An excellent essay, and that comparison with Keats is fascinating. Whenever I teach The Whitsun Weddings I linger over this line: 'sun destroys/The interest of what’s happening in the shade', because I think Larkin is preoccupied with the shadows, and clarity, sunshine, reduces that ambiguity to something more exposed and less complex.
Thanks for this lovely essay. If you haven’t done so already, I would highly recommend listening to his recording of his poems on “The Sunday Sessions,” which is available as an audiobook. Despite his reservations about reading poetry aloud, he was a magnificently sensitive reader, and one of the rare poets who was an ideal reader of his own poetry. His readings of the handful of poems from “The North Ship” are particularly touching for their sense of fondness and regret for the earlier poet who wrote them, a nascent Keatsian (and Yeatsian) poet that Larkin had long since lost. You can tell he knows the poems are not as good as his more recent work, but that he still feels “the strength and pain” of them. Hearing it adds a lot to one’s sense of the man.
This essay has some delightful, entertaining insights: "T. S. Eliot has the sprawling genius of a near-mad, romantic, depressive scholar”. “Where Eliot wrote long verses about “the intolerable wrestle / With words and meanings”, Larkin cynically shrugged: “but why put it into words?” Oliver's comments on the pugnacious "brawling Keatsian" humour of Larkin’s letters are arresting, as is the link he makes between the ever-unfulfilled longing of their poems and the restless frustration in their letters. Larkin “often writes with more energy than the words can contain".
In my own writing on Larkin I was perhaps too ready to accept that he doesn't really mean to be taken too seriously on ideological or political issues. Even at its grimmest and nastiest, perhaps, crassness itself has kind of surreal, exhilarating stylishness about it (“I want to see them starving,/ The so-called working class. /Their wages weekly halving, /Their women stewing grass.”) But Oliver is spot on about the strain of desperate misery, the note of hysteria, in Larkin’s crudest, most Amisian comments. Larkin, his vision “mountain clear” just could not bear to watch himself growing old. Oliver's title, “The strength and pain of being young”, is well chosen.
Oliver is moving on the organic quality of the unfolding, maturing and decaying of Larkin’s sensibility. Is it too fanciful to see Larkin as showing a rhetorical, literary version of the rare physical condition of progeria which causes the sufferer to go through the cycle of ageing too fast? He heard his biological clock ticking more loudly than the rest of us. He knew he would die at 63, the same age as his father, and by the time he reached my age he'd been dead 16 years.
What a great essay, thanks! I love Larkin's poems (not so familiar with the letters) for the reasons you so clearly give - that he is "a poet of the almost" and captures "what it felt like for the ordinary person". Entering Larkin world, I feel immediately tearfully connected to his "plain sadness and misery" and strangely comforted and moved by his bleak honesty. In particular, I love Aubade:
"Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,"
capped with the truly quotidian, "Postmen like doctors go from house to house."
A great essay. I admit I've never warmed to Larkin - but I've also never read anything that expresses so profoundly why people can and do warm to him. It makes me want to read him again - it's probably 20 years since I last tried, and maybe you're right, maybe that 20 years of my own aging will make all the difference.
Simon Armitage did a lovely radio series about Larkin’s poetry, and talked about ‘The Whitsun weddings’. Such a wonderful poem. The last four lines are perfection
A fine essay, indeed! Poetry of Departures is the Larkin poem that stays with me. I slip in the phrase 'I heard fifth-hand', often to much appreciation.
It makes one wonder how much of other poems were striking an attitude for sale or consumption, or were perhaps just a few (albeit most public) facets of the man. Just as his letters were laced with irony and intentionally boisterous, and not intended to be taken, po-faced, as a true representation of the Heart of Larkin. No heart is ready to be diagnosed accurately, by its owner or an outsider.
It seems a double calumny to promote a character judgment based on correspondence written in an age of different cultural assumptions, as well as in jest and under the influence. We are not always what we say, and certainly not what we drink. 'In vino veritas' is simply incorrect. At best, there are shades of veritas, and the synecdoche is utterly unreliable.
I think he meant everything he wrote but that he wanted to be a different sort of writer, maybe person. A lot of the letters are jokey but as I say a lot are revealing and he sure was nasty. He was outside the usual assumptions of his time as well, very often. He got worse as he got older. Sad story…
I think alcohol easily exacerbates self-pity which expresses itself in ever more ugly ways as one ages. But you have made me want to pick up my volumes of his work again - which I was too young for by far when I bought them. Not sure I'll visit the letters at the moment, though...
Thanks for this. I always loved Larkin in my youth but haven't gone back to him in a while, or any poetry really, your writing has encouraged me to revisit him
But who else put up such a show in the face of a changing world? - Wordsworth comes to mind. His letters after the age of 40 becoming increasingly reactionary, against electoral reform,critical of his friends' political views, critical of calls to end the slave trade, against Catholic emancipation, supportive of the government over the Peterloo Massacre and an unsticking supporter of the Tories. He was no stranger to despair as he aged with the death of his brother, John,, followed by 2 of his children in early childhood his daugher in adulthood and the descent of his sister into dementia.
I don't know if I "like" Larkin and I don't think I need to. I think that the way he expresses discomfort through poetry is something we may not see again - and probably need more of. "Dockery and Son" I find especially brutal for that. Thank you for this essay - it will make me read more Larkin even though (and perhaps especially because) it's not going to be a very....comforting experience.
I know little of Larkin other than the popular stories and the popular lines and the odd old documentary. You have aroused an interest both in biography and critique of his poetry. I shall try.
An excellent essay, and that comparison with Keats is fascinating. Whenever I teach The Whitsun Weddings I linger over this line: 'sun destroys/The interest of what’s happening in the shade', because I think Larkin is preoccupied with the shadows, and clarity, sunshine, reduces that ambiguity to something more exposed and less complex.
It’s something a photographer would notice too
Thanks for this lovely essay. If you haven’t done so already, I would highly recommend listening to his recording of his poems on “The Sunday Sessions,” which is available as an audiobook. Despite his reservations about reading poetry aloud, he was a magnificently sensitive reader, and one of the rare poets who was an ideal reader of his own poetry. His readings of the handful of poems from “The North Ship” are particularly touching for their sense of fondness and regret for the earlier poet who wrote them, a nascent Keatsian (and Yeatsian) poet that Larkin had long since lost. You can tell he knows the poems are not as good as his more recent work, but that he still feels “the strength and pain” of them. Hearing it adds a lot to one’s sense of the man.
James Boooth
This essay has some delightful, entertaining insights: "T. S. Eliot has the sprawling genius of a near-mad, romantic, depressive scholar”. “Where Eliot wrote long verses about “the intolerable wrestle / With words and meanings”, Larkin cynically shrugged: “but why put it into words?” Oliver's comments on the pugnacious "brawling Keatsian" humour of Larkin’s letters are arresting, as is the link he makes between the ever-unfulfilled longing of their poems and the restless frustration in their letters. Larkin “often writes with more energy than the words can contain".
In my own writing on Larkin I was perhaps too ready to accept that he doesn't really mean to be taken too seriously on ideological or political issues. Even at its grimmest and nastiest, perhaps, crassness itself has kind of surreal, exhilarating stylishness about it (“I want to see them starving,/ The so-called working class. /Their wages weekly halving, /Their women stewing grass.”) But Oliver is spot on about the strain of desperate misery, the note of hysteria, in Larkin’s crudest, most Amisian comments. Larkin, his vision “mountain clear” just could not bear to watch himself growing old. Oliver's title, “The strength and pain of being young”, is well chosen.
Oliver is moving on the organic quality of the unfolding, maturing and decaying of Larkin’s sensibility. Is it too fanciful to see Larkin as showing a rhetorical, literary version of the rare physical condition of progeria which causes the sufferer to go through the cycle of ageing too fast? He heard his biological clock ticking more loudly than the rest of us. He knew he would die at 63, the same age as his father, and by the time he reached my age he'd been dead 16 years.
James this is a wonderful comment, thank you so much. I admire your book very much so I am especially pleased by this.
What a great essay, thanks! I love Larkin's poems (not so familiar with the letters) for the reasons you so clearly give - that he is "a poet of the almost" and captures "what it felt like for the ordinary person". Entering Larkin world, I feel immediately tearfully connected to his "plain sadness and misery" and strangely comforted and moved by his bleak honesty. In particular, I love Aubade:
"Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,"
capped with the truly quotidian, "Postmen like doctors go from house to house."
A great essay. I admit I've never warmed to Larkin - but I've also never read anything that expresses so profoundly why people can and do warm to him. It makes me want to read him again - it's probably 20 years since I last tried, and maybe you're right, maybe that 20 years of my own aging will make all the difference.
Thank you—I hope you find him worthwhile
Simon Armitage did a lovely radio series about Larkin’s poetry, and talked about ‘The Whitsun weddings’. Such a wonderful poem. The last four lines are perfection
Oh sounds good thanks
A fine essay, indeed! Poetry of Departures is the Larkin poem that stays with me. I slip in the phrase 'I heard fifth-hand', often to much appreciation.
I sent this piece to my dad too. He enjoyed it.
Ah thank you!!
The final quote is redemptive, and magnificent
It's a quiet strain in his work but very strong.
It makes one wonder how much of other poems were striking an attitude for sale or consumption, or were perhaps just a few (albeit most public) facets of the man. Just as his letters were laced with irony and intentionally boisterous, and not intended to be taken, po-faced, as a true representation of the Heart of Larkin. No heart is ready to be diagnosed accurately, by its owner or an outsider.
It seems a double calumny to promote a character judgment based on correspondence written in an age of different cultural assumptions, as well as in jest and under the influence. We are not always what we say, and certainly not what we drink. 'In vino veritas' is simply incorrect. At best, there are shades of veritas, and the synecdoche is utterly unreliable.
I think he meant everything he wrote but that he wanted to be a different sort of writer, maybe person. A lot of the letters are jokey but as I say a lot are revealing and he sure was nasty. He was outside the usual assumptions of his time as well, very often. He got worse as he got older. Sad story…
I think alcohol easily exacerbates self-pity which expresses itself in ever more ugly ways as one ages. But you have made me want to pick up my volumes of his work again - which I was too young for by far when I bought them. Not sure I'll visit the letters at the moment, though...
Thanks for this. I always loved Larkin in my youth but haven't gone back to him in a while, or any poetry really, your writing has encouraged me to revisit him
I’m glad!
But who else put up such a show in the face of a changing world? - Wordsworth comes to mind. His letters after the age of 40 becoming increasingly reactionary, against electoral reform,critical of his friends' political views, critical of calls to end the slave trade, against Catholic emancipation, supportive of the government over the Peterloo Massacre and an unsticking supporter of the Tories. He was no stranger to despair as he aged with the death of his brother, John,, followed by 2 of his children in early childhood his daugher in adulthood and the descent of his sister into dementia.
I meant against modernism really but yea absolutely that’s another shared strain of romanticism
What a beautiful essay. It's a shame Larkin stopped writing towards the end. His last years seem sad
Yes really miserable :(
I forget about Larkin - thank you for reminding me. He was a type that has vanished - the English curmudgeon ( even the word is archaic ).
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad…..”
Glorious!
This is a beautiful and generous essay, Henry. Thank you. I had never noticed the relationship between Larkin and Keats, but it is clear.
Thank you! Neither had I until I wrote this
I don't know if I "like" Larkin and I don't think I need to. I think that the way he expresses discomfort through poetry is something we may not see again - and probably need more of. "Dockery and Son" I find especially brutal for that. Thank you for this essay - it will make me read more Larkin even though (and perhaps especially because) it's not going to be a very....comforting experience.
I know little of Larkin other than the popular stories and the popular lines and the odd old documentary. You have aroused an interest both in biography and critique of his poetry. I shall try.
enjoy!
Most of what you dismiss as sad or miserable or worse seems to be simple banter, and of its time, an English melancholy.
Read the letters and get back to me. If you think I’m dismissing him I’d suggest you are misreading me…
Oh please. I have and I’m not.