Passage
Although he rejected the prevailing Neo-Romanticism of the late forties
and early fifties, Philip Larkin was no admirer of modernism. Like many in
the English middle-class, for example, he thought Picasso a fake, and
believed that an artist should ―make a horse look like a horse.
When some disparaged his work as ―limited‖ and ―commonplace,
Larkin replied, ―I‘d like to know what dragon-infested world these lads
live in to make them so free with the word ‗commonplace‘.‖ His irritation
stemmed from his view that poetry ―was an act of sanity, of seeing things
as they are.‖ He thought that the connection between poetry and the
reading public, forged in the 19th century by such poets as Kipling,
Housman and Brooke, had by the mid-20th century been destroyed by
the growing unintelligibility of English poetry to the general reader. He
attributed this in part to the emergence of English literature (along with
the other arts) as an academic subject, demanding poetry that required
elucidation.
He saw no such need to explain his own work. When asked to expand
on The Whitsun Weddings, he remarked that the intent of each poem was
clear enough in itself, and he would only add that ―the poems had been
written in or near Hull, Yorkshire, with a succession of 2B pencils during
the years 1955 to 1963.‖ Influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy, he
made the mundane details of his life the basis for tough, unsparing,
memorable poems that rejected the Victorian belief in a benevolent God,
exploring life with a post-religious stoicism. The poems themselves are
deceptively simple. Through the details of advertisements, train-stations,
and provincial towns, they transform into something elevated and
strangely beautiful the central issues of ordinary life in the language of
ordinary speech. His underlying themes of love, solitude, and mortality
express intense personal emotion while they strictly avoid sentimentality
or self-pity, using rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction with an
extraordinary variety of meters and stanzaic forms. These qualities were
quickly identified, if not always appreciated, by reviewers. As the critic
Donald Hall put it (only half-admiringly), ― [Larkin‘s poem] ‗At Grass‘ is
the best horse picture ever painted.‖
Some critics went so far as to call him anti-social. In an interview,
Larkin questioned why he was described a melancholy man, protesting—
self-deprecatingly—that he was actually ―rather funny.‖ Neither of these
adjectives reflect the beauty of his poetry that is the source of a deep,
abiding pleasure.
Philip Larkin earned a living as a librarian until his death of cancer in
1985. His first poem was published in 1940, but he earned his reputation
as one of England‘s finest poets with the publication of The Less Deceived
in 1955, which was subscribed to by almost all recognized young English
poets: Amis, Bergonzi, Boyars, Brownjohn, Conquest, Davie, Enright,
Hamburger, Hill, Jennings, MacBeth, Murphy, Thwaite, Tomlinson, and
Wain. His status was confirmed with the release in 1963 of The Whitsun
Weddings (the title poem of which may be the finest in all his work), and
again with High Windows in 1974. The mood of each of these thin
volumes changed considerably from poem to poem; but, for all their
range, they were clearly the products of a singular and accomplished
poetic sensibility.
Although he rejected the prevailing Neo-Romanticism of the late forties
and early fifties, Philip Larkin was no admirer of modernism. Like many in
the English middle-class, for example, he thought Picasso a fake, and
believed that an artist should ―make a horse look like a horse.
When some disparaged his work as ―limited‖ and ―commonplace,
Larkin replied, ―I‘d like to know what dragon-infested world these lads
live in to make them so free with the word ‗commonplace‘.‖ His irritation
stemmed from his view that poetry ―was an act of sanity, of seeing things
as they are.‖ He thought that the connection between poetry and the
reading public, forged in the 19th century by such poets as Kipling,
Housman and Brooke, had by the mid-20th century been destroyed by
the growing unintelligibility of English poetry to the general reader. He
attributed this in part to the emergence of English literature (along with
the other arts) as an academic subject, demanding poetry that required
elucidation.
He saw no such need to explain his own work. When asked to expand
on The Whitsun Weddings, he remarked that the intent of each poem was
clear enough in itself, and he would only add that ―the poems had been
written in or near Hull, Yorkshire, with a succession of 2B pencils during
the years 1955 to 1963.‖ Influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy, he
made the mundane details of his life the basis for tough, unsparing,
memorable poems that rejected the Victorian belief in a benevolent God,
exploring life with a post-religious stoicism. The poems themselves are
deceptively simple. Through the details of advertisements, train-stations,
and provincial towns, they transform into something elevated and
strangely beautiful the central issues of ordinary life in the language of
ordinary speech. His underlying themes of love, solitude, and mortality
express intense personal emotion while they strictly avoid sentimentality
or self-pity, using rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction with an
extraordinary variety of meters and stanzaic forms. These qualities were
quickly identified, if not always appreciated, by reviewers. As the critic
Donald Hall put it (only half-admiringly), ― [Larkin‘s poem] ‗At Grass‘ is
the best horse picture ever painted.‖
Some critics went so far as to call him anti-social. In an interview,
Larkin questioned why he was described a melancholy man, protesting—
self-deprecatingly—that he was actually ―rather funny.‖ Neither of these
adjectives reflect the beauty of his poetry that is the source of a deep,
abiding pleasure.
Philip Larkin earned a living as a librarian until his death of cancer in
1985. His first poem was published in 1940, but he earned his reputation
as one of England‘s finest poets with the publication of The Less Deceived
in 1955, which was subscribed to by almost all recognized young English
poets: Amis, Bergonzi, Boyars, Brownjohn, Conquest, Davie, Enright,
Hamburger, Hill, Jennings, MacBeth, Murphy, Thwaite, Tomlinson, and
Wain. His status was confirmed with the release in 1963 of The Whitsun
Weddings (the title poem of which may be the finest in all his work), and
again with High Windows in 1974. The mood of each of these thin
volumes changed considerably from poem to poem; but, for all their
range, they were clearly the products of a singular and accomplished
poetic sensibility.
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