PHILIP LARKIN,
THE BARD OF DESPAIR
Dr. Vasudeva Reddy
Philip Larkin, a leading light among Movement poets, overtly expresses his dislike for modernism, when he says “it helps us neither to enjoy or endure”. This aversion to modernism probably stems forth from the fact that the modern society has become corrupt and degenerated and the true values are dwindling fast now-a-days. Taking the cue from the above, Christopher Ricks tries to see classical temper in Larkin: “Larkin’s classical temper shows its mettle when he deplores modernism, whether in, jazz, poetry or painting”. All the same in spite of his hatred for modernism, his poetry is not totally free from the spirit of modernism which is a strange mixture of mudane buoyancy and psychological depression, the inevitable legacy of the nuclear holocaust.
The Movement writers, by and large, represent the lower middle class society. The sudden fall of Britain as a World power after the Second World War was a great blow to the young writers such as Larkin. Psychologically they were very much upset by the post-war British socio-political scenario. The following statement of Larkin reveals how deeply they were psychologically upset by the impact of war: “At an age when self-importance would have been normal, the events cut us ruthlessly down to size”. Obviously it is a clear pointer to the inherent cause for the general mood of depression. It is quite natural that Larkin’s poetry is imbued with the prevailing mood of depression. Philip Larkin is generally called the poet of death and deprivation as most of his poems present a graphic picture of the numerous shades of death.
His first collection The North Ship, published in 1945, not only draws the contours of his deeper feeling, but it gives us a taste of his preoccupation with the unhappy side of life. His poems reveal how pain and suffering moved his sensitive heart gradually leading to a state of disillusionment. Larkin’s characteristic note of depression can be seen in his poem ‘conscript’ (Poem V in The North Ship) modeled on the conventional English sonnet. It is at once elegiac in tone and lyrical in spirit. The poem is about the untimely tragical death of a young man James Ballard Suttan in the Wars. It begins with the personal loss of his deer friend and gradually rises to the universal by bemoaning the death of all those unfortunate victims who are conscribed for War. While the War poet Wildred Owen describes the pity of war in realistic terms, Larkin describes not only the horrors of war but the post-war consequences in British society.
In his early poems he gives expression to the feeling of sadness and the depressed spirit of the poet sees sadness everywhere. The distinctive feature of his poetry is, as Clive James remarks, “It made misery beautiful”.
Larkin expresses:
‘Among the rain and stone places
I find only an ancient sadness falling
only hurrying and troubled faces
The Walking of girls’. (Poem IX, TNS).
Larkin’s ‘ancient sadness’ reminds us of Arnold’s ‘eternal note of sadness’ expressed in his melancholy poem ‘Dover Beach’.
We find a distinguishable change in the treatment of disillusionment in his later poetry, viz. in his second collection The Less Deceived, published in 1955. It presents disillusionment in a different light imbued with kindness for those that suffer, and also for the old people. His poem ‘Old Fools’ is a clear example that shows the poet’s sympathetic concern for old people and particularly for extreme old age. Larkin’s description of old age as inverted childhood’ is closely akin to Shakespeare’s comparison of old age to ‘second childishness’.
The poem reveals not only the poet’s compassion for the old, but also his disillusionment at the futility of human life.
His spirit of disillusionment which is obviously the result of the terrible war, gradually leads to his preoccupation with death. His view of life is quite pessimistic and it is totally devoid of the sunny side. Life is not a delightful tale of joy, but it is a gloomy situation steeped in misery, uncertainty and the certainty of death.
His fear of death is presented in its depth in his three representative poems Ambulances (1961). The Building (1972) and Aubade (1977) composed at fairly long spells of intervals. These three poems share not only the fear of death as a predominant feature but also the nominal mention of religion. But he has neither respect nor sympathy for religion which, as he feels, is made of the stuff of pretence:
Religion used to try
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die.
Another distinctive feature of his spirit of disillusionment is the sexual disillusionment. He thinks of sex as a light affair as he views it “as a simple pleasure rather than a sacred mystery and therefore to be treated in a light and entertaining fashion. A careful examination of the poem ‘Waiting for Breakfast’; published in the Faber edition of The North Ship, presents the moment of post-sexual act and the resultant feeling of disillusionment.
‘I thought: featureless morning, featureless night’.
Another poem ‘Dry Point’ also expounds the theme of sexual disillusionment and it makes a categorical assertion of the fact that it is not possible to reach any kind of fulfilment through sexual love. The poet himself gives a brief explanation of the poem - ‘how awful sex is and how we want to get away from it’.
His poem ‘Deceptions’ presents a vivid picture of the psychological depression of the rapist with stronger intensity than the state of the raped. In this poem, a girl who is drugged and raped undergoes mental agony. Under the impact of post-coital disillusionment, the man who has raped the girl feels bitterly for his past action. The poet’s view of the rapist is, in fact, a clinical attitude to sex.
Thus we see the different facts of disillusionment experienced by Philip Larkin in all walks of life which naturally pave way to its corollary, a brooding mood of deprivation which becomes his characteristic theme. In his interview to The Observer Larkin himself says, that “Deprivation is for me, what daffodils were to Wordsworth”. This feeling of deprivation gradually leads to a feeling of loneliness and his longing for loneliness: ‘Beyond all this, the wish to be alone’ (from the poem ‘Wants’,). This sense of loneliness automatically leads to a sense of alienation in Philip Larkin. His love of loneliness has probably brought him the sobriquet - ‘Hermit of Hull’. Truly he is the bard of despair, a poet who sings of death, deprivation and disillusionment. Thus it can be seen that the rising popularity of Larkin as a poet of eminence rests on the rock-bed of disillusionment.
References:
‘Like something almost being said’, Christopher Ricks, Larkin at Sixty, ed. by Anthony Thwaite (Faber & Faber, 1982). p. 123
‘Introduction to Jill’, Required Writing (Faber & Faber, 1983), p.18
James Booth, Philip Larkin: Writer (London, Harvester, 1992), p.152
‘Larkin Ascending’ George Watson, The American Scholar (Summer 1988), p.455 Movement, Blake Morrison, p. 179
John Haffenden, ‘The Time and the Beautiful: a conversation with Philip Larkin’. The London Magazine, 20, Nos. 1-2 (April-May, 1980), p. 85