends in death. Therefore, a human being is always wrong in believing that all his promises and hopes will be fulfilled. In this way Larkin's monologues are very good creations of his searching mind. He has expressed his agnostic philosophy through the various monologues.
His Style and Language:
Larkin's language poses no problem to the reader on account of its lucidity and simplicity, though the ideas expressed are complex or paradoxical at times as in the case of Next Please. His diction covers a wide range from the slangy to the stately, from the crudely vernacular and the conversational to the formally dignified. Larkin proves himself an unsurpassed master in the slangy and the colloquial. He galvanizes poetry, enlivening it with slang words like ‘kiddies’, ‘stewed’. Toads, Wild Oats, Send No Money and Self's the Man are animated by the vigour of the perky street - favoured simplicity of the language. He has incorporated the prose virtues of simplicity, naturalness and humour in a carefully written piece of verse like Poetry of Departures and it is an amazing achievement. Verbal economy and laconicity characterise Larkin's style. For instance, the phrase, “an adhesive sense of betrayal” in If My Daughter with its terseness, suggests the tenuous quality of lover's loyalty as well as the repulsive nature of the act of love. In Toads Revisited, the short lines and clipped syntax with their sparse language, express vividly his gloomy attitude.
