Philip Larkin, who was born a hundred years ago, on 9th August 1922, was one of the best-known poets of the 20th Century. Born in Coventry and a graduate in English Literature from Oxford, he spent most of his working life as a Librarian at Hull University, during which time he wrote most of his literary work. He was not keen to attract public attention to himself, so when offered the position of Poet Laureate after John Betjeman’s death, he declined it.
Larkin was a solitary person, not given to expressing much emotion in his poems. When once asked about the simplicity of his poems, he commented that he did want the lines of his poetry to be understood by people at the first time of reading, but that he hoped people would then be drawn to read it many times, gaining a better understanding each time. He is said to have much inspiration from W. H. Auden. The poems are marked by what critics call ‘a very English, glum accuracy’ about emotions, places, and relationships and ‘a poetry from which even people who distrust poetry, most people, can take comfort and delight’. Larkin claims that deprivation is to him what daffodils were to Wordsworth!
Kingsley Amis and Larkin were close friends, a life- long friendship that started in his student days. The librarian in Amis’ famous novel ‘Lucky Jim’ is fashioned on Larkin and his time as a librarian in Hull.
He was a novelist and a jazz critic, as well as a poet. His choice of music at his appearance on Desert Island Discs included Tallis and Handel, surprisingly for an agnostic as he confessed himself, along with Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith.
While never married, Larkin had several long-term relationships with women, some of them concurrent! Partly due to that, he is frequently accused of misogyny, though that may in reality have been just one part of his general misanthropy. More definitely, he did express racist sentiments in private correspondence, on more than one occasion. While this would rightly be seen as unacceptable today, such attitudes were more common then, and it is also possible that he was being deliberately shocking in private letters. Nonetheless, there are university curricula that have removed him from their reading lists and Hull Council apparently has included his statue in its racism review.
So, Larkin’s life has generated much controversy, but should that detract from his poetry? As David Baddiel said about misogyny, racism and antisemitism in poets like Larkin and T. S. Eliot, “We have to be able to hold those conflicting thoughts together...” A memorial to Philip Larkin was dedicated in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey in 2016.
Some Quotes from Larkin
Many people will remember Larkin’s lines:
They [mess] you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
A good example of a glum poem! The later verses also contain the lines ’But they were [messed] up in their turn’ and ’Man hands on misery to man’, ending with the advice ‘And don’t have any kids yourself.’
Larkin himself is said to have thought of The Whitsun Weddings collection of poems as his favourite. Here is a thought from ‘Dockery and Son’ , from The Whitsun Weddings: “...how Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution.”
And also from The Whitsun Weddings (‘Faith Healing’):
In everyone there sleeps A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
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