'Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day': Philip Larkin and the Plain Style (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

Citation preview

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STUDIES IN MAJOR LITERARY AUTHORS

Edited by

William E. Cain Professor of English Wellesley College

A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

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STUDIES IN MAJOR LITERARY AUTHORS WILLIAM E. CAIN, General Editor GEORGE ORWELL, DOUBLENESS, AND THE VALUE OF DECENCY Anthony Stewart PROGRESS AND IDENTITY IN THE PLAYS OF W. B. YEATS Barbara A. Seuss FREDERICK DOUGLASS’S CURIOUS AUDIENCES Ethos in the Age of the Consumable Subject Terry Baxter THE ARTIST, SOCIETY & SEXUALITY IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S NOVELS Ann Ronchetti T. S. ELIOT’S CIVILIZED SAVAGE Religious Eroticism and Poetics Laurie J. MacDiarmid WORLDING FORSTER The Passage from Pastoral Stuart Christie WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS AND THE ENDS OF REALISM Paul Abeln WHITMAN’S ECSTATIC UNION Conversion and Ideology in Leaves of Grass Michael Sowder READY TO TRAMPLE ON ALL HUMAN LAW Financial Capitalism in the Fiction of Charles Dickens Paul A. Jarvie PYNCHON AND HISTORY Metahistorical Rhetoric and Postmodern Narrative Form in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon Shawn Smith

A SINGING CONTEST Conventions of Sound in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney Meg Tyler EDITH WHARTON AS SPATIAL ACTIVIST AND ANALYST Reneé Somers QUEER IMPRESSIONS Henry James’s Art of Fiction Elaine Pigeon “NO IMAGE THERE AND THE GAZE REMAINS” The Visual in the Work of Jorie Graham Catherine Sona Karagueuzian “SOMEWHAT ON THE COMMUNITY-SYSTEM” Fourierism in the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne Andrew Loman COLONIALISM AND THE MODERNIST MOMENT IN THE EARLY NOVELS OF JEAN RHYS Carol Dell’Amico MELVILLE’S MONUMENTAL IMAGINATION Ian S. Maloney WRITING “OUT OF ALL THE CAMPS” J. M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement Laura Wright HERE AND NOW The Politics of Social Space in D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf Youngjoo Son “UNNOTICED IN THE CASUAL LIGHT OF DAY” Philip Larkin and the Plain Style Tijana Stojkovic´

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“UNNOTICED IN THE CASUAL LIGHT OF DAY” Philip Larkin and the Plain Style

Tijana Stojkovic´

Routledge New York & London

RT5492X_Discl.fm Page 1 Wednesday, March 22, 2006 11:02 AM

Excerpts from “Aubade,” “Counting,” “Fiction and the Reading Public,” “The Mower,” “Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses,” “None of the books have time,” “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb,” “Talking in Bed,” and Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin, copyright 1988, 2003 by the estate of Philip Larkin, reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC.

Excerpts from Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin, reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

"Poetry of Departures," "Church Going," and quotations from: "Next, Please," "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album," "I Remember, I Remember," "Triple Time," Born Yesterday," "Places, Loved Ones," "Reasons for Attendance," "Deceptions," "If, My Darling," "At Grass" and "Wedding Wind" by Philip Larkin are reprinted from The Less Deceived by permission of The Marvell Press, England and Australia.

Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Published in Great Britain by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-97549-2 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97549-0 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Catalog record is available from the Library of Congress

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of Informa plc.

and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge-ny.com

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To Branimir, Zlata, and Srdjan

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction Raising the Questions

1

Chapter One Literature, Language, Plainness, and the Plain Style Traditions

11

Chapter Two Larkin in Context

39

Chapter Three Rhetorical Strategies I

77

Chapter Four Rhetorical Strategies II

119

Chapter Five Themes

163

Conclusion Larkin’s Own Blend

207

Notes

217

Bibliography

229

Index

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Acknowledgments

Many people have become part of this work over the past years, directly or indirectly. Starting from where it all began, I am grateful to the English Department at the Faculty of Philology at Belgrade University for introducing me to Larkin’s poetry. Next comes the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at Cambridge University for intriguing me about the wonders of language. My warmest gratitude goes out to my most recent source of academic support: the English Department at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Above all, I am thankful to Dr. Terry Whalen for his boundless support, expert guidance, and high spirits at every instant of this project. I would also like to thank Dr. Bruce Greenfield for all the suggestions and encouragement during my years at Dalhousie, as well as Dr. John Baxter for his help. Many thanks to Dr. Anthony Stewart for the Orwell connection. This book would not have been possible without many unforgettable people whose paths have crossed mine in Bosnia, Serbia, England and Canada, and who have shown me various faces of poetry in their own way. Thank you Gordana Milakovic´, Dijana Petkovic´, Marijana Matic´, Ivana Djordjevic´, Kaisa Hietala, Stephen Walker, James Emerson, Christoph Meyer, Leïta Boucicaut, Aaron Cavon, Pallavi Gupta-Vaidya, Markus Poetzsch, Federica Belluccini, Keila Isaac-Olivé, Erick González, Alexandra Antonakaki, Christophe Fricker, Torang Sinaga, David Iza and many others. This book is dedicated to my family, whose love and patience are the best and the plainest poetry I could think of.

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Introduction

Raising the Questions

Asked in an interview to comment on the criticism of his own works, Philip Larkin said: “I may flatter myself, but I think in one sense I’m like Evelyn Waugh or John Betjeman, in that there’s not much to say about my work. When you’ve read a poem, that’s it, it’s all quite clear what it means” (Required Writing 54). If the poet himself claims “there’s nothing much to say about his work,” how does one write a whole book about it? Or, to use J. V. Cunningham’s words, changing the angle slightly: “What does one say of the unnoticeable [style]?” (Collected Essays 394). Larkin has certainly put me in a difficult position as an unwanted commentator, or interpreter—a person performing dubious and strictly academic feats of criticism. His admiration for Betjeman, for example, springs particularly from the latter’s success in bypassing “the whole light industry of exegesis” (Required Writing 129), which was in Larkin’s mind a direct result of T. S. Eliot’s assertion that poets in our civilization must be difficult. In other words, Larkin prefers clarity, or even plainness, in poetry— hence his feeling that there is nothing much to say about it. If it is true that it is quite clear what Larkin’s poems mean, what is it that makes them clear, transparent, “un-difficult”? For Larkin and a whole tradition of poetry and prose writing such adjectives are a term of praise. My own interest hinges on the word “style” in Cunningham’s query above: Larkin’s plainness can most comfortably be “located” in the style, and this is where the following chapters are headed; that is, the question, “What does Larkin write about in his poems?” will be important but primarily as a means of answering questions such as, “How does he write so plainly?” and “Why is this, or why isn’t it, plain?” as well as “Is there a value in this plainness?” Everything that has been said so far is based on the general assumption that Larkin’s poems are generally considered to be plain, or written in an “unnoticeable” style. Indeed, whether they praise him or blame him for it, most critics explicitly or implicitly invoke his plainness; whether this style is 1

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seen as natural perfection of common speech or as studied artifice, its (honest or deceiving) plainness is usually taken for granted. These widely diverging evaluations of his style have been present in criticism ever since the beginning of Larkin’s poetic career, and even though by now Larkin is firmly entrenched in the British twentieth-century poetic canon, the polarization of opinions about his poetry and, specifically, about his style still remains. Within a larger picture it could be said that Larkin’s poetry is assessed in contradictory ways precisely because there are, and have always been, contradictory assessments of his kind of style, the plain style. For example, in an article entitled “The egotistical banal, or against Larkitudinising,” after a bold claim that after Yeats and Eliot there has been no great poetry written in Britain, Christopher Miller calls Larkin “a mediocrity.” According to Miller, Larkin has never heard of modernity, or experimentation (71), he banalizes his own symbols by explaining them (79), and his “populist reductivity” results in “an undemanding poetry whose appreciation requires neither notes nor erudition” (95). Miller ends up making a sharp distinction between “good poetry” and “good verse,” based on the “heuristic nature of the former” and the “absence of the quality of discovery” in the latter (86). In short, Larkin’s plainness—or “populist reductivity,” as Miller would have it—is clearly slotted into the “good verse” category and denied the greatness of “poetry” and the energy of the “heuristic.” In stark contrast to Miller’s position, Lolette Kuby praises Larkin’s plain language and his particular “linguistic break with modernism” (An Uncommon Poet for a Common Man 32). She finds that Larkin’s “traditionalism,” “correctness,” and “clarity” are “the means of writing communicative poetry” (32), where “traditionalism” or what she also calls “classicism,” is defined as “the search for the word [which] goes on outside the poem” (33). Unlike the Modernists, with their “private,” “esoteric” language, Larkin shows “faith both that there is an audience and that the audience shares a common tongue viable enough to communicate the full range of experience” (42). In Kuby’s scheme of things, Larkin’s style is far from being identified as “populist reductivity,” or from having inferior, verse-like status; the fact that many can enjoy it is here a positive feature, while her claim that Larkin’s “shop-worn words” are renewed through “dialectic between thoughts” (35) opposes Miller’s objection that there is a lack of “discovery” in Larkin’s poetry. What becomes immediately clear from these two approaches is that both authors use their like or dislike of Modernism as a touchstone in defining good poetry—the story of Modernism, or more generally, the poetics of difficulty is obviously closely bound up with the plain style, and is necessarily involved in any discussion of it.

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In “Philip Larkin’s ‘cut-price crowd’: The Poet and the Average Reader,” Mike Tierce picks up on Kuby’s argument, confirming the importance Larkin attached to the shift from obscurity to clarity in mid-twentiethcentury poetry, but he adds that the poet’s attempts to reach the average reader, in fact, failed. The four decades of Larkin’s endeavours to “snare a reader” (98) by avoiding literary abstractions1 and concentrating on clarity and concrete experiences (99) were not fruitful. Contradicting Kuby by saying that Larkin is “still not the poet of the common man” (101), Tierce suggests that this could be explained within a larger literary context: the Movement poetry, with which Larkin is often associated, had “a very limited appeal” and was mainly read by an academic audience (102). This “limited appeal,” however, was not part of the Movement’s artistic programme or their active attempt to be “unappealing”; on the contrary, a few critics maintain, they tried to be appealing to the general audience a little too much. Tierce, for example, finds that in his attempts to make poetry competitive with other forms of entertainment Larkin drifts “dangerously close to a givethe-readers-what-they-want mentality” (98). The result: Larkin “reduces artistic creation to a marketable commodity” (97). This particular stance harks back to an early criticism of the Movement by their contemporary Charles Tomlinson. In his article “The Middlebrow Muse,” Tomlinson attacks the Movement’s staged “ordinariness”—a concept which has strong links with the overall plainness of style. As Tomlinson sees it, poets like Larkin, Wain and Amis employ a persona in their poetry which ingratiatingly resembles the average man, so as to attract a general readership. Tomlinson even spells out this strategy: “you make friends with the reader by assuring him how decent you and he are and how chaps like Eliot lay it on a bit thick” (212). Ultimately, Tomlinson’s complaint is that such poetic procedures constitute an open “invitation to mediocrity” (216), allowing for the substitution of the “aesthetic” with the “middlebrow.” All this Tomlinson sees as direct consequence of Britain’s “watered-down, democratic culture” of the fifties (216). This brief look at a few studies dealing with Larkin and his style points to concepts and issues which seem to be inevitable in any discussion of literary plainness, particularly in twentieth-century literature. The same issues are also the main concerns in some of the central or more recent critical texts written by Donald Davie, Blake Morrison, or Andrew Crozier. As most of the mentioned titles indicate, a great emphasis is placed on the audience, and, more specifically, on the particular kind of audience—the one composed of “average” or “common” or (depending on evaluation) “middlebrow” readers. For those who accept some version of the elitist model of writing

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and reading, this often mentioned aspect of the plain style is disastrous; for others, it is one of its fortes. The question remains: who is a plain-style text intended to reach, if anyone in particular, and who does it actually reach? What does “the common reader” mean in reality? This kind of reader is also seen as the most important “judge” of whether something is plain or not. The idea of a text’s accessibility becomes of prime interest here and is intertwined with any attempt to define verbal, and especially literary, plainness: how accessible should a text be in order to be deemed plain? And is the level of difficulty in comprehending a text the principal factor in determining plainness in writing? The criterion for determining plainness seems to differ depending on the type of discourse at hand. It is usually taken for granted that the level of cognitive difficulty expected in “everyday” communication is lower than the one anticipated in the literary verbal mode, mainly because the latter is less pragmatically-oriented and more stylized (also, probably because it is associated with “literacy,” education and sophistication). In other words, when we are about to start reading a piece of fiction, we anticipate that it will most probably require more thinking than most (unspecialized) non-fictional texts. This higher level of difficulty seems to be a sine qua non of literature but it is also a fact that various literary texts exhibit various levels of difficulty—so where exactly is the “lower” limit of literary plainness, which demarcates the literary from the non-literary? To complicate matters even more, it is possible to argue that within the general literary mode, there exists a gradation of plainness or difficulty, depending on the literary genre of the text. According to David Lodge, for example, poetry is “inherently” a metaphoric mode of writing, which would, in general terms, make the whole genre more difficult than prose, which is typically metonymic (The Modes of Modern Writing). In this context, what does it mean for a poem to be plain? And is there such a thing as “too plain”? Some of the previously examined opinions would suggest that the answer is yes. As we have seen, Miller considers Larkin’s artistic achievement inferior mainly because his poetry is “undemanding”; to him, it is conventional, and doesn’t present the reader with a puzzle. Similar opinions are offered by Tierce, who mentions the reduction of artistic creation in Larkin’s poems, and Tomlinson, who laments the suffocation of the aesthetic in the middlebrow. To put it crudely, according to these views plainness is killing the art. On the other hand, there has been a long-standing poetic tradition— to which I will add Larkin, albeit as a significantly different example—in which the aesthetic of poetry functions on a set of axioms not based on the “puzzling out” of poems and its correlative difficulty. The important point to keep in mind is that the consideration of what is “beautiful” or “aesthetically

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pleasing”—one of the main factors in assessing the artistic achievement in a poem—shifts over time and occasionally reverts to an earlier standard. Part of the story of Larkin’s plainness belongs to this general tendency of art to undergo paradigm shifts or reversions. The heavy stress on the importance of the relationship between the writer and the audience in the poetics of the plain style is often linked with another idea which lurks in the background in the mentioned pieces of criticism of Larkin’s poetry: democracy. While Kuby finds Larkin’s language “democratized by its intelligibility to the general reading public” (36), and calls his poetry “communicative” and “moral,” Miller and Tomlinson find fault with what they see as Larkin’s “populist gestures.” The impulse to write for a large body of readers, which Tomlinson explicitly connects with the postwar democratic mind-set in Britain, brings up questions of “mediocrity” and “levelling tendencies,” and these, according to him, lower artistic standards. What is, then, the relationship between democratic (both social and artistic) beliefs and art? Additionally, the idea of only “gesturing” towards a general reading public raises another controversial issue among the defenders and detractors of the plain style: how much of it is genuine and how much is deceitful; is it all only a simulation of plainness or accessibility? Tomlinson has no second thoughts on this matter: in his opinion all big Movement names adopt an average-man’s persona; hence their poetry somehow falls down not only in the realm of the aesthetic but of the ethical too. They only “pretend” to be plain, and so are, in fact, condescending to the reader. The question of ethics in literature is always contentious and hard to define, but its proportions seem to grow even bigger in discussions of plainness. We might even say that in this particular instance we are actually dealing with the “ethics of the form.” Texts—and especially poems—which don’t openly display signs of literary artifice are often presumed to have a “hidden agenda,” some secret and dark intention whose prerequisite is the reader’s gullible faith that what he or she is reading is fact, and not fiction. The other kind of literature—the difficult one—gets its own share of such ethical evaluation: High Modernist texts, for example, have been described by some as “obscene,” or “perverse.”2 The logic here seems to be that a modernist writer “twists” the usual texture of a text in an unhealthy or unnecessarily flamboyant way and thus offends the reader. In both cases the ultimate grievance is the text’s relationship to reality. Critics of plain texts find that these try too hard to imitate the factual reality by hiding their literary artifice, whereas critics of difficult texts find that these try to put forward a hardly recognizable subjective reality by displaying arrogantly all of their literary artifice.

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Most of this ethical perspective on the literary form, however, comes from discussions of the plain style. Hugh Kenner calls the plain style “the most disorienting form of discourse yet invented by man” (261). Writing mainly about plain prose, and specifically George Orwell, Kenner defines the plain style as a “contrivance,” which deceives the reader by suggesting it is handling things, not ideas. Such a “populist style” is recognized by “homely diction,” “1–2-3 syntax, the show of candor, and the artifice of seeming to be grounded outside language, in what is called ‘fact’” (265–6). Considering Orwell’s oeuvre, Kenner concludes that such a style is a perfect medium for political writers—Swift is his other example—presumably, since it allows an unnoticeable peddling of an ideology.3 Thus, for example, some critics claim that Larkin’s poetry is subtly conservative to a smaller or a larger degree. Gary Day finds that the “empirical language” of Larkin’s mature poetry represents “familiar ways of seeing the world,” and is thus innately conservative: “it pays a great deal of respect to things as they are, despite the private need for change” (42, 43). Day’s comment points to an often invoked aspect of the plain style: the relationship between the text and the world, which figures in making ethical and perhaps political evaluations of the text. Day, for example, assumes that Larkin’s language is “empirical,” or, in Day’s use of the word, that it presents “things as they are.” This, however, isn’t enough for suggesting a radical or revolutionary political stance: in Day’s view, Larkin’s language simply refers; it doesn’t incite private or social change. Annie Dillard takes a somewhat different angle of this position in her article “Contemporary Prose Styles.” Having made a broad categorization of all literary writing into fine or fancy writing and plain writing, she describes the latter as “useful” since it is not calling attention to itself but referring to the world (216). Plain prose honors the world by seeing it and represents “literature’s new morality” (218). Comparing modernist prose to “a painted sphere” and plain prose to an Orwellian “clear windowpane” (219), she extends her epistemological appreciation of plainness to the aesthetic one: “it can claim control, purity and the dignity of material essences” (219). In other words, she shares Day’s belief in the plain style’s empirical epistemology but unlike him finds it adequate and praiseworthy. In calling the plain style “honest” (218), she challenges assertions that this style is “deceitful,” made by Kenner and like-minded critics. Words like “epistemology,” and particularly “empirical,” point us in the direction of more theoretical and, fundamentally, linguistic conundrums related to the plain style. The first instinct here is probably to ask: “What does empiricism have to do with literature? With poetry?!” The link, however convoluted, does exist. We have touched on the significance and

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preponderance of ethical considerations in the discussions of plain-style texts—these considerations often foreground the relationship between the text and the world. The way a subject (here: author, narrator, reader) knows and relates to the world constitutes epistemological concerns, which in this case have the added dimension of specifically literary representation of this knowledge or relation. In properly philosophical terms, the main distinction lies between empiricism and rationalism. Whereas empiricism emphasizes sense perception, experience and observation as the prime source of knowledge, rationalism exalts reason as a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions. More theoretical discussions often investigate the viability of the empirical approach: can we know the real world directly through our senses? And ultimately: is there a “real” world? A more relevant question in literary considerations involves the specific linguistic dimension of epistemology embedded in a literary text: what is the role of language, unavoidable in literature, in how we know the world? Or with a specific reference to empiricism, how much does the necessity of using language in (literary) texts “skew” or even invalidate the invoked directness of, say, sensory experience? Can we “know” the world through a text? Opinions are divided on this matter. For Dillard plain prose relates more or less directly to the world; its primary function is referential. According to this point of view, plain language manages to capture in some degree the world “as it is,” without co-opting the reader into an idiosyncratic perspective; therein lies its value. Critics like Kenner, on the other hand, claim that language is never directly related to the world since it is filtered through the speaking, writing, or reading subjectivity; therefore, any verbal representation does not capture the “real” world. And it is precisely in his feeling that the plain style disregards this and “pretends” to be rooted outside, in the world of “fact,” that Kenner bases his evaluation of the plain style as dishonest. Whatever the individual attitudes towards empiricism and its literary exponents are, it does seem that such a writing procedure is conducive to intelligibility in texts, and we will return to it. By this point, we have come a long way from our opening statement by Larkin: not only is there something to say about his poems, but there is probably too much that could be said. This is the result of contentious beliefs critics have, more specifically, about Larkin’s poetry, and, more generally, about the plain style. The issues and questions raised so far are crucial in trying to define and assess Larkin’s style, and in understanding the inner workings of a generic plain style. In other words, our exploration of Larkin’s poetry in the subsequent chapters will be guided by the concepts of the audi-

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ence and the common reader, textual accessibility and its relationship with aesthetic form, the relationship between the text and the world and the role of this relationship in literary plainness, as well as a larger context—social and literary—in which Larkin’s plain style may be better appreciated. We will first situate Larkin within the long tradition of the plain style, which is in criticism usually associated with the pre-eighteenth-century “plain” schools and movements, in English as well as in other literatures. Philip Larkin may be seen as a unique twentieth-century “successor” of the classical and Renaissance plain styles, whose work offers an excellent insight into what the plain style means in mid-twentieth century, that is, after the influential phenomenon of Modernism. In order to see how Larkin further develops the genre of the plain style by working with his own temporal and cultural materials, we will begin by delineating both the plain style traditions and Larkin’s socio-historico-literary environment. Although Ben Jonson, Martial, Orwell, Larkin, the Movement and the Welfare State might appear to combine into a dissimilar lot, they constitute a greater context which helps in understanding Larkin and the plain style in general. This contextual inquiry is followed and developed by close textual examinations of Larkin’s poems. We will look at what poetic plainness consists of in Larkin, what empirical or non-empirical strategies he is using, how this facilitates understanding or produces ambiguities, and where he seems to comply with or diverge from traditional plainness. This will show that Larkin has produced an idiosyncratic blend of the old and the new, deepening and refining the term “the plain style,” updating it to serve the needs of his contemporary culture, and his own personality. And in the process, he has also confirmed the feeling of Ben Jonson and many others that plain writing possesses a valuable aesthetic of its own. A related, though not at first sight central, issue deriving from this examination is the consideration of plainness with regard to literary genres, or the standard “resistance” of poetry to plain speaking. This comes primarily as a result of formal poetic characteristics, which are usually stricter and more noticeable than the formal characteristics in prose. If we accept this view, then poetic plainness can be described as a negotiation, or a compromise between prose and poetry. And, indeed, Lodge suggests that Larkin is a realistic novelist-like poet, who relies mainly on synecdochic detail (216). This, presumably, helps the reader experience Larkin’s poetry as “plain discourse,” despite the “typical” poetic features of the form, such as rhyme, or the iambic pentameter. Although this is a viable approach to the plain style in poetry, and one that will be used where it proves constructive, I would like to disassociate Larkin’s plainness from what is regarded as exclusively prosaic fea-

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tures, and situate it in a nexus of more comprehensive rhetorical, philosophical and stylistic procedures. In this way, the plain style might be seen as a specific écriture involving certain stylistic decisions and procedures which are applied with some modification in prose or in poetry. One speculation which will grow out of the contextual analysis can loosely be called “the politics of the plain style,” to borrow Kenner’s phrase. If the plain style (like any style, for that matter) is born out of particular circumstances, does that also mean that the author has a certain “agenda” in writing plainly? Orwell, whom Kenner is writing about, was unquestionably more politically vocal than Larkin and it is perhaps easier to construct ideological intentions behind Orwell’s writing style. In Larkin’s case, it would be an overstatement to talk about the “politics” of the plain style but it is possible to use the relevant contextual information to suggest which plain-style features in Larkin might be a response to some aspect of life in the Britain of the fifties, sixties, and the seventies. Might the plain style have acquired a cultural reputation peculiar to the twentieth century?4 This book grew out of my admiration for Larkin’s poetry and a wish to understand what it is that makes his poems powerful yet plain. Combining my interest in how language works and my enjoyment of poetry, I wish to examine linguistic and stylistic matters relevant to literature but stay close to actual poems and reading experience. Given this, I expect that this study will be of most interest to those readers who feel they might benefit from an introduction to literary styles, and then enjoy the discussion of the poems themselves, with a copy of Larkin’s Collected Poems close at hand.

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Chapter One

Literature, Language, Plainness, and the Plain Style Traditions

The history of the critical understanding of literature can be simplified to an often-discussed clash between two coveted or despised values in literary texts: plainness and difficulty. The espousal of one and rejection of the other largely depends on the overall model of literature, upheld by a particular critical or artistic approach. The two models in question are what we can call, in very general terms, a social or communicative model of literature, and an autotelic or metaphysical model. This basic and inevitably rough distinction is helpful in explaining some principal motives in championing a particular writing style: each model reveals a system of beliefs about language, society and literature, which is then embodied in different versions of either the plain style, or the difficult one. One of the most articulate 20th-century expressions of the social or communicative model of literature is Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1947 essay “What is Literature?” Developing his theory of littérature engagée, Sartre defines good literature as useful; it has a function in society—to name is to show, and to show is to change: “The writer presents [the society] with its image; he calls upon it to assume it or to change itself” (81).1 In this scheme, where literature is understood as praxis, action which leads ultimately to changes in class society, the trust and communication between the reader and the author are vital. For Sartre, an example of “bad” literature, which he even calls “anti-literature,” is Surrealism, which betrayed the public and literature by turning aside from life. Situating this literary event within the ethical realm, Sartre finds that the Surrealist writer sets up “the principle of his total irresponsibility” (121). The concept of writerly “responsibility” for reaching as great a number of readers as is necessary for inciting changes in social life leads logically to a demand Sartre poses for the writer in the forties: the use of mass media. Like 11

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George Orwell in his essay “Poetry and the Microphone,” Sartre maintains that the newspaper, the radio, and the cinema can be used to turn “potential readers” into “actual public,” without turning art into propaganda (216). This foregrounded relationship between the text and the reader gives rise to Sartre’s stylistic credo, embedded in his concept of the writer: The function of a writer is to call a spade a spade. If words are sick, it is up to us to cure them. Instead of that, many writers live off this sickness . . . There is nothing more deplorable than the literary practice which, I believe, is called poetic prose and which consists of using words for the obscure harmonics which resound about them and which are made up of vague meanings which are in contradiction with the clear meaning. (228)

He adds that it is pointless to deplore the “inadequacy of language to reality”; instead, a writer should “re-establish language in its dignity” (228). Sartre thus puts forward a mimetic concept of literature—it shows society its own image—but what really defines his view is the enormous emphasis he places on the function of literature in bringing about a change in socially unjust situations (as opposed to a more limited moral improvement of the individual). In other words, literature for Sartre has a mimetic nature but a revolutionary function. His advocacy of plain writing is driven exclusively by his social commitment, but even though it is an obvious progenitor of the plain style in literature, this outspokenly political motivation is not the only one. Many of Philip Larkin’s beliefs correspond closely to Sartre’s. For example, he too calls Modernist techniques—of which Surrealism is one—”irresponsible,” and he, similarly, makes active use of mass media: along with some other Movement poets, he first became known to a wider public through a series of BBC radio broadcasts entitled “First Reading” in 1953. But his original motive is not political, at least, not to the same extent as Sartre’s, or, closer to home, George Orwell’s. As we will see later, the explanation for this partly lies in the temporal (and social) discrepancy of at least a decade between the relevant writings of Sartre and Orwell and the time when Larkin started writing his earliest mature poetry. If, however, we leave aside the variable degree of political commitment, we are left with some important features of the social or communicative model of literature, which Sartre lays out. Language is here believed to be a sufficiently adequate instrument for saying something intelligible about or to the world; a close and direct link between the author and the reader is encouraged, and the best way of achieving this is believed to be the use of straightforward language;

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the communicative value of a literary utterance is of the utmost importance— everything else is deemed “irresponsible.” Literature, in short, is part of society. The autotelic or metaphysical model of literature couldn’t be further from the stylistic plainness exalted in the previous model. A good example of this model is High Modernist literature of the Finnegans Wake type, for instance; it can be best grasped within the context of structuralist and poststructuralist criticism. In this model, the real value of literature lies in its “autonomy,” its capacity to create a world of its own, independent of the external, social world and representing the only true realm of human freedom. Whereas in the previous model naming is bound up with the vital processes in human and social life, it is here considered to be completely opposite, bordering on death, even murder. In his essay “Language and Power” Gerald L. Bruns, invoking Blanchot and Hegel, writes: Adam’s first act, which made him master of the animals, was to give them names, that is, he annihilated them in their existence (as existing creatures), turning them into ideas, that is, into spirits or ghosts. (30)

Admittedly, the view according to which the use of words equals tyranny and murder concerns language in general; but Bruns takes it closer to literary application. Opposing “ambiguity” to “definition”—which could be seen as a stylistic choice opposing difficulty to plainness—Bruns claims that definition is “a tying down of what is said: a bondage of word and thing . . . ; it is a literalization or death of metaphor” (31). Thus universals, timeless maxims or analytic sentences all belong to death’s dominion. Such “ossified” use of language is contrasted to what Valéry says happens in (presumably, Symbolist) poetry, where “the word is not annihilated and replaced with a meaning; it is no longer the sign of anything—it cannot be identified (and, therefore, used) as a name” (Bruns 37). This is why Modernist poetry and poetry-like language seems to be what is particularly valued in literature within this theoretical framework. Speaking through Blanchot again, Bruns separates “ordinary language” from “literature”; the former “limits equivocation” and “puts a term to understanding,” while literature “is language turning into ambiguity” (39, 38), resulting in indeterminacy of meaning and evading verbal annihilation. Pushed to its limits, this “vicissitude” of poetry and ambiguity allows for a claim to revolutionary capacity, but of a more “metaphysical” kind, as compared to, for example, the one Sartre talks about. In a commentary on Blanchot’s understanding of the relation between poetry and revolution, Bruns says that “the political equivalent of . . . poetry or ambiguity . . . is, Blanchot

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says, revolution, or that moment in history ‘when everything seems put in question . . . everything is possible’” (40). However, Bruns reminds us that this, as it were, pure essence of the revolutionary state is potentially dangerous—though necessary—precisely because of the vicissitude and uncontrollability implied in it. Some literary commentators, as we will see, use this latent destructive aspect of what they view as difficult styles as a reason against them. Bruns and Blanchot do not explicitly talk about different literary styles here; in fact, the one distinction they make between “ordinary language” and “literary language”2 looks rather crude to anyone who has read even a modest number of literary texts. What this opinion suggests is that literary discourse (excluding “ordinariness”) lends this desirable indeterminacy to language. This attitude, however viable in philosophical discussions, causes problems in literary ones. Practically speaking, what happens when a writer like Sartre, or Orwell, or Larkin tries to use “ordinary language” or its closest approximation in his literary works? Given a wide range of literary styles, it stands to reason to think that certain kinds of literature facilitate more readily the creation and discovery of aporias Bruns and Blanchot are calling for. The use of ordinary language in literature seems to do the opposite: it doesn’t exclude the open-endedness of meaning germane to literary form but it does seem to reduce the overall inconclusiveness—and this latter point is precisely why “ordinary language” is contradictory to “literature” according to these critics. Does this less obvious (though existing) field of ambiguity in ordinary-language works make their literary value smaller? This is not explicitly mentioned in any of the above-mentioned discussions, but the answer seems to be “yes.”3 In short, the autotelic/metaphysical model of literature—perhaps interacting with (post)structuralist ideas about language—promotes difficulty in style; and not only that, but by putting ordinary language into a separate verbal category, it effectively denies the status of literature to works primarily based on ordinary language, favoured by the plain stylists. We can here remember Miller’s criticism of Larkin from the beginning (see page 2), where Larkin is found to be too “undemanding” and thus not a poet but a versifier. The features characterizing this model of literature and distinguishing it from the social one can be summarized as: an assumption that literature deals with the reality of language, not of the world; an attempt to evade the conservatism of language used socially through opacity and ambiguity in literary texts; a loss of the concern for the reader. In a beautifully written chapter “Word against object” in his book After Babel, George Steiner telescopes all of the preceding debate into an opposition

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between the public and the private drives in human language. The drive towards clarity and consensus in language, he says, prevents “the disorder of Babel,” the chaos and autism which would follow from absence of public utterances (or, he adds carefully, those that can be treated as if they were public) (214, 215). The private, inward, drive, which makes use of the “messiness” of language, comes from our deeply human need to “state the thing which is not,” to gainsay the world, and to express personal intent (232). In designating a poem as “maximal speech” which circumvents traditional transparency and optimizes human linguistic invention (244), Steiner comes close to Bruns’ and Blanchot’s view which somehow separates poetry (and literature) from the public, social realm of language, which is the one foregrounded in the plain style. He, however, says something else in the same chapter, which is an excellent way of approaching and understanding the best examples of the plain style in literature: “Vital acts of speech are those which seek to make a fresh and ‘private’ content more publicly available without weakening the uniqueness, the felt edge of individual intent” (215). The core feature of the plain style in literature is this precarious but everpresent balance between the “publicness” of a discourse calling itself “plain,” and “privateness” (or uniqueness) required by literature as a domain of human invention. As we will see later, this particular characteristic is known as one aspect of “urbanity” in the classical plain style. The tension between the public and the private aspects of language, each of which is emphasized in the social and the autotelic models of literature respectively, is related to another contentious issue: the relationship between the world and the word. The question is primarily linguistic: how does a (private) subject relate to the (public) world, or object, through words? Can the object be truthfully represented in verbal form? Although originally not a literary inquiry (a philosophical division between nominalists and realists has been known since antiquity), it has found its place in literary studies too, since “truth” has always been an important concern in literature. More specifically, the scrutiny of how truthfully a literary form represents the world, and how truthful it presents itself to be, is a particular field of investigation in literary criticism, linked up with ethical appraisals of different styles. The obvious question here is: what does “truthful” mean? In traditional terms, “truthfulness” in literature can be seen as a certain amount of correspondence of the fictional world to a reality. Significantly, the question of correspondence to something outside of literature itself is less important for the autotelic model, where, what ever might be the initial impulse for writing, the creation of a self-sufficient fictional world is an end unto itself.4 In

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the social model, where communication to the reader is of vital importance, correspondence to some collectively endorsed reality plays a larger role. This difference between the two models has been diagnosed by critics like David Lodge as the result of the foundation of Modernist poetics in semiotic formalism, which seeks to “abolish the referential function of language in literary texts” and “denies the epistemological validity of empiricism” (62). As Lodge indicates, the problem for any literary model based on the correspondence theory has been a rather meticulous philosophical questioning of the existence of “objective” reality, and its linguistic aspect involving the referential function of language. This is the point where the labels of empiricism, referentiality and the plain style converge. If the plain style often goes hand in hand with the social, or communicative, model of literature, its plainness will be most easily achieved by stressing the common human faculty of observation, perception, and experiential knowledge. This plainness will also depend on making an implicit pact with the reader in which words do refer to something recognizable in the world. This, only general, tendency of plain stylists towards empiricism and referentiality has caused them trouble. Both Philip Larkin and George Orwell before him have been accused of basing their writing styles on “naïve empiricism,” or a naïve theory of total correspondence between word and object, which has generally been rejected by modern theoreticians. Naïve empiricism refers to a very “primitive” assumption that the speaker’s subjectivity does not colour the way he or she sees and describes the world, thus enabling the speaker to put forward as objective reality what is essentially a subjective impression of reality. If true, this accusation would present Larkin, Orwell and similar writers as manipulating, or dishonest, or simply wrong. The plain style itself would in this light be seen as founded on an outdated and incorrect epistemology, and as being of little value to the reader. Larkin’s poems will show us later whether this understanding of the plain style holds true. Here, we should take note of the awareness of the limitations of the radical or naïve empiricism and related issues in many authors, including the ones defending the plain style. Far from being naïve, they seem to suggest that any philosophy behind the plain style is a willingly accepted compromise; a practical belief that even though words don’t absolutely correspond to the world, they can go a long way towards a successful evocation in an interlocutor of the most recognizable aspects of the world.5 We have seen this already in Steiner (page 15 above), where he carefully says that, rather than being public, utterances are treated as such. He finds this “collective agreement” about what is public (or, for all intents and purposes, objective, as opposed to private and subjective) to be inevitable in any social situation

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where those involved would like to understand each other the best they can. Even though he recognizes the philosophical importance of the rejection of any naïve theory of correspondence between word and object, he adds that there is some “psychological spuriousness about the idea . . . that any philosophically more satisfactory model can be acted on” (Steiner 223). In support of this view, he quotes philosopher Michael Dummett: Although we no longer accept the correspondence theory, we remain realists au fond; we retain in our thinking a fundamentally realist conception of truth. Realism consists in the belief that for any statement there must be something in virtue of which either it or its negation is true: it is only on the basis of this belief that we can justify the idea that truth and falsity play any essential role in the notion of the meaning of a statement, that the general form of an explanation of meaning is a statement of the truth-conditions. (qtd. in Steiner 224)

In other words, even the most analytic philosophies rely in some form or other on the idea of correspondence to “actual” reality. Closer to literary concerns, in his study of Ben Jonson and the plain style, Wesely Trimpi claims that the main “Attic” (that is, plain) stylistic intention “is to subserve the closest approximation to the truth achievable in the representation of reality” (32). This idea of approximation is extremely important for a refined version of the theory of correspondence, which is the backbone of the plain style. Trimpi goes on to say that an author’s subject matter is not objective reality but his, and other people’s, experience of it. He adds, “and to describe the experience, however, the reality must be perceived with accuracy” (31). In other words, Trimpi suggests that all writing is intrinsically subjective (it is about one’s experience) but that the plain stylist, by insisting on achieving the accuracy of perception, approximates the objective reality in literary representation. “Accuracy” of perception could here be understood as a verbal evocation of perception with which others can identify or which they deem to be “true.” A similar claim is made about Larkin by Terry Whalen, who describes Larkin’s style as a “sophisticated empiricism” (“Relocating Larkin’s Movement Poetic” 16). Similar qualifications and refinements of these terms could be traced back to the founder of English seventeenth-century empiricism, John Locke. In Book III of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke shows profound sensitivity to the social, and constructed, nature of language. He has a clear opinion on the referential aspect of language, for example. According to him, “Words, as they are used by Men, can properly and immediately signify

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nothing but the Ideas, that are in the Mind of the Speaker” (406). And yet, in order to communicate successfully, people attach to their words “a secret reference to two other things”: ideas in the minds of those they communicate with, and the reality of things (406, 407). The foundation of Locke’s theory is his understanding of language as primarily a communicative instrument of humanity. Even though, says Locke, “every Man has so inviolable a Liberty, to make Words stand for what Ideas he pleases,” he does not speak intelligibly unless his “Words excite the same Ideas in the Hearer, which he makes them stand for in speaking” (408). And since what Locke calls “complex” ideas—abstract notions such as “moral Words”—seldom have the same precise signification in different people, he points to “common Use, that is the Rule of Propriety” as helpful in regulating the meaning of words (479). Approaching language as a “bond of Society” and thinking within paradigms of knowledge and enlightenment, Locke makes the following appeal: . . . but I leave it to be considered, whether it would not be well for Mankind, whose concernment it is to know Things as they are, and to do what they ought; and not to spend their Lives in talking about them, or tossing Words to and fro; Whether it would not be well, I say, that the Use of Words were made plain and direct; and that Language, which was given us for the improvement of Knowledge, and bond of Society, should not be employ’d to darken Truth, and unsettle Peoples Rights; to raise Mists, and render unintelligible both Morality and Religion? Or that at least, if this will happen, it should not be thought Learning or Knowledge to do so? (497)

In one brief explicit mention of specifically literary language, Locke does allow for figurative and allusive language, but emphasizes that “Order and Clearness” are the only parts of “the Art of Rhetorick” which lead to truth and knowledge (508). The remarkable thing about Locke’s view of language is its insight into the spirit of compromise necessary for the pragmatic reconciliation between absolute truth and social or human reality. For example, Locke knows that words don’t equal things, but for communication to work, its participants must try to conform their words to things and to ideas others might have of them (Trimpi’s word “approximation” comes to mind). Also, distinguishing between “real Essences” of things, which we cannot know, and “nominal Essences,” which are human ideas about things, Locke says, “we may at least try the Truth of these nominal Essences” (450). In other words, due to certain limitations, people are always one step removed from “actual” truth, but

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this shouldn’t stop them from trying to get as close to it as is humanly possible. What is needed in this enterprise is a linguistic consensus, a “social agreement” on what constitutes the common use of a particular language. John Locke was writing at the time when such ideas of the collective and social aspects of human existence were particularly popular. Some of the basic tenets, however, do not seem to be too different from the intellectual context Philip Larkin was writing in, three centuries later. The way Andrew Crozier characterizes the Movement’s beliefs implied in their poetry sounds very similar to Locke’s demand for social consensus in using language. For Crozier, the “verifiable” language Movement poetry aspired to is the one which observes “the prevailing contractual usages in language” and is “bound by the commonsense meanings of the times” (227). This “pact” between word and world, or its absence at certain times in the history of ideas, is a defining criterion in literary history. Even though different authors see different demarcation lines, most put forward a certain year or a decade which was a turning point: for some it is 1848, for some the 1870s, for some 1914. In all cases, what follows the turning point is “modern literature,” the one where this pact was radically destabilized. As George Steiner puts it, “so far as the Western tradition goes, an underlying classicism, a pact negotiated between word and world, lasts until the second half of the nineteenth century” (186; my italics). While before this time literature was “housed in language,” language now becomes its “prison” (184). Driven by the notion of “the lacking word,” modern poets like Rimbaud and Mallarmé—then followed by many others—regard “established” language as their enemy. In short, we have the clash between the public and the private mentioned before; the private now needs “new” forms of linguistic expression; the (traditional) word is inadequate to express the world. Roland Barthes offers an insightful point of view regarding this decisive development in literature in one of his earlier works, Writing Degree Zero.6 For him, the year of delineation is 1848—a revolutionary year across Europe, when the bourgeois ideology ceases to be perceived as universal. Until then, literature is characterized by “the unity of classical writing” (17); afterwards, literature faces “the plurality” of the modes of writing, which “came near to questioning the very fact of literature” (17). As in Steiner, the main division for Barthes is between classicism and modernism;7 the difference is located in the changed nature of the word. In classical prose and poetry, language is of a relational nature. This means, says Barthes, that “in it words are abstracted as much as possible in the interest of relationships”; a word is “the means of conveying a connection”

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(44). Instead of establishing relationships guided by the social function of language, modern literature produces “an explosion of words” (46); it “destroys the spontaneously functional nature of language, and leaves standing only its lexical basis” (46). Since fixed connections are thus abolished, “the word is left only with a vertical project, it is like a monolith . . . which plunges into a totality of meanings” (47). In linguistic terms, Barthes is saying that in modern writing (particularly poetry) the usual reliance on the axis of combination, or syntagmatic relations in language, is replaced by a reliance on the axis of selection, or paradigmatic relations. In graphic terms, we shift from the horizontal (words “lined up” to make up a syntagm) to the vertical (words “piled up” in readiness to substitute for each other). This is why a word, which is primarily a means of achieving connection in classical writing, now becomes the “Word,” standing by itself. Barthes describes this “Word” as “encyclopaedic, it contains simultaneously all the acceptations from which a relational discourse might have required it to choose” (48). Hence its plurality. Barthes sees such language in which links are only potential as destroying “any ethical scope” (51). The “zero degree” writing from the title is a mode of “neutral” writing which would rediscover the main feature of classical writing—instrumentality. Significantly, Barthes calls this search for a non-style “utopian” since it presupposes the existence of a homogeneous social state. This raises a question we will have to return to: is the “classical” writing style, which sounds conducive to plainness (at least, in Barthes’ terms),8 possible in an ideologically chaotic century such as was the twentieth? Part of the answer, and a closer link between Larkin and classicism can be pursued in Donald Davie’s influential book Purity of Diction in English Verse. Published in 1952, it was hailed as one of the manifestoes of the then emerging Movement, even though Davie, in fact, does not mention the Movement poets by name. There is a feeling, however, that certain poetic characteristics in older English poetry, which constitute the “purity” from the title, are precisely the ones Davie not only wants but also sees renewed in the young contemporary English poets. The “purity” or “chastity” of diction that Davie praises in writers like Johnson, Goldsmith or Wordsworth refers primarily to a restraint in the use of metaphors. The distinction of such less figurative language, he claims, “has just reappeared in English poetry, after too long a silence” (66). The ancestry of this “nicety of statement,” as he calls it, should be sought in Ben Jonson, or Fulke Greville, or John Dryden (67). Davie is thus establishing a connection between some mid-twentieth-century English poets, and English neo-classicism in poetry. This connection, or “nicety of statement,” is further explained as “a prosaic strength, concentrated and discriminating” (66); a quality of writing

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when, as Johnson says, “so much meaning is comprised in so few words” (as qtd. in Davie 65). In order to achieve this state, words must be joined through syntactically appropriate relations; or as Johnson puts it in the same passage on a poem by Cowley: “the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted” (as qtd. in Davie 65). What is this if not emphasis on the relational nature of language similar to the one made by Barthes in his description of classical writing? Indeed, nicety of statement for Davie is in part associated with syntax. Like Barthes, Davie finds that modern poetry is characterized by “dislocation of syntax” (96). For him, the best example of this is Ezra Pound’s symbolist aesthetic, which Davie ascribes to Pound’s interest in the Chinese ideogram. Just as in the ideogram the meaning is made through an arrangement of individual signs, “each standing for a concrete particular,” so is the meaning of a symbolist poem suggested through an arrangement of particular words, not syntactical or logical connections (94). Once more we are encountering a general feeling that the nature of words has changed in modern poetry, partly as a result of a reduced number of explicit links between them. They are less determined by the immediate verbal context, and more opaque. An excellent illustration of this changed attitude towards words is the well-known comparison of words to “currency,” often used for completely contradictory purposes. Paul Valéry, for instance, invokes the currency, or long-standing public use and worth of words, as something that demeans, or devalues each individual use: Those pieces of paper have passed through many hands. . . . But words, too, have passed through many mouths, have formed part of many phrases, have been so used and abused that only the most meticulous precautions will save us from falling into mental confusion. . . . (as qtd. in Davie 101)

In Steiner’s and Barthes’ broad understanding of classicism, the attitude towards the “currency” of words is entirely different: “current” words are celebrated as the texture of social discourse; confusion is likely to be caused by words which are not current. To start with a philosopher: even though John Locke asserts that no one has the right to “order” what somebody else’s use of a word will be, he also says, “’tis not for any one, at pleasure, to change the Stamp [Words] are current in” (514). The master of neo-classical plain style, Ben Jonson, mentioned by Davie as one of the ancestors of that nicety of statement in English poetry, clearly supports the stable currency of words: “Custom is the most certain mistress of language, as the public stamp makes the current money. But we must not be too frequent with the mint, every

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day coining” (Discoveries lines 2386–89). Across a few centuries, and after Valéry, Philip Larkin writes in “Modesties”: Thoughts that shuffle round like pence Through each reign, Wear down to their simplest sense, Yet remain.

Déjà vu of classicism, and particularly the plain style, in 1949? In a certain sense, yes. Larkin may not be building his ideas and style directly on Jonson’s but in this poem he is employing the same image of constancy, social use, and tested reliability to suggest his stylistic preference in word choice. Such a preference for customary or common use of language is one of the most significant features of poetry like Larkin’s. This emphasis on the role of denotation is a standard requirement of plain discourse. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines denotation as “the definitional components of a word—the attributes that a thing must have if it is to be correctly recognized as referred to by that word” (Brogan 235). The same source suggests that, in general terms, twentieth-century poetry places a greater emphasis on connotation—or the associative, personal meanings a word can have. It is possible to draw parallels between this denotative-connotative relationship and the public-private one mentioned earlier. In texts of criticism, both sets of terms are often accompanied by the claim that the change in the nature of the word towards the end of the nineteenth century can be located in the shift from denotation to connotation, or from public to private in literature. A more accurate view is, perhaps, that the shift is from a more balanced use of both elements to a more pronounced reliance on just one, connotative, or private. In any case, Larkin seems to pick up an “older” thread of writing in this poetic aspect. Larkin does, however, write after a few centuries, when such modern literary developments as Symbolism, Surrealism, Imagism, or High Modernism came into being; these occurrences were inevitably reflected in Larkin’s version of the older traditions, which gives him a curious in-between status in general. His poems display that basic tie between his poetic style and pre-modern writing, a tie which makes him go out of step with mainstream Modernist techniques, usually thought the “trademark” of the twentieth century; but Larkin is, no doubt, also a “product” of modern times. So where does the plain style come in within the parameters of the preceding discussion? And what is Larkin’s position? As we have seen, literary plainness is usually associated with certain theoretical prerequisites: a belief

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that language not only can communicate something about reality but in literature should make that communication its primary goal, which leads to a consideration of the reader as an important part of the literary process. This communicative model of literature stresses the interdependence between art and society, which distinguishes it from the autotelic model where the primary goal remains within the realm of artistic creation. There is a logical connection between plain—as opposed to difficult—writing, and the stress on the “communicativeness” of a text. This plainness is sometimes referred to, perhaps incorrectly, as “classicism” by latter-day critics who wish to distinguish this particular writing style from the overwhelmingly influential Modernist techniques. The key factor in achieving linguistic and literary plainness seems to be the foregrounding of commonality with the reader; this often implies a literary invocation of an empirical approach to the world, use of “public” language in balance with the “private,” and preservation of relational or syntactic coherence of expression. In other words, intelligibility is enhanced by recreation of the (recognizable) individual experience of the world through observation, and also by controlling the semantic limits of the word. This, however, is far from the whole story of the plain style, particularly in Larkin’s case. Keeping in mind Steiner’s thought about the importance of preserving both the individual and the social, the unique and the common in “vital acts of speech” (see page 15), we can suggest that the above features of literary plainness are only the “default” setting, the minimal requirement which creates the “public availability” Steiner mentions. This, as it were, plain matrix then allows for flights into the personal, connotative, and even transcendental, which nevertheless remain within the reader’s grasp, since a common footing has been established. The result of this careful negotiation is the plain style in literature, and Philip Larkin is a twentiethcentury master of it. For the detractors of the plain style, the notion of “plain literature” is an oxymoron from a theoretical point of view since each text is a plurality of uncontrollable meanings, and there can be nothing plain about such vast capacities. While it does not deny the unbounded semantic potential in any linguistic expression, the view we will be following suggests that some ways of organizing the text help narrow down interpretative possibilities, or bring out productive ambiguities. These ways, or the plain style, both control the “untidiness” of language and retain the possibilities of inventive play in literary discourse. This is precisely why many believe that, from the artistic point of view, the plain style is the most “unimitable” of styles: it looks easy but it is hard to achieve. And since it brings ordinariness and literariness together, it

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seems to be working—especially in poetry—with a set of aesthetic principles alien to (and often downgraded by) the modern creative and critical preference for Modernist-derived aesthetics, defined by difficulty. The plain style is an old literary tradition: as Raymond Oliver says in his Introduction to the anthology of plain-style poetry To Be Plain, it has existed for two or three thousand years (xiii). It has appeared in different forms, was prominent in certain periods, and neglected or denied in others. Speaking about “pure diction” in poetry, which has some affinities with the plain style, Donald Davie suggests that “we shall look for purity of diction at the end of a strong tradition” (32). Philip Larkin happened to start writing at the end of such a “strong tradition” which dominated the first half of the century—this is why the plain style he is using should be examined against the background of High Modernism (peaking in the twenties and the thirties), and within his own contextual framework. His case illustrates well the already mentioned problems a plain stylist encounters in general, and particularly if the work of such a writer was held up for inspection in the late twentieth-century. Most significantly, the “common ground” the plain stylist tries to establish with the reader is almost automatically dismissed as a naïve or manipulative attempt to represent the objective reality, which belongs to an outdated epistemology. From the aesthetic point of view, therefore, a plain stylist’s work is often on the defensive since it lacks mainstream signals of literariness. Another line of “attack” in Larkin’s case, essential for our examination, is the questioning of the plain status of his poetry. There are occasional features in his poetry which might be considered “unplain,” such as irony, or the use of persona, or even convoluted syntax. Chapters Three and Four explore to what extent such features, normally considered inimical to plainness, function within Larkin’s plain style. Since understanding the traditions of the plain style is important for consideration of the form and status of the style in the twentieth-century and Larkin’s work, we will first take a brief look at some vital developments in the pre-modern life of the plain style. The present chapter ends with the definitions and ideas of a few twentiethcentury critics who wrote specifically on the plain style in poetry. THE PLAIN STYLE TRADITIONS The origins of the plain style can be traced in the old debate between rhetoric and dialectic. Seen primarily as the art of persuasion, rhetoric in ancient Greece was associated with a “high” style, whereas dialectic was thought to be a philosophical discipline concerned with the discovery and teaching of

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the truth, and therefore associated with a “plain,” or even “conversational” style. Thus, in Socrates’ scheme of things (particularly in Gorgias), rhetoric could not be a meaningful or worthy art without a prior philosophical pursuit of truth; unguided by the superior discipline of dialectic, rhetoric is mere sophistry—an empty or distorted use of words. Unlike those before him, who associated rhetoric only with ornate oratorical forms of such famous speakers as Gorgias and Isocrates, Aristotle foregrounds the place of logic in rhetoric, which aligns it more closely with dialectic. Aristotle was probably the first person to claim that there is a twoway relationship between expression and truth: in Rhetoric he maintains that, as “an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion” (36), rhetoric is necessary for bringing out the truth or refuting its opposite in a debate. Defining rhetoric in a more neutral way—it can argue persuasively on both sides of an issue—Aristotle’s treatise shows a pragmatic interest in the ways the speaker interacts with the audience. Even though he is writing about civic, not literary, rhetoric, and even though he is not discussing any “style” in particular, many of his ideas can be seen as the first principles of any later literary tradition whose concern is to “get through” to the reader successfully. More specifically, since his discussion is still within the oratorical context, Aristotle shows a particular concern with what a popular audience will understand. He maintains that “it is necessary for pisteis [proof, or means of persuasion] and speeches . . . to be formed on the basis of common [beliefs]” (34). The most important common pisteis of logical persuasion for Aristotle is enthymeme, or, as George A. Kennedy says in the Introduction to his translation of Rhetoric, an argument from probability. Unlike a logical syllogism, enthymeme is a syllogism derived from probability or signs and results in informality of expression, which enables a general audience to follow the argument more easily. Explaining why enthymemes are more successful in this situation, Aristotle says something which might in a certain way be applied to literary styles too: the reason why “the uneducated are more persuasive than the educated before a crowd” is that “[the educated] reason with axioms . . . and universals, [the uneducated] on the basis of what [particulars] they know and instances near their experience” (187). Translated into a literary context, this means that a more erudite style won’t attract general readership, as is indeed the case, for example, with some Modernist texts. The stress on particulars, or concrete illustration coming from experience, is another feature of a generally persuasive argument which we will find later in all important supporters of the plain style. Aristotle, however, doesn’t neglect the role of maxims, which, even though they are not about particulars, are

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“useful,” because “they are common” and therefore “seem true” (185). This, again, strikes a chord with the plain style, where epigrammatic statements often find their place. In Book III, where Aristotle considers more specifically stylistic issues, we encounter another idea which often recurs: the stress on the visual. In the chapters on lexis, the concept of “bringing before the eyes” is one of the leading notions. Discussing the importance of the proper word choice, Aristotle says that “one word is more proper than another and more like the object signified and more adapted to making the thing ‘appear before the eyes’” (225). The visual is important because it enables the hearer to “see” things and learn more easily. Significantly, this bringing-before-the-eyes is not achieved only through “visualizable” words, but also through verbal means signifying “things engaged in activity” (248). For Aristotle, energeia and motion are a necessary part of a good style. As we will see, a number of plain stylists make a similar emphasis on the visual. Another comment Aristotle makes, which is relevant to our discussion, concerns clarity. “Let the virtue of style,” he says, “be defined as ‘to be clear’ (speech is a kind of sign, so if it does not make clear it will not perform its function)—and neither flat nor above the dignity of the subject, but appropriate” (221). The parenthetical comment points to the communicative understanding of language we mentioned earlier, as does Aristotle’s explanation of how clarity is achieved: “The use of nouns and verbs in their prevailing [kyrios] meaning makes for clarity” (221). This “prevailing meaning” of words sounds very much like “currency,” or the “public” meaning often praised by the plain style practitioners. The demand that the style should be neither flat nor too elevated is, as Kennedy suggests in his prefatory note to this chapter, a requirement for a “mean between ordinary speech and poetic language as appropriate to the subject” (220). The most intelligible and persuasive style, in other words, is composed of some aspects of both ends, ordinary and literary. Aristotle’s ultimate claim is that “authors should compose without being noticed and should seem to speak not artificially but naturally” (222). This invocation of an “invisible” art, or a “styleless” style comes up again and again in considerations of the plain style, for various reasons. Aristotle’s rationale is purely pragmatic, however. What seems natural is persuasive, unlike the artificial: “for [if artifice is obvious] people become resentful, as at someone plotting against them, just as they are at those adulterating wines” (222). This remark about resentment which “obvious artifice” might incite in the audience is very interesting: it suggests a certain relationship between the aesthetic form and the ethical or psychological reception of it. Thinking

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primarily along the lines of persuasion, Aristotle believes that a general audience becomes suspicious of any overt signs of “artifice” in what is, essentially, artifice, and advises the speaker to make his speech more “natural” or what comes close to “conversational.” A complete reversal of this attitude happens in some twentieth-century literary criticism: certain critics become resentful towards the authors whose work does not show clear or traditional signs of artifice. Poets like Larkin or prose-writers like Orwell are seen by these commentators as ingratiating or condescending to a “mass” audience, trying to win them over or manipulate them by “naturalizing” something that is supposed to be an unnatural language. There are a few possible reasons for this difference in attitudes towards the “artificiality” of art. Even though Aristotle speaks of “authors” and “composition” above, his whole treatise refers mainly to oratory, and spoken language is usually less stylized than the written one which literary critics discuss. The latter seem to find the reduction of apparent stylization in the plain style texts ideologically offensive, and therefore unethical—the “natural speech” in literature feels like persuasion, or even politics, and should not be part of (literary) art; or, more precisely, shouldn’t “pretend” to be art. This issue of different perception or reception of certain discourses is a complex one, and requires more consideration in the context of Larkin’s poetry and time. Broadly speaking, it is perhaps a curiosity of modern times to regard the plain style as not only aesthetically inferior—as was the case with some commentators in earlier times too—but also, and more seriously, as ideologically suspicious. The basic distinction of classical styles into “high” (genus grande), deriving originally from oratorical schemes, and “low” or “plain” (genus humile or tenue), deriving from the philosophical search for truth, is to a certain extent paralleled by the distinction between the “Asiatic” and the “Attic” styles. The key figure here is Cicero, who, as a reaction to Socrates’ stern preference for philosophical discourse, became a supporter of an ornate or “Asiatic” style. Those opposed to Cicero’s stylistic preferences are known as the supporters of the “Attic” style, and even though this opposition assumed a few differing forms, they could all be classified broadly under the plain style discussed in this section. Cicero himself provides one of the best known descriptions of the Attic orator, which was later influential in defining the (written) plain style. This orator . . . is restrained and plain . . . he follows the ordinary usage. . . . The language will be pure Latin, plain and clear . . . ; propriety will always be

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” the chief aim. Only one quality will be lacking . . .—the charm and richness of figurative ornament. . . . [T]he orator of the plain style, provided he is elegant and finished, will not be bold in coining words, and in metaphor will be modest, sparing in the use of archaisms, and somewhat subdued in using the other embellishments of language and of thought. Metaphor he may possibly employ more frequently because it is of the commonest occurrence in the language of townsman and rustic alike. . . . A speech of this kind should also be sprinkled with the salt of pleasantry . . . humour and wit. (qtd. in Trimpi 6–8)

Interestingly, even though figurative language on the whole should be subdued in this style, metaphor is allowed in moderate doses since it is claimed to be an ordinary occurrence in everyone’s language. In this, Cicero resembles Aristotle, who also accepts metaphor in general as a linguistic practice all people use in their conversations (Rhetoric 223). Obviously, then, a certain kind and degree of metaphoric use of language need not be contrary to plainness, or persuasiveness. Anti-Ciceronians usually upheld Seneca as the proper model to follow. Seneca based his beliefs on the Socratic examination of moral experience; his approach made use of the informality and intimacy of the epistle, a genre which, along with the satire, the epigram and the comedy, was considered one of principal (written) plain style genres. The complications within this seemingly clear-cut distinction between “high” and “low,” “Asiatic” and “Attic” begin with the later successors, some of whom developed the basic tendencies in certain directions which blurred the lines between the two. Thus, for example, the later followers of Seneca emphasized their personal relation with the truth and in the process developed mannerisms which were contrary to the clearness or lucidity originally strived for.9 Exaggerations of Cicero’s stylistic methods, on the other hand, led to their own extremes, such as Euphuism in English Renaissance poetry. All later developments, however, originate in the opposition between the two early styles. Firmly in the written literary domain now, we can look at the most important features of the plain style in classical verse. The transference of Attic ideals from prose to poetry came as a “reaction to Asiatic floridness” (Trimpi 11). There is a striking similarity among the “revolting” poets in their stress on the candid representation of what people actually do. Horace, Persius and Juvenal, all in differing degrees, attempt to offer an exact representation of life through styles unusually “unpoetic” for the times. A very influential figure is Martial, who defends his right to use candid (perhaps even offensive) language in his epigrams, and to treat “anything men do,

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think, or feel” (Trimpi 17). His plain stylist’s determination to deal with immediate human realities is clearly communicated in a few epigrams disapproving of mythical themes: You, who read of Oedipus and Thyestes neath a darkened sun, of Colchian witches and Scyllas—of what do you read but monsters? What will the rape of Hylas avail you, what Parthenopaeus and Attis, what the sleeper Endymion? Or the boy stript of his gliding wings? Or Hermaphroditus who hates the amorous waters? Why does the vain twaddle of a wretched sheet attract you? Read this of which Life can say: “’Tis my own.” Not here will you find Centaurs, not Gorgons and Harpies: ’tis of man my page smacks. But you do not wish, Mamurra, to recognise your own manners, or to know yourself. Read the Origins of Callimachus. (X.iv. p. 155)

This harsh critique of myth-lovers is based on their escape, through the myth, from the knowledge of themselves and of real life; their escapism is enabled by “mythological” literature. This refusal of a thematic framework removed from life is in Martial accompanied by a refusal to adopt a writing style removed from the language which can be understood without mediation of interpreters: Why, I ask, do you, Sextus, like writing that hardly Modestus himself, and hardly Claranus, could understand? Your books do not require a reader, but an Apollo; in your judgment Cinna was greater than Maro. On these terms let your books be praised by all means; let my poems, Sextus, please commentators—so as to do without commentators. (X.xxi. p. 169)

In all these crucial aspects—candid language, epigrammatic brevity, interest in immediate human reality, impatience with mythology, and anti-obscurantist literary position—Martial seems to herald the appearance of Philip Larkin almost two thousand years later. There have been, however, other developments within the plain style in the (long) meantime. The most notable of these is the neo-classical movement in the English Renaissance, which was dominated by one of the best English plain stylists of all time, Ben Jonson. Jonson’s treatise Discoveries, published in 1640, is an excellent source of Latin and contemporary authorities on the plain style, including Jonson’s own beliefs. Like Horace, Martial, and Tacitus, Ben Jonson favours the informality and flexibility of the plain

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style sermo, or a conversational idiom, over the rhetorically elevated figures of Elizabethan Petrarchans and Euphuists, who were continuing the Ciceronian “Asiatic” tradition. Like most plain stylists, Jonson warns against excessive figurative language: “Metaphors farfet hinder to be understood, and affected, lose their grace. Or when the person fetcheth his translations from a wrong place” (Discoveries lines 2359–62). Again, as we have seen in Aristotle’s and Cicero’s ideas about metaphors, Jonson allows for some metaphorical “translations,” which can be graceful, but only if there is a certain semantic logic in them; in other words, metaphors should be coming from a “right” field of comparison. Thus, some extreme conceits of a John Donne, for example, are judged to be marred by obscurity. Obscurity is also to be avoided in the formal structure or ordering of sentences. “For the consequence of sentences, you must be sure, that every clause do give the cue one to the other, and be bespoken ere it come,” says Jonson (lines 2712–15), and brings to mind Steiner’s, Barthes,’ and Davie’s suggestions about the “relational” nature of language in classicism. Unlike certain authors who—like Montaigne a little earlier—under the influence of seventeenth-century skepticism, believed in the necessity of stylistic fragmentariness and lack of logical connectives in representations of reality, Jonson believed in the possibility and adequacy of “ordered” representation. One of the most influential figures in Jonson’s stylistic theory was his contemporary Juan Luis Vives, whose idea of an ideal style was, as Trimpi puts it, that of “a style that is unspecialized, completely flexible, and nearest to that of the urbane conversation of educated men” (41). This gives a few clues to what the plain style should be like, according to Vives and Jonson. Firstly, we are dealing with the idea of an unnoticeable or even “styleless” style. In his translations of Quintillian, Jonson points out that the art of “the true Artificer” is the one that “none but Artificers perceive” (qtd. in Trimpi 55). He is well aware that this might lead to unfavourable aesthetic opinions since there will be people who will call such style “barren, dull, leane,” (qtd. in Trimpi 55), but those lack “judgment” or “sense.” Whereas in Aristotle the unnoticeable or natural style is desirable mainly because it is more effective before an audience, in Jonson we get a feeling that the praise for the styleless style comes from a more ethical position, translated into aesthetic form. “A good life is a main argument,” says he in Discoveries (lines 114–5), and indicates that art is for him formed by life. Trimpi’s claim about the “styleless” style is reminiscent of Davie’s about the purity of diction following a strong tradition (see page 24 above); according to Trimpi, this style is the “one to which each new period must return to break off the encrustation of mannerism of the preceding period” (58). In somewhat different terms: plainness

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seems to be cyclically alternating with difficulty; or, more precisely in this context, with rhetorical ornamentation and elaborateness. The idea that the language of the plain style should be the one of “educated” people is significant as it sets out certain parameters for otherwise indiscriminately unlimited “current” word choice. Jonson values currency and custom in language, but he also adds: Yet when I name custom, I understand not the vulgar custom: for that were a precept no less dangerous to language, than life, if we should speak or live after the manners of the vulgar: but that I call custom of speech, which is the consent of the learned; as custom of life, which is the consent of the good. (Discoveries lines 2401–08)

This specification of a certain group which determines the standard or custom in language suggests that the targeted readership is probably less “general” or “popular” than, for example, the one Aristotle had in mind in Rhetoric. It is, in other words, more specific than the abstract notion of “general audience” often associated with the plain style, and we will return to it. It is important, however, to point out that Jonson doesn’t have in mind “pure” formal education as this criterion for determining the best vocabulary. The learnedness he demands is of a more comprehensive nature; it includes “honesty,” “wisdom” and “living well” (Discoveries 107, 114), or what Aristotle would call e¯thos—the moral character of a person.10 Both Vives and Jonson regarded one particular plain style genre—the epistle—as the model style for writing in general. Out of the traditional five qualities the epistolary style should have—brevity, perspicuity, simplicity, grace and appropriateness—”grace” is, perhaps, in need of further explanation. It is most often associated with the quality of “urbanity,” which is itself hard to pin down. Jonson shares Quintilian’s view which defines urbanity as the language of an urban, as opposed to rustic, environment;11 one sense of the term “Attic,” which is the style Jonson is interested in, is derived from “Athens” and designates a “city” idiom. Urbanity also seems to imply a certain “intellectual sophistication” joined with the “intimate familiarity” characterizing the epistle (Trimpi 81). In this respect the plain style is expected to find a perfect balance between the private and the public, or, as Trimpi puts it, at its best this style provides “the intimate commerce between the particular and the generalization” (190). Providing a context common enough for the reader to participate in the described personal experience, and examining emotions without over-dramatization, are some of the key plain style traits of Jonson’s, and Larkin’s, poetry.

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The Renaissance praise of the epistolary genre “legitimized” through treatises an idea which classical Latin Atticists like Martial or Juvenal had already voiced in their time: the freedom of the epistle to treat any subjectmatter. The ancient rigid hierarchy of themes and the appropriate styles to treat them is thus more or less abandoned in the Renaissance, and since the epistolary genre was considered a model for all good writing, the plain style was now permitted to treat any subject.12 Broadening of the thematic range in the plain style, and an unwillingness to clothe poems in myth, resulted in a heavy stress laid by plain stylists on particularity. Trimpi finds that this emphasis on “the accurate observation of any subject is simply a concern with the particularity of individual experience, from which moral truths can then be derived” (86). In this respect, Ben Jonson is relying artistically on a Latin predecessor, Horace, and philosophically on a contemporary, Francis Bacon. Following the Horatian motto, which has an Aristotelian touch to it, that moral generalizations should be derived from factual observation in order to be persuasive, Jonson stresses the importance of experience, in life and in art. Trimpi even calls Jonson “anti-rhetorical” in the sense that his preference for particulars defies some more traditional rhetorical procedures in which precept leads to generalization. In fact, in the “Parnassus Plays,” which exhibit a contemporary critical stance, Jonson is called somewhat disparagingly, “A meere Empyrick, one that getts what he hath by obseruation” (qtd. in Trimpi 86). As in other things, however, Jonson shows more moderation than this commentary suggests. Locked only in oneself, one wouldn’t be able to offer a valuable observation, or “council”; at the very beginning of Discoveries, Jonson says: “But very few men are wise by their own council; or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool to his master” (lines 23–6). Extreme subjectivity, in other words, does not fit the bill for Jonson. Ben Jonson had a great respect for Francis Bacon’s concise and precise style. “No man,” claims Jonson in Discoveries, “ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered” (lines 1098–1100). What he also admired was Bacon’s scientific inductive method of inquiry. Even though the process of gathering and examining particular details in order to derive valid generalizations was originally linked with natural sciences, Bacon believes that this “method of interpretation” should “embrace everything,” that is, all the disciplines, including ethics and politics (qtd. in Trimpi 88). Ben Jonson certainly applies it to yet another “discipline” of the human mind—literature, and thus claims an aesthetic, besides the epistemological, value for the particular. In poetry, particular

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details can be as beautiful as universal ideas. Jumping over a few centuries, we will recall the critic Andrew Crozier, who finds “figures of empirical lyricism” at the base of the post-war canonical nexus of Larkin-Hughes-Heaney in English poetry (“Thrills and frills: poetry as figures of empirical lyricism”). Undoubtedly somewhat different from the Renaissance context, this invoked “empirical lyricism” nevertheless suggests certain similarities between the Jonsonian plain style and Larkin’s poems.13 The mention of Bacon and, earlier, Locke, indicates that the seventeenth-century advance of science played a certain role in the development of the plain style as a discourse of significant applicability. The main impetus for the encouragement of plain-style writing in science was the opposition of the new experimental science to the older, mysterious and alchemical, practices which thrived on a deliberate obscurity of style. In the spirit of increasing knowledge, the new seventeenth-century scientists launched an attack on the hermetic, allegorical and metaphoric style of their predecessors. As Michael Srigley writes in his article “The Lascivious Metaphor: The Evolution of the Plain Style in the Seventeenth Century,” the metaphor was seen as the principal “culprit” in the deliberate concealment of knowledge and meaning in the writings of the leading alchemists, such as Thomas Vaughan (brother of the poet Henry). Associated by the new scientists with deluding passions, irrationality, and ontological distortion of reality, metaphor was singled out as the main “enemy” of the experimental science. First, it perpetuated the old ways of explaining the world through fables rather than through the new mathematical discourse, and second, it preserved an elitist attitude according to which the “vulgar” should not be “initiated” into the secrets of the world. This latter attitude was contrary to the spirit of Enlightenment among the new scientists, who encouraged a certain “democratization” of knowledge; as Srigley suggests, they believed that “scientific information should be shared by all and should therefore be conveyed in a prose style of mathematical plainness and exactitude” (187). In what is a typical rebuttal of skepticism, Vaughan replies, and concisely expresses the ideology behind the completely opposite writing style: “Those who ‘believe the Philosophers will teach us, and in plaine termes tell us all their Art’ are entertaining ‘impudent Hopes’” (as qtd. in Srigley 186). This clash of the plain and the difficult is here, of course, within a scientific context, not the literary and poetic one we are interested in. It does, however, point to a more circumstantial ideological reason behind the promotion of plain writing, which is not prominent in the Jonsonian poetics: anti-elitism. Within the parameters of science and the latter-seventeenth-century Enlightenment, the idea of public sharing becomes the driving stylistic force. As

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Trimpi indicates, the plainness of language in the classical plain style is different from the Enlightenment version in that it is “addressed to sophisticated men” (90), whereas the religious and scientific anti-rhetorical attitudes of the time had to do with the attempt to “reach the uneducated” (90) or to share new knowledge publicly. Larkin’s plainness has something of all of these traditions in it, but the latter, less “classical,” aspect is perhaps more germane to his poetics . Chapter Two will explore the circumstantial factors in the creation of Larkin’s plain style. The discussions of the plain style in poetry usually stop at the eighteenth century. As Raymond Oliver says in the Introduction to his anthology, “by that date the classical revival of the Renaissance had largely run its course . . . ; new associative modes of structuring poems were about to supplant the old logical framework” (xiii). This is the time when a radical change is felt to have taken place in the relationship between literature, especially poetry, on the one hand, and language and reality on the other. In fact, some of the most prominent twentieth-century critics interested in the plain style openly express their preference for the poetry of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries written in that style over contemporary poetry. For Yvor Winters, “there has been a general deterioration of the quality of poetry since the opening of the eighteenth century,” while “certain poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” approximates his idea of the best poetry (In Defense of Reason 13). Similarly, even though he respects some modern poets such as Wallace Stevens, J. V. Cunningham shows particular admiration for the style of John Donne’s early poetry, which was then perfected by Ben Jonson. This style, he says, “can handle circumstantiality and detail, can accommodate in poetry what we think of as the material of prose” but also includes “human feeling” (323). As he explains in In Defense of Reason (1937), Winters finds the Renaissance plain style poems examples of good poetry because they convey a “rational” statement about a possible, if not real, experience, accompanied by a certain quality of feeling. This insistence on the “rational coherence” in poetry is the trademark of Winters’ poetics, and the main difference between what he views as good poetry and many Modernist poems. Starting with a Jonsonian stress on poetry as a moral discipline, Winters concentrates his critical efforts on explaining and promoting an Aristotelian understanding of formal execution—what he calls “the logical method of composition” (35). Just as Aristotle isolated logic as the key element in persuasive rhetoric, so does Winters find the “explicitly rational progression from one detail to another” the basis of good poetry (35). Modernist poetics, by contrast, is characterized by a reduction of rational coherence, whose chief manifestation Winters calls “pseudo-reference” (40).

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Such procedures as reference to a non-existent plot (as in T. S. Eliot’s “Gerontion”), reference to an obscure principle of motivation (as in some poetry by Hart Crane), or reference to a purely private symbolic value (as in Yeats) lead to the unintelligibility of what Winters terms “diffuse lyricism” (64). This principle of composition, which is opposed to the logical method of the plain style, is referred to as “qualitative progression” and is best exemplified by Pound’s poetry, where the “sole principle of unity is mood” (57). The defect that Winters finds with this particular principle is explained in his interesting footnote, bringing about some semantic considerations which have been recurring in our discussion of plainness in language so far. Asserting that “language possesses both connotative and denotative powers,” Winters goes on to say that “the abandonment of the denotative, or rational, in particular, and in a pure state, results in one’s losing the only means available for checking up on the qualitative or ‘ideographic’ sequences to see if they really are coherent in more than vague feeling” (57–8 n32). The idea of “checking up” on the logical coherence of a statement sounds very similar to some ideas expressed around the same time—mid-thirties—by certain philosophers, most notably A. J. Ayer. Famous for his “verification principle,” Ayer’s philosophy of language was extremely influential in Oxford and Cambridge in the forties, and may have had an impact on the Movement poets, as we will see in the next chapter. The application of some aspects of this essentially logical-positivist philosophical idea in literary theory, however, can already be discerned in Winters’ attempt to explain the difference between the Modernist styles and the plain style. The imbalance of the denotative and the connotative which he perceives in diffuse lyricism leads Winters to a very important point. Since the predominance of the connotative impairs coherence, the form is enfeebled. In so far as form is enfeebled, precision of detail is enfeebled . . . ; to say that detail is enfeebled is to say that the power of discrimination is enfeebled. (61)

In other words, a style which does not have a strong denotative backbone lacks discrimination, and ultimately “leads to the unlimited subdivision of feelings into sensory details till perception is lost” (62). Instead of this impressionism, major poetry in Winters’ opinion shows a certain “intellectual clarification” and discrimination (94). Thus the Renaissance plain style poetry is distinguished by “refined subtleties” of diction and cadence (Winters “The 16th Century Lyric in England: A Critical and Historical Reinterpretation” 96). These “refined subtleties” claimed for the plain style suggest a

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link between Winters and Donald Davie, who puts forward a “nicety of statement” as the best quality of “pure” diction in poetry, and especially in the British poetry of the fifties. This “nicety” in Davie has to do with “concentration” and “discrimination,” as well as orderly syntax (see page 20 above). What Winters seems to be suggesting in his consideration of the importance of denotation in poetry is that there needs to be something (a meaning, or a form) to vary from, for the variation to make sense. If a poem consists mainly of connotative values of words, the meaning, however impressive, will be unclear and the full import will remain unappreciated since there is nothing for the reader to judge it against. This line of reasoning is shared by other plain style critics. Writing about the difference in form between the pre-modern poetry employing traditional meter and some Modernist poetry employing a “parasitic” meter, J. V. Cunningham describes the latter as “depart[ure] from and return to norm” (269). In a slightly different shape, this is the argument from above: the new “parasitic” meter would not exist at all if it wasn’t for the norm, or the traditional meter, from which to vary. Or in the words of a more recent critic, John Baxter: “The plain style is necessary not only to keep us in touch with what stays the same, but also to delineate what is new” (36). Variation, which in excessive amounts defeats itself, is in all these cases associated with idiosyncracy, and implicitly opposed to an established, or “shared,” meaning or form, which is crucially linked with plainness. Baxter, for example, adds that “the plain style is necessary for the survival of the common reader because it provides most readily for ‘common language judgments’” (36).14 The plain-style critics’ emphasis on the norm, which happens to be of a “traditional” kind, potentially leaves them open to accusations of supporting a limiting, conservative position. Winters, for example, sounds particularly rigid in his views when he dismisses as “group hypochondria” a frequently expressed opinion that poetic form should keep pace with the changes in social conditions or literary traditions (In Defense of Reason 101). Since he himself wrote not only plain style poetry, but also symbolist poetry of controlled association, his explicit unreceptiveness to change is probably best taken in a moderate form. The key to understanding Winters is, as Raymond Oliver says, in the “precise control over language” (“Yvor Winters and the English Renaissance” 780) which Winters admired in Ben Jonson. This approach to good plain-style poetry, in which control of one’s medium is the leading notion, also allows us to consider Philip Larkin in this context: Larkin’s poetic expression is rooted in the traditional norm, but he is also introducing some changes in response to his cultural and literary environment. While the traditional aspect is thus

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modified, the control with which he executes his craft keeps him within the parameters of the plain style. What this walk through different ages, literary and critical traditions has shown us is that literary discourse seems to be dominated by a broad opposition which has been present in different forms since antiquity: the opposition between plainness and “unplainness,” where the latter is seen either as excessive rhetorical ornamentation or as cognitive difficulty. Whether engendered by considerations of persuasiveness before a general audience, an attempt to seize immediate human reality and correct vices, a belief in the ethical value of urbane conversation, outspoken social commitment to a struggle against injustice, or something else, the tendency towards linguistic plainness is rooted in the idea of communication and intelligibility. Within this framework language is, first and foremost, a system of signs and as such it should exhibit clarity, even when used as a literary, artistic device. Ways of reconciling the communicative, recipient-oriented aspect of language and the creative, artistic demands of literature are the main concern of the plain style in literature, particularly poetry, which is traditionally understood as the most private discourse, furthest from “ordinary” language. The clarity, or “plainness” of the plain style, as we have seen, has been described differently over time. Sufficient use of shared, denotative meanings of words, strong logical compositional principle, relatively ordered syntactical connections, use of particulars, and concentration of expression are some of the most emphasized stylistic elements. While the plain style genre in poetry exists as a full-blown tradition up until the eighteenth century, a certain rupture takes place at that time, and especially with the later developments in Modernism, which brings into more serious question the viability of the plain style, artistically and ideologically. What makes practitioners of the plain style in the twentieth century revert to this seemingly outdated literary tradition, and how do they do it? Philip Larkin is an excellent example of the plain style in modern times and an interesting case to examine. In some ways successor of the pre-modern plain style tradition (classical and neo-classical), he is also a child of the twentieth century and its literary trends which in many ways defy the plain style. On the one hand, Larkin’s style abounds in epistolary intimacy, satirical wit, epigrammatic conciseness, and “current” words but his poems also show some features generally considered “difficult,” and “(post)modernist.” This paradoxical position allows Larkin to continue the ancient line of literary plainness but also to expand it, update it, give it a new look, all the while keeping its core. In the next chapter we begin to look more closely at why and how Larkin does this.

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Chapter Two

Larkin in Context

“Let my hands find such symbols, that can be Unnoticed in the casual light of day” (Larkin, “Plymouth”)

In 1956, after his first important collection of poems The Less Deceived was published by Faber & Faber, Philip Larkin received indirect praise from one of the most important figures in Modernism and 20th-century literature, T. S. Eliot. As the then director of Faber & Faber, Eliot wrote in a letter that Larkin “often makes words do what he wants” (as qtd. in Selected Letters 255 n1). What Eliot praises in this passing comment is Larkin’s control over words—a plain stylist’s skill which will persist and even grow in Larkin’s best poems throughout his career. So will his dislike of Modernism in his critical writings, regardless of his acknowledgement of T. S. Eliot’s influence in English letters. To a certain extent, the quarrel between the poetry of the fifties and Modernism can be traced in the understanding of diction, or word-usage. Interestingly, the completely different attitudes are revealed through the use of the same concept—purification of language. The catch-phrase of Modernism, a belief that the poet’s task is “to purify the language of the tribe,” finds a similar expression in Donald Davie’s idea of “pure” or “chaste” diction he develops in the fifties with respect to earlier poetry, but also to contemporary British poetry. What this “purification” entails in either case, however, is very different. The phrase itself originates in Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1879 sonnet on Edgar Allan Poe, “Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe.” This master of French Symbolism and one of the precursors of Modernism admired Poe’s originality and imagination in writing, and compared him to an angel who gave “un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu” (“a purer meaning to the words of the tribe”). A few decades later, Pound and Eliot use the phrase to reinforce some of the key notions behind Modernist poetry. To them, purification of language means 39

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stripping away its means of suppressing ambiguity, and setting poetic vision free from older perspectives or traditions. This new poetic tongue is clearly not only at odds with, but also superior to the language of “the tribe,” the common mass of people. Significantly, the idea of the tribe does not appear as the nemesis of “the purity of diction” in Davie’s use of the phrase. In fact, even though the word is not used at all, his concept of purification might be said to be partly based on the language of “the tribe,” or the group of people to which the poet himself belongs. According to Davie, to purify the language means to enliven dead metaphors (31), that is, those expressions which have become part and parcel of our everyday language. Subscribing to a classicist position, Davie opposes a private language to pure diction, which is defined as “the perfection of a common language” (68). It is precisely this rejection of the idiosyncratic and even elitist concept of poetry in favour of the commonsensical or “tribal” that characterizes Larkin’s life-long criticism of Modernism. Unlike Davie’s critique, which lost some of its edge over the years, Larkin’s critique remained steady, and is best presented in his 1970 collection of essays on jazz, All What Jazz. Admitting in the Introduction that what follows might be nothing more than “a self-portrait of the critic [of ] ossified sensibility” (Required Writing 297), Larkin goes on to give very clear reasons for his dislike of Modernism, reasons which ultimately turn out to be based not on the novelty of the new forms, but on the basic principles within them. Even though these theoretical considerations of different artistic styles arise from his interest in jazz, the essay offers a cross-section of all the arts, presenting Modernism as a pan-artistic attitude and ideology. What characterizes modern, post-World-War-II jazz for Larkin is “the deliberately-contrived eccentricity” in Parker, Gillespie, Monk, and particularly in Miles Davis and John Coltrane with whom “a new inhumanity” opens up in jazz (290; 291). This deliberate and dehumanizing deviation, this attempt to be “ugly on purpose,” inevitably generates an increasing demand for “greater and greater technical virtuosity and more and more exaggerated musical non sequiturs” (291; 290). Larkin finds this wilful eccentricity, excess, and lack of common logic to be at the root of all Modernist arts. Considering the necessity for technical and professional knowledge in order to appreciate a Modernist work of art, and the difficulty and complexity of the new jazz techniques, Larkin concludes: Of course! This was the language of criticism of modern painting, modern poetry, modern music. . . . There could hardly have been a conciser summary of what I don’t believe about art. (292–3)

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Larkin thus confirms the importance of Modernism as a factor in creating or evaluating art in the twentieth century, and in his opposition to it, he is in consonance with some of Sartre’s ideas from a quarter of a century before. According to Larkin, Modernism is the result of an imbalance at the heart of the creative process: the productive tension between the artist and his audience has perished in the last century, relocating all the stress of artistic creation in the tension between the artist and his material. The outcome: the “mystification and outrage” of Modernism (293). In a recognizably plainstyle tradition, Larkin’s primary concern is a successful communication between the writer and the reader, so the suppression of the importance of the reader in favour of the material in Modernism is a serious offence. In fact, “Modernism” is not so much a historical term for Larkin as it is ethical: “it denotes a quality of irresponsibility peculiar to this century” (293). The Sartrean line comes up again a little later in the same essay: “No, I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by Parker, Pound or Picasso” (297). This statement suggests that Larkin shares the plain-style “hopeful epistemology”: it is not only possible to know human life or reality, but it is also possible to convey one’s ideas about it to others (Oliver xiii). If writers obscure or distort this knowledge through a certain stylistic technique, they are irresponsible. What seems to bother Larkin in particular in this Modernist artistic ideology is its inherent discouragement of empirical epistemology, and its industry of self-perpetuation. In his typical sardonic tone, he writes: The terms and the arguments vary with circumstances, but basically the message is: Don’t trust your eyes, or ears, or understanding. They’ll tell you this is ridiculous, or ugly, or meaningless. Don’t believe them. You’ve got to work at this: after all, you don’t expect to understand anything as important as art straight off, do you? I mean, this is pretty complex stuff: if you want to know how complex, I’m giving a course of ninety-six lectures at the local college, starting next week, and you’d be more than welcome. The whole thing’s on the rates, you won’t have to pay. After all, think what asses people have made of themselves in the past by not understanding art—you don’t want to be like that, do you? And so on, and so forth. Keep the suckers spending. (293)

Larkin’s aversion to academia and its tight links with Modernism is clear, here and in other writings. He finds the T. S. Eliot notion of the poet-critic

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extremely dangerous: if poets become university teachers, they will most probably begin to act and think as critics. In other words, as Larkin says in his essay “Subsidizing Poetry,” they will believe that “poems are born of other poems, rather than from personal non-literary experience,” and that “the more a poem can be analysed . . . the better poem it is” (89). The latter belief might even serve as an incentive to write the university-endorsed kind of poetry simply because it is earning the poet a living. Larkin is thus placing Modernism, with its emphasis on a tight bond between criticism and art production, under the auspices of an academic industry, subsidizing those creations which keep the industry alive and thriving. This state of affairs is the most damaging for the “fundamental nexus between poet and audience” since “the poet is paid to write and the audience is paid to listen. Something vital goes out of their relation . . .” (92). True to his word, Larkin would have none of it: he did receive a few honorary doctorates in his later years, but he declined the offer of the Chair of Poetry at Oxford in 1973, and earned his living as a librarian for the entire length of his working life. Partly, this stance comes as the result of Larkin’s sole interest in active poetry-writing: “I have very little interest in poetry in the abstract,” he writes to Charles Monteith in connection with the offer of the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford (Selected Letters 470); but one of the main reasons is his disagreement with, and disapproval of academics. He records these feelings in a few poems written in the tradition of the so-called “campus novel,” which was very popular in the fifties. Satirical and demystifying, this kind of prose—best exemplified in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1956)—uses professors as the butt of its satire. The two poems Larkin writes in this vein are very telling of his attitude, and each brings out certain ideas which are, directly or indirectly, related to his writing style. Hurrying to catch my Comet One dark November day, Which soon will snatch me from it To the sunshine of Bombay, I pondered pages Berkeley Not three weeks since had heard, Perceiving Chatto darkly Through the mirror of the Third. Crowds, colourless and careworn, Had made my taxi late, Yet not till I was airborne

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Did I recall the date That day when Queen and Minister And Band of Guards and all Still act their solemn-sinister Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall. It used to make me throw up, These mawkish nursery games: O when will England grow up? - But I outsoar the Thames, And dwindle off down Auster To greet Professor Lal (He once met Morgan Forster), My contact and my pal. (“Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses”)

We could, perhaps, say that the poem is about the academic “Ivory Tower,” except that there’s nothing particularly “ivory” about it. The speaker seems utterly oblivious—which heightens the satire—of the ridiculous aura about him; formally, this is conveyed to the reader through the almost mechanical succession of lines of the approximately same length (6, 7, or 8 syllables), and the alternate rhyme scheme, which is given an inane sing-song quality through the absence of enjambment. The ridiculous feeling, which ends up bordering on contempt for the speaker, is supported by the statements and attitudes in the speaker’s interior monologue. The inherent elitism of academia and separation from the “ordinary” world is perfectly embodied in the speaker, a presumably successful lecturer, who metaphorically and literally looks down on “crowds, colourless and careworn” from his “airborne” position (if the ivory of the tower is nowhere to be found, at least its “outsoaring” height has been preserved). The lecturer’s peevish and condescending irritation—”O when will England grow up?” he exclaims in the third stanza— comes from his feeling that the crowds are an impediment to his plans: they made his taxi late. The isolated, out-of-touch nature of academic work comes out clearly in the speaker’s impatience and dismissal of the public, “people’s” holiday, described as “mawkish nursery games.” The irony, of course, comes from the tacit joke the author suggests to the reader: if anything resembles nursery games, it is the speaker’s own monologue. The repetitive, self-perpetuating business of academia is indicated through the hint that the speaker is reading the same paper over and over again, while the cliquishness of the lecturing clan is clearly visible in the

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end. If the speaker shows any positive emotions towards other human beings, then it is towards his “contact” and “pal,” Professor Lal from Bombay where he is heading. Professor Lal’s “real” importance, however, is revealed in the aside: he met E. M. Forster once. Obviously, knowing the “right” people is the most valuable possession in the academic world and rounds off the poem tellingly. The unfortunate lecturer is easy prey in Larkin’s hands: lacking more comprehensive awareness, given only a ludicrous form of self-expression, and (unknowingly) including the reader in the crowds he despises so much, the speaker doesn’t have much of a chance for sympathy with the reader. Representing him as a professional failure (he doesn’t do anything particularly useful) and as a human disappointment (he is only full of himself ), Larkin implicitly shows a deep personal dissatisfaction with this academic type. The suggestion of a noticeable social power behind such institutions and their members, which is most evident in subsidizing, is in this poem mentioned only briefly in the title. The ironic statement by someone other than the speaker of the poem indicates that everything the speaker is and does is being sponsored by a wealthy funding organization. The financial and political aspect of academia is exposed more clearly in a later poem, “Posterity.” The speaker of the poem, the author’s biographer Jake Balokowsky, is an opportunist: he is in academia strictly for the tenure and the money. Even though he himself believes that the research line is “stinking dead,” he continues to do research on “this old fart” because in the long run the institution will enable him to do what he really wants to do. This attitude points to two things. Firstly, it shows the fake nature of academics like Balokowsky (who happens to be American and Jewish, which may or may not be significant1): far from being an enthusiastic representative of a humanistic institution, he is using the university infrastructure for his own ends, letting himself, in turn, be used by the same infrastructure. Secondly, and this is where the poem assumes tones of self-parody, the Jake Balokowsky phenomenon shows that the “old-type natural fouled-up guys” like Larkin don’t set the academic world on fire and are given a marginal, chore-like status. Many of these anti-academic grievances are also developed in Larkin’s essays. For instance, the self-aggrandizing tendency of academics implicitly ridiculed in “Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses” is closely associated with Modernist poetic practices in his short essay “Statement.” What he says has a direct bearing on the writing style: As a guiding principle, I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly-created universe, and therefore have no belief in ‘tradition’ or a

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common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people. (Required Writing 79)

The “common myth-kitty” is Larkin’s own name for what Modernists like T. S. Eliot called “tradition,” and suggests an impersonal, mechanical and quasi-professional poetic technique of allusion. Poets who allude to other poems or poets, Larkin suggests, do it mainly to push themselves into the “professionally” recognized canon, which is not what poetry should be about. This attitude invoked an angry response from Frank Kermode, who in The Spectator article “The Myth-Kitty” writes that myth is “the province of human creative force” through which “we can short-circuit the intellect and liberate imagination. . . . Myth deals in what is more ‘real’ than intellect can accede to: it is a seamless garment to replace the tattered fragments worn by the modern mind . . .” (339). Myth is for Kermode equated with the real and the modern; therefore, “the ancient gods survive” (339). In a letter to Robert Conquest, Larkin comments on Kermode’s article, and reinforces his feeling that myth is simply a device commonly used by those poets who want their poetry to be “hard enough” to merit critical attention and praise: Trouble with blokes like K. is that they have, as salaried explainers of poetry, a professional interest in keeping poetry hard & full of allusions. To my mind either you don’t believe your myth, in wch case it stinks yr poetry up, or you do & call it something else. (Selected Letters 307–8)

If we reverse the terms a little, Larkin is implying that myth-free poetry has a good chance of being plain and as such will be of no interest to the critical machinery of the literary profession. What he adds brings out even clearer links with the plain style tradition: Myth means something untrue, doesn’t it? ‘Purely fictitious narrative usu. involving supernatural persons’—Concise Oxf. Dict. (1911). I’m not interested in things that aren’t true. (308)

This comment, in which myth is opposed to the truth, is reminiscent of Martial, who believes that mythological literature offers an easy escape from the true everyday concerns of an individual (see 29 above). Like Larkin, Martial, too, associates the “mythical” writing style with the need for interpreters, which he himself does not respect in literature. Myth is thus unacceptable for

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Larkin the plain stylist for two reasons: it creates difficult poetry, and it isn’t true. After reviewing some of Larkin’s intractable objections to Modernism, it is important to point out that Larkin never discarded “tradition” or “myth” completely from his own poetry. As Blake Morrison suggests in The Movement, and as we will see in more detail later, Larkin and other Movement writers develop a modified understanding of tradition and myth. Unlike Modernist poems which require the reader to recognize an allusion in order to comprehend the poem, “Movement poems do not make detection of an allusion essential to their understanding, but offer a ‘bonus’ to those readers who do manage to spot a reference” (Morrison 194). This practice of meagre and unobtrusive use of allusion contributes to a certain “democratization” of poetry: different kinds of audience can understand and enjoy the poem on different levels. What Larkin objects to in “mythical writing” is not so much myth itself, as it is the “common myth-kitty”: the institutionalized, ready-made range of mainly classical stories, which require prior knowledge, that is, erudition. Morrison brings up Larkin’s “MCMXIV” as an example of a different “myth”: it is trying to capture the feeling of many people about the pre-1914 world, and presents a myth of the “innocence” of that world. In other words, the poem attempts to speak to people on the level of a personal feeling, idea, or a myth linked to one’s own life. 1914 is a particularly significant year in Larkin’s—and The Movement’s— understanding of English poetry and tradition. This year marked the beginning of modern poetry in Larkin’s opinion, since the new continental or American poetic trends replaced the old, “native,” English tradition represented by Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, and the Georgians among others. The most serious consequence brought about by this change was the loss of a general audience during Modernism, and as we have seen, Larkin particularly stresses the importance of a healthy, thriving relationship between the writer and the (nonprofessional) reader. In a review, Larkin considers the impact on English poetry of the death of a number of poets during World War I: No doubt poetry, like every other branch of art, was bound to go through a period of Modernismus, and certainly there could have been much worse exemplars than Mr. Eliot, but it would have been interesting to observe the continental impact refracted through stronger native talents. (“Down Among the Dead Men” 912)

After his youthful infatuation with Yeats, Larkin himself followed the “stronger native talent” of Thomas Hardy (who, however, was not one of the

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poets killed in the war). As Morrison says, while Modernist poets showed interest in “transcendental religions, mystical philosophies, [and] utopian politics,” Larkin and the Movement picked up on Hardy’s “scepticism, empiricism, verification” (220; 221), which are often seen as embodying the “native English temperament.” One aspect of Hardy’s role in Larkin’s poetry and poetics is this interest in “native” tradition. This tradition, however, is less a matter of Modernist textual allusions than it is a matter of a more comprehensive cultural legacy, which Larkin revives in poetry.2 Although a big impetus in Larkin’s explicit theoretical ideas about poetry is his reaction against Modernism, his numerous short essays, articles and reviews offer an abundance of more general (and not necessarily antiModernist) thoughts and concepts amounting to something we can consider to be Larkin’s poetics. Probably the best place to start is his essay “The Pleasure Principle,” in which he claims: . . . poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet loses his pleasure-seeking audience he has lost the only audience worth having, for which the dutiful mob that signs on every September is no substitute. (Required Writing 82)

Analysing and studying poetry in an academic institution, in other words, is not the same as literary appreciation; there first needs to be a more “direct,” a more “spontaneous” connection between the poem and the reader. What Larkin finds reprehensible in modern poetry is that [t]he reader, in fact, seems no longer present in the poet’s mind as he used to be, as someone who must understand and enjoy the finished product if it is to be a success at all. (81)

The importance of the reader is, then, twofold. It is not only irresponsible on the writer’s part to neglect clear communication to the reader, but this neglect is also contrary to the very nature of poetry, as Larkin defines it. In the same essay, Larkin offers a working definition of the writing process: [The writing of a poem] consists of three stages: the first is when a man becomes obsessed with an emotional concept to such a degree that he is compelled to do something about it. What he does is the second stage, namely, construct a verbal device that will reproduce this emotional concept in anyone who cares to read it, anywhere, any time. The third stage is the recurrent situation of people in different times and places

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” setting off the device and re-creating in themselves what the poet felt when he wrote it. The stages are interdependent and all necessary. If there has been no preliminary feeling, the device has nothing to reproduce and the reader will experience nothing. If the second stage has not been well done, the device will not deliver the goods, or will deliver only a few goods to a few people, or will stop delivering them after an absurdly short while. And if there is no third stage, no successful reading, the poem can hardly be said to exist in a practical sense at all. (80)

Some commentators attack Larkin’s overtly outdated understanding of language: critics who make such claims point out that Larkin seems to believe in a non-problematic, one-to-one relationship between words and things, which is also identical in all speakers. What they overlook is Larkin’s own characterization of this model as an “oversimplification” (in “Writing Poems”) and simply a “working theory” (Selected Letters 226). More interestingly, the passage offers an insight into a few key concepts in Larkin’s version of plain style: for Larkin, emotion, skill, and timelessness all serve as links between the author and the reader. Larkin himself summarizes the passage, saying that “poetry is . . . a skilled recreation of emotion in other people” (80). Emotion is the precondition for good poetry, and is brought up time and again in Larkin’s various writings. Already in 1946, Larkin writes to J. B. Sutton about the “new” Auden. Even though Larkin greatly admired Auden’s poetry written in the thirties, he couldn’t extend his admiration to Auden’s poems written after he moved to the United States. The reason, as he writes to Sutton in this early letter, is that “he, like most people, is blown up by words & ideas, instead of reduced to mortal perspective by feelings” (Selected Letters 127). The influence of Hardy, whose poetry Larkin had just discovered that year, is doubly present: poetry should be empirical and based on one’s feelings, and it should be woven around mortality as the state of humanity. Much later, in a 1960 essay entitled “What’s Become of Wystan?,” Larkin gives a more specific criticism of the once great poet. The most serious charge is Auden’s neglect of his own adage: he claimed he should feel “deep abhorrence” If [he] caught anyone preferring Art To Life and Love and being Pure-in-Heart.

Well, Larkin goes on to show, that is precisely what Auden does in his later poetry—”he has become a reader rather than a writer” (Required Writing 125) and references to other writers and texts were “replacing experience as material for his verse” (125). Auden’s turning away from life, love and the

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heart, concludes Larkin, was irreparably damaging for his poetry. This stance is best captured in Larkin’s favourite quotation from Hardy, an adage which Hardy, in turn, had copied from Leslie Stephen: The ultimate aim of a poet should be to touch our hearts by showing his own, and not to exhibit his learning, or his fine taste, or his skill in mimicking the notes of his predecessors. (Further Requirements 150)

Self-revelation, pathos, and an avoidance of erudite notes are, then, what Larkin, along with Hardy, values most in poetry. Related to this is a successful way of creating empathy in the reader—one of the key elements in any poetic technique. According to Larkin, this is precisely where Modernist poetry fails.3 In “The Poetry of Hardy” he sets Hardy against “transcendental writers” such as Yeats or Eliot. “His subjects are men, the life of men, time and the passing of time, love and the fading of love” (Required Writing 174). In other words, Hardy writes from life, and moreover, he “taught one to feel rather than to write”; and “One could simply relapse back into one’s own life and write from it” (175). The Modernist concept of poetry, Larkin is suggesting, is transcendental, outside of the individual as much as possible, and impersonal. This transcendental outlook, and more importantly, absence of emotion, have close links with a particular style of writing. In a broadcast review of a few collections of poems, “New Poetry,” Larkin reinforces his idea that “poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transference. No matter what else we ask of poetry, or what methods we choose to bring it about, it must fulfil this first function, or cease to be an art at all” (Further Requirements 65). Larkin, however, makes an important distinction between emotion which constitutes the core of good poetry, and what is usually, and in Larkin’s view unfortunately, called “mere personal emotion.” This latter concept is emotion which remains personal to the poet “without becoming personal to us. We understand him to be in the grip of some emotional experience, because he tells us so, but his poem fails to bring it home to us . . .” (65). Larkin concludes, I think it enormously important for us to recognize that what has failed is not the poet’s emotion but his technique. What we should be saying, in other words, is ‘mere incompetent writing.’(65)

Even though Larkin’s primary goal here is a defence of personal emotion in poetry, he is also making a point which is reminiscent of Yvor Winters’

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comments in In Defense of Reason: unintelligible emotion, or emotion which can’t be decoded by the reader, cannot merit the label of good poetry. In other words, the expression of emotion is not enough—there has to be a certain “user-friendly” kind of expression. As young Larkin writes to Sutton in 1947, the Picasso Still Life “arouses hardly any emotion in me at all. It’s like a poem I can’t understand” (Selected Letters 138). That is, the statement of emotion, which is the first function of art, is bound up with technique, and more specifically, with clarity or intelligibility—the very foundation of the plain style. As someone who said once that he thought he was writing “fairly simply in the language of ordinary people, using the accepted grammatical constructions” (as qtd. in Tolley 177), Larkin laid a great deal of stress on intelligibility in writing. Aspiring to a poetic equivalent of Orwell’s windowpane prose, Larkin has little patience for poets who don’t abide by clarity as a general writing rule. This attitude is present in some of his earliest comments. For example, in a 1947 letter to Kingsley Amis, young Larkin lashes out at Dylan Thomas, who, even though impressive, is not intelligible: I think a man ought to use good words to make what he means impressive: Dylan Thos. just makes you wonder what he means, very hard. Take a phrase that comes at the start of a poem in Death & Entrances— something about waking up in the ‘immortal hospital.’ Now that is a phrase that makes me feel suddenly a sort of reverent apprehension, only I don’t know what it means. Can’t the FOOL see that if I could see what it means, I should admire it 2ce as much?? But I agree he is a shocking influence. . . . (Selected Letters 133)

As a major representative of the forties poetic group “The New Apocalypse” known for its rhetorical flourishes, Dylan Thomas was one of the main targets of the Movement poets’ dislike of overblown poetic expression resulting in unintelligibility. In many ways, the tensions between the Movement— particularly Larkin and Amis4—on the one hand, and “The New Apocalypse” on the other resemble the tensions between the Attic and the Asiatic traditions in antiquity. In both cases, a certain kind of plainness is opposed to obscurity, whether it comes from unclear images, convoluted sentences, or opaque scholarly references. Larkin’s general attitude towards the kind of language desirable in poetry brings to mind Andrew Crozier’s assessment of the Movement’s poetic language. Larkin’s “accepted grammatical constructions” and “language of ordinary people” invoke ideas similar to Crozier’s “contractual usages in lan-

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guage” and “commonsense meanings of the times” (see page 19 above). Or, going further back in time, we encounter Ben Jonson’s acknowledgement of the social, collective nature of language: “Words are the people’s” (Discoveries, lines 2339–40).5 In other words, plainness in poetry comes from what could be termed the centrality of language: lexical and grammatical usages accepted by most people speaking the language in question at a given time. In somewhat narrower terms, centrality can also refer to a particular standard dialect; this consideration, for example, is one of Larkin’s selection criteria for The Oxford Book of Modern English Verse (Required Writing 72), and could be seen as one aspect of the plain-style urbanity. Saying, however, that Larkin always observes the “accepted” language rules in his poems would be untrue. To realize this, it is enough to cast a quick glance at the first stanza of “Here” which has neither a proper subject, nor the main verb; or “MCMXIV” which in its entirety lacks a main verb, and which Larkin himself characterizes as a “trick” poem (Selected Letters 367); or the famous example of Larkin’s occasional syntactical convolutedness—the two last stanzas of “Mr. Bleaney”: But if he stood and watched the frigid wind Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed Telling himself that this was home, and grinned, And shivered, without shaking off the dread That how we live measures our own nature, And at his age having no more to show Than one hired box should make him pretty sure He warranted no better, I don’t know.

Grammatically speaking, it is hard to make head or tail of this statement, and from that point of view, it is certainly not plain. What matters, though, is to investigate in each case of overt linguistic complexity how it is contextualized within the whole poem, and whether it impedes the reader’s understanding. Leaving these details for later analysis, we can here assert that Larkin’s style shows traces of the “difficult” poetic tradition, usually associated with Modernism and its off-shoots in the twentieth century. The question which remains to be answered is whether such traces fit into the (revised) plain style. One of Larkin’s strong links with the plain style traditions is his insistence on personal experience, ordinariness, and observation, which could be summed up as an empirical approach to the world. Such an outlook was already

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indicated in Larkin’s preference for life over art as the starting and ending point of poetry in comments he made on the later poetry of Auden, or the transcendental tendencies in the Modernists. In the essay “Statement” he says: I write poems to preserve things I have seen/thought/felt (if I may so indicate a composite and complex experience) both for myself and for others, though I feel that my prime responsibility is to the experience itself. . . . (Required Writing 79)

Whereas the message of Modernism seems to be “don’t trust your eyes, or ears, or understanding” (see page 41 above), the experiential aspect of Larkin’s poetry emphasizes precisely those faculties, both in the poet, and in the reader. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the notion of observation along with the accurate verbal record of the observed is the basis of the plain style, and Larkin can safely be called a “poet of observation.” Even when the Kodak-precision of observation is recognized as potentially disillusioning, it is still something desirable, and even beautiful: But o, photography! as no art is, Faithful and disappointing! that records Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds, And will not censor blemishes Like washing-lines, and Hall’s-Distemper boards, But show the cat as disinclined, and shades A chin as doubled where it is, what grace Your candour thus confers upon her face! (“Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album” )

While “Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album” balances delicately between human memory and the mechanical precision of photography, “Forget What Did” expresses a wish for personal observation unclouded by memory. After deciding to stop his diary and do away with past words and actions, the speaker wonders how he should fill up the empty pages. His answer is instantaneous: he wants to record “observed celestial recurrences” such as “the day the flowers come,” or “when the birds go.” Most of Larkin’s poetry, of course, does not exclude the human element as the last stanza in “Forget What Did” suggests, but it is indeed guided by careful observation and recurring, ordinary experiences.

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Larkin’s seriousness about the empirical precision of observation and the accompanying description can be glimpsed in a couple of comments he makes in his letters about unfortunate imprecisions in some poems. In 1961, he writes to a Mr. Evans, an oceanographer who sent him a letter explaining how Larkin had confused two kinds of waves in his poem “Absences,” thanking him for the correction. When Larkin picked “Absences” for an anthology published the following year, he added a comment: Incidentally, an oceanographer wrote to me pointing out that I was confusing two kinds of wave, plunging waves and spilling waves, which seriously damaged the poem from a technical viewpoint. I am sorry about this, but do not see how to amend it now. (Selected Letters 333 n4)

Similarly, in 1975 when a schoolmaster sent him some illustrations of tombs, he found out that in “An Arundel Tomb” he “got the hands the wrong way round, and it should be ‘right-hand gauntlet,’ not left-hand” (Selected Letters 523). Although neither of the corrections found their way into the poems in question, Larkin obviously took them seriously: poetry should be “true to life.” Moreover, if it involves everyday phenomena, it is perfectly permissible, and perhaps desirable, for a poem to be subjected to some kind of “verification” by the readers who have had similar experiences. The everyday, the ordinary—which invites empirical treatment by the plain stylist and verification by the reader—is of huge significance in Larkin, both in his theoretical considerations and in his poems. Some critics find this ordinariness, as recorded by Larkin, to be of a particularly “dreary” type, both in the sense of irrelevance and of bleakness. In an interview, Larkin wonders whether his choice of poetic subject-matter and particular way of treating it is really dreary, or simply realistic and ordinary: One thing I do feel a slight restiveness about is being typed as someone who has carved out for himself a uniquely dreary life, growing older, having to work, and not getting things he wants and so on—is this so different from everyone else? I’d like to know how all these romantic reviewers spend their time—do they kill a lot of dragons, for instance? (as qtd. in Hamilton “Four Conversations” 72)

The comment is interesting as it suggests that, at least with some critics, the prevalent poetic expectations are still largely romantic: if not a grand

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subject-matter, then a certain heightened tone, a certain exhilaration is expected. Although Larkin’s poetry is all about emotion in the poet and in the reader, the emotion he talks about is not of that particular grand or dragon-killing kind. Quiet hope mixed with scepticism, tempered disappointment, self-questioning and careful appreciation are connected with how he experiences life and observes it in others.6 Larkin’s most outspoken defence of the ordinary in literature is his advocacy of Barbara Pym’s novels, which he also reviewed. Larkin admired Pym’s fiction for years, and on many occasions attempted to prevail on publishing houses to consider her work for publication. In one such letter to Charles Monteith, Larkin writes: Personally, too, I feel it is a great shame if ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things can’t find a publisher these days. This is in the tradition of Jane Austen & Trollope, and I refuse to believe that no one wants its successors today. Why shd I have to choose between spy rubbish, science fiction rubbish, Negrohomosexual rubbish, or dope-taking nervous-breakdown rubbish? I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren’t beautiful or lucky, who try to behave well in the limited field of activity they command, but who can see, in little autumnal moments of vision, that the so called ‘big’ experiences of life are going to miss them; and I like to read about such things presented not with self pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness & even humour, that is in fact what the critics wd call the moral tone of the book. (Selected Letters 376–8)

First, it is easy to see from this passage why the publication of his letters brought about the accusations of a “racist” Larkin, or a “chauvinist” Larkin. Some of his expressions in this and other letters are certainly politically incorrect and easily attract criticism. On the other hand, in the wider context of Larkin’s artistic beliefs we could see less offensive interpretations of such statements. All the “rubbishes” from the quotation above, for example, aren’t there to offend or dismiss any of the mentioned categories of people—rather, they are a critique of the “sensational” kind of writing which exploits the “exotic” or untrue-to-the-life-of-the-majority-of-people elements and is nevertheless published. What this particular passage reveals is a strong link Larkin makes—in an almost Jonsonian way—between the ordinary in good literature, and a particular ethics. What “ordinary sane” people do—the way they go about

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their disillusionments, with understanding, acceptance and no big selfdramatization—is the most valuable human topic any literature can offer. In the following letter to Monteith, Larkin reinforces his approval of such morality in Pym’s books, and also indicates what kind of style is particularly successful in bringing it about: In all her writing I find a continual perceptive attention to detail which is a joy, and a steady background of rueful yet courageous acceptance of things which I think more relevant to life as most of us have to live it than spies coming in from the cold. (Selected Letters 376)

This particular brand of the aesthetic (“attention to detail”) and of the ethical (“courageous acceptance”) is a more specific reassertion of Larkin’s more general idea that good art is the one that helps us enjoy and endure. Again, as he concludes in the Introduction to All What Jazz, he fails to see Modernism achieve this, which is why he dislikes it (Required Writing 297). As with most other general preferences in Larkin’s artistic beliefs, the stress on the empirical and the ordinary, too, should be taken only as a guideline, not as a dogmatic prescription. Larkin himself shows a receptiveness to feelings of wonder and mystery throughout his poetic career. In 1943, the twenty-one-year-old Larkin, very much under the influence of D. H. Lawrence, writes to J. B. Sutton: More and more I believe in a central pavilion of mystery, whose various sides are emblazoned with different emblems. To some it’s God, or Reason, or Beauty, or even Science or Life or Passion. But the centre is the same. (Selected Letters 57)

In his mature poetry, this “pavilion of mystery” seemed to have taken the form of “Life,” and the “out-of-the-ordinary,” if it is noticeable, often seems to be on the margins of the described experience. There is, for example, an undeniable admiration for the trees and their spring mysteries in “The Trees,” even when they are explained as “Their yearly trick of looking new” (line 7); or, there is a certain awe and wonder about the tomb in “An Arundel Tomb” which conveys the message—even if it was completely unintentional, as the speaker shows us—that “What will survive of us is love” (line 42). This marginal, almost side-effect feeling of mystery and wonder is occasionally stronger. A good example is the 1970 poem “The Explosion” about the coalmine accident, where after the church service

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Even if the appearance of the dead miners is explained away as a vision the wives have—they are “larger than life” and there is something a little awkward about them—the very last line finishes the poem on a more properly miraculous note: how could the women know about the bird’s eggs one of the miners found before the explosion, and how is it that the eggs are unbroken? “The Explosion” is certainly an extreme example of the “unordinary” and the ambiguous in Larkin’s poetry, but it does appear in other, less noticeable forms, and at first sight represents one of those occasional departures Larkin makes from an overall plainness.7 A question raised by such instances and central to the investigation in the following chapters is whether the plain style can accommodate the mysterious, or the unclear. The most concise summary of Larkin’s poetic beliefs is in his comments on one of his favourite contemporary poets, John Betjeman, which he makes in “The Blending of Betjeman,” and “It Could Happen Only in England.” In accordance with his dislike of Modernism, what Larkin respects most in Betjeman is his inclusion of the reader in the “poetic equation,” and his approach to poetry as an emotional concept. It was Betjeman, Larkin claims, who, forty years after Eliot’s advocacy of difficulty, was to prove “that a direct relation with the reading public could be established by anyone prepared to be moving and memorable” (Required Writing 129). The qualities of being moving and memorable in Betjeman are closely connected with recording and arousing emotion, and with doing that in an intelligible way. Believing that “poetry is an emotional business, and that rhyme and metre are means of enhancing that emotion,” Betjeman is the writer “who restored direct intelligible communication to poetry, not as a pompous pseudo-military operation of literary warfare but simply by exclaiming ‘Gosh, how lovely’ (or ‘Gosh, how awful’) and roaring with laughter” (209; 217). In other words, Betjeman has the knack of saying something worth the reader’s attention in simple, everyday language. What makes Betjeman interesting to the general readership is that, having “knocked over the ‘No Road Through to Real Life’ signs” erected by Modernism (217), he gives empirical attention

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to experience: “he is that rare thing, an extrovert sensitive, not interested in himself but in the experiences being himself enables him to savour” (130). Betjeman seems to show a genuine interest in the experience itself, without succumbing to exhibitionism or pomp: this is what enables readers to connect with his poetry on more than just the intellectual level. What Larkin admires in Betjeman, however, is not simply the skill to capture experience and emotion, but also his attitude: . . . he is an accepter, not a rejecter, of our time, registering ‘dear old, bloody old England’ with robustness, precision and a vivacious affection that shimmers continually between laughter and rage, his sense of the past casting long perspectives behind every observation. (129)

As in his comments on Pym’s novels, Larkin shows here an approval of a certain harsh-but-positive attitude on the writer’s part: while in Pym this implies an acceptance of who we are as individuals, in Betjeman it is extended to the socio-historical context of where and when we live. Needless to say, this is precisely what Larkin finds missing in the anomic Modernists. The “sense of past” which informs every observation in Betjeman is primarily a respect for tradition understood as “cultural heritage” by most Movement writers. This brings up an interesting point: although the cultural inclusiveness in Larkin’s own poetry is not as comprehensive as Betjeman’s, Larkin is sometimes perceived as the epitome of “Englishness.” Does this, as Andrew Crozier wonders, annex “poetic quality to an exclusive sense of cultural possession” (203)? And if so, how would this be different from something we could call “intellectual possession” in High Modernist texts? What is the significance and effect of “Domesday lines” (from “MCMXIV”), “Pullmans” and “Lincolnshire” (“The Whitsun Weddings”), or “Granny Graveclothes’ Tea” (“Essential Beauty”)? When we engage in the analysis of Larkin’s poems, it will be important to test their plainness against this possible charge of cultural elitism (or, alternatively, parochialism) and obscurity. Larkin himself hints at one possible answer: “The crucial point is whether the reader gets enough out of the work initially to make it worth his while solving the references to deepen his enjoyment” (Required Writing 215). Although Larkin never explicitly calls on any earlier masters of rhetoric or the plain style, the comments he makes about Betjeman’s technique are reminiscent of Aristotle and Ben Jonson. When he says that “Betjeman has an astonishing command of detail, both visual and circumstantial,” and that with him “the eye leads the spirit” (132; 207), he is invoking, in different terms, the stress on observation, particularity, and “bringing-before-the-eyes”

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expressed by the old masters. Just as Aristotle advises an appropriate combination of the ordinary and the poetic, Larkin praises Betjeman’s unique approach, “a blend of the direct and the round-about” (210). Even though the weight of Larkin’s comment is essentially on Betjeman’s ability to harmonize the unique and the eccentric with the familiar and the recognizable, the phrase is also an excellent description of Larkin’s own most successful writing style. The straightforward expression is curiously blended with the more indirect one in his best poems. That the combination of the direct and the round-about, the ordinary and the poetic speech, is indeed significant in Larkin’s approach to writing is confirmed in his peculiar view of the interrelation between prose and poetry. In an interview he says: A well-known publisher asked me how one punctuated poetry, and looked flabbergasted when I said, The same as prose. By which I mean that I write, or wrote, as everyone did till the mad lads started, using words and syntax in the normal way to describe recognizable experiences as memorably as possible. (Required Writing 75)

Larkin implies that pre-Modernist poetry was much closer to prose, or the “normal” way of using the language, than poetry has been since the Modernists, thus expressing the general feeling we have seen in Barthes and Steiner in the previous chapter.8 In fact, the last sentence in the quotation above recalls Steiner’s description of “vital acts of speech” (see 15 above), which we have adopted as a working definition of the plain style. The “memorable” description of experiences in Larkin’s poems corresponds to Steiner’s “fresh and ‘private’ content,” whereas Larkin’s “normal way” of using words (denotation) and syntax (relation) is the kind of speech which, according to Steiner, makes such a content “more publicly available.” Even though Larkin made important distinctions between novels and poems as two different forms of writing, his particular way of achieving those “vital acts of speech” seems partly to be in putting together some prosaic and some poetic features. As someone who for a long time wished to be a novelist and not a poet, Larkin was always sharply aware of some peculiarities of either form. While the poem “is a single emotional spear-point, a concentrated effect that is achieved by leaving everything out but the emotion itself ” (Required Writing 95), the novel has a much broader scope. In other words, “the poet relies on the intensity with which he can say [something about life],” while “the novelist relies on the persuasiveness with which he can show it” (95). The difference, then, seems to be between the intensity of

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the expression of emotion in poetry, and the detailed showing in prose. Or, to give Larkin’s example: “The poet says old age is sad; the novelist describes a group of old people” (95). But what could be a more detailed description of a group of old people than Larkin’s poem “The Old Fools”? Even just the first stanza shows the point: What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools, And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose, They could alter things back to when they danced all night, Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September? Or do they fancy there’s really been no change, And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight, Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming Watching light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange: Why aren’t they screaming?

The stanza certainly offers an emotion, as a poem should according to Larkin: we get a good sense of the speaker’s shocked, hysterical feeling of disgust for old age, which in the rest of the poem evolves into a more peaceful and even sympathetic consideration. But these unmistakably poetic lines— they are roughly of the same length, and have a rhyme scheme—offer so much more: a very graphic description, and an analytic thought process on the speaker’s part. This poem, in other words, has more than just an emotion which Larkin identifies as the sole body of a poem, and, interestingly, it is precisely these more prosaic features which seem to be enhancing the emotion the poem is trying to express. The visually sharp descriptive vignettes and the analytic process of going from a general query, through hypothetical answers expressed in the form of questions, to the final bewilderment help create the emotion the speaker is conveying. Of course, not all Larkin’s poems show this novelistic broader scope, or the “spreading” effect Larkin admires in the novel (Required Writing 49), but there are more examples of novelistic particularity, which somehow paves the way for the emotion. Terry Whalen, for example, invites a comparison between some of Larkin’s fiction and some of his poems, which occasionally share a certain “lyric-descriptive intensity” which can come from empirical observation (“Relocating Larkin’s Movement Poetic” 14). The passage from Larkin’s second novel, A Girl in Winter (1947), which Whalen holds up for

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inspection of empirical detail, has something that looks like a close version of a later poem embedded in it: A great good-humour filled the crowd, which was a local one from the surrounding villages. Every class of person wandered aimlessly about: village women, looking older than they were; knowledgeable farmers, who knew what neighbours had left at home in their stables as well as what they had brought to show; a tramp dressed in a long overcoat fastened with a safety-pin and with a wisp of grass drooping from his mouth, who stumped painfully round three sides of the field in order to buy a bottle of beer from the refreshment tent, and then retired to the foot of a five-barred gate to unwrap a large cheese sandwich. There were young men with raw, red necks and closely-tailored suits, young farmers’ sons who pushed through the crowd on their horses, groomed and braided for the occasion; unplaceable men who stared from the open sunshine-roofs of their cars; the fantastic older gentry, hardly to be taken seriously, in archaic tweeds, with old sticks and fobs and hat pins that had been worn through season after season of this same company and pursuit; and then there were the young gentry, on holiday. . . . (A Girl in Winter 111)

The poem “Show Saturday” from 1973 describes a similar occasion and shows the same attention to detail. We will look at the whole poem later, but the first two stanzas demonstrate sufficiently this particularity: Grey day for the Show, but cars jam the narrow lanes. Inside, on the field, judging has started: dogs (Set their legs back, hold out their tails) and ponies (manes Repeatedly smoothed, to calm heads); over there, sheep (Cheviot and Blackface); by the hedge, squealing logs (Chain Saw Competition). Each has its own keen crowd. In the main arena, more judges meet by a jeep: The jumping’s on next. Announcements, splutteringly loud, Clash with the quack of a man with pound notes round his hat And a lit-up board. There’s more than just animals: Bead-stalls, balloon-men, a Bank; a beer-marquee that Half-screens a canvas Gents; a tent selling tweed, And another, jackets. Folks sit about on bales Like great straw dice. For each scene is linked by spaces

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Not given to anything much, where kids scrap, freed, While their owners stare different ways with incurious faces.

A feel of “God’s plenty” links the poem to the prose passage, and in both cases it has been achieved through meticulous description. But, again, these two stanzas are undeniably part of a poem: as in “The Old Fools,” the lines are fairly even with approximately 12 syllables in each, and there is a consistent rhyming pattern (abacbdcd), though made less noticeable as a result of enjambment. Also, in comparison to the prose extract, the poem has a certain “roundedness” or intensity to it: by the end of it, a deep feeling of respect for the observed on the speaker’s part is developed. These examples take us back to Larkin’s suggestion that the poetry he writes resembles pre-Modernist poetry, in that it shares an important point with (pre-Modernist) prose: a commonly used language, which ensures general intelligibility. Such an attitude towards literary, and more specifically, poetic, language confirms the importance of the non-professional (that is, non-academic) readership in Larkin’s understanding of poetry. Dissatisfied that “in this century English poetry went off on a loop-line that took it away from the general reader” (Required Writing 216), Larkin is obviously interested in popularizing poetry once again. In this, he resembles George Orwell, who in 1943 writes that the common person’s feeling is that “the divorce between poetry and popular culture” is “a sort of law of nature,” and that “poetry is disliked because it is associated with unintelligibility, intellectual pretentiousness, and a general feeling of Sunday-on-a-weekday” (“Poetry and the Microphone” 242; 243).9 As the title of Orwell’s essay suggests, a possible way of popularizing poetry again is through the radio—Larkin and some other Movement poets did take part in such an attempt in the fifties. If the radio was the means of popularizing poetry advocated by Orwell and Sartre in the forties, then the underground transport is an “updated” version of this attempt from the eighties onwards. Indeed, Larkin was involved in the Underground Poetry project, started in London in 1985 by the American writer Judith Chernaik. As the footnote to Larkin’s letter to her says, Chernaik had asked Larkin for his opinion and financial help from a committee he was a member of (Selected Letters 733 n1). Larkin’s reply was as enthusiastic as his already failing health would allow: . . . let me say that I found your idea more original and more attractive than subsidising the production of one more unread magazine or anthology. I have always liked the Wayside Pulpit placards (‘Don’t Put Your Wishbone Where Your Backbone Ought To Be’), and think it

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” might be equally inspiring to be able to read on a tube journey poems that served as a reminder that the world of imagination existed. (733–4)

The implication is clear: there is a divide between poetry (the kind published in magazines and anthologies and read by few) and popular culture, and the “tube” might serve as the lost bridge between the two. The function of poetry, Larkin is saying, is to touch people’s imagination and give them inspiration, not to make them work hard at it.10 The idea of popularization or democratization of poetry brings back questions we have mentioned regarding the “general reader”: what does an intention to reach a mass audience, or “the common man,” mean in aesthetic terms? Or as Larkin says in his letter to Chernaik, “What level of appreciation are you aiming at?” (734). He adds immediately: “Somerset Maugham, in his play-writing days, said that if you saw the audiences’ taste in terms of the alphabet, it was best to aim at letter O” (734). This is an intriguing thought, but what exactly does it mean? Not giving the best or the most sophisticated works (presumably, letter Z) to the audience since they won’t be able to appreciate them? Although Larkin claimed he had “never been didactic” in his poetry (Required Writing 74), with respect to the public taste, he might be coming close to some ideas expressed earlier by Orwell. In “Poetry and the Microphone,” Orwell finds it “difficult to believe that poetry can ever be popularized again without some deliberate effort at the education of public taste, involving strategy and perhaps even subterfuge” (243). Not going as far as suggesting the employment of “subterfuge,” or even explicit “education” of public taste, Larkin does at times show an unease with the demands of the general readership. “Fiction and the Reading Public” from 1954 captures this feeling: Give me a thrill, says the reader, Give me a kick; I don’t care how you succeed, or What subject you pick. Choose something you know all about That’ll sound like real life: Your childhood, your Dad pegging out, How you sleep with your wife. But that’s not sufficient, unless You make me feel good -

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Whatever you’re ‘trying to express’ Let it be understood That ‘somehow’ God plaits up the threads, Makes ‘all for the best,’ That we may lie quiet in our beds And not be ‘depressed.’ For I call the tune in this racket: I pay your screw, Write reviews and the bull on the jacket So stop looking blue And start serving up your sensations Before it’s too late; Just please me for two generations You’ll be ‘truly great.’

While some details from the first stanza can be seen as a valid demand for realism in writing, it is the second stanza which shows the low-brow or unrefined desires on the readers’ part: all they want is to feel good, and believe there is a higher force looking after them. As the quotation marks suggest, the readers are perfectly aware of the clichéd status of some frequent ideas or expressions in literature they want, but it is precisely those they demand. In fact, the “thrill,” the “kick,” and the “sensations” they are asking for show the sensationalist texts they are referring to as a kind of a drug, a “fix” people need to escape daily frustrations. The last stanza reveals the economic reality of the publishing market: bad public taste directs the kinds of texts which are being published, which in their turn “feed” the bad public taste, and so the cycle continues until a new “fad” appears, and it starts all over again. The poem does not go into details about the causes of such a situation, but considered along with Larkin’s numerous comments on the role Modernism played in the separation of literature from the general public, “Fiction and the Reading Public” is one of Larkin’s bitterest comments on the state of public taste after the early-twentieth-century literary experiments. Given this view on Larkin’s part, perhaps the “letter O” of the audiences’ taste can be seen as two things. It is an attempt to avoid further alienation of the general reader caused by what is deemed the best by the existing canon-making authorities, but it is also an attempt to avoid some artistically harmful aspects of the “lowest common denominator” which is sometimes mistakenly supposed to be the basis for the common reader. Larkin’s ideas about his own writing and its reception show an interesting turning of the tables on those who feel that general readers

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do not have sharp enough critical faculties. Explaining how his “Naturally the Foundation Will Bear Your Expenses” was misunderstood by a poet and an editor, he says: “There is nothing like writing poems for realizing how low the level of critical understanding is; maybe the average reader can understand what I say, but the above-average often can’t” (as qtd. in Hamilton “Four Conversations” 76). Larkin’s delicate positioning between an openness to popular audience or culture, and an awareness of its weak spots which developed in the first half of the twentieth century captures some of the intellectual debates around the midcentury. On the one hand, there was the influential figure of George Orwell. Orwell was admired by many members of the Movement since, as John Rodden says, he was truly receptive to popular culture; in Orwell’s own words, he attempted to explore “the emotional overlap between the intellectual and the common man” (as qtd. in Rodden 227). On the other hand, there were the remnants and new forms of the mass-culture debate from the twenties and the thirties, mainly led by such advocates of “high culture” as T. S. Eliot. In his Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948) Eliot, who was and still is one of the highest-ranking names of the literary canon, maintains: For there is no doubt that in our headlong rush to educate everybody, we are lowering our standards, and more and more abandoning the study of those subjects by which the essentials of our culture—of that part of it which is transmissible by education—are transmitted; destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in their mechanized caravans. (108)

With Orwell’s focus on popular culture and Eliot’s outright denial of the existence of such culture, we are entering a wider socio-historical context relevant for Larkin’s work. Although he wasn’t interested in social or political literature per se (see “The Writer in His Age” in Further Requirements), Larkin did appreciate the importance of the social context in poetry. As he says in an interview following the publication of his Anthology, some of the poems were selected because they “show you what the 20th century was like” (“‘A great parade of single poems’” 473). Put differently, we can understand Larkin’s artistic stance and his poetry better if we look at some cultural trends which surrounded him, and which may have found their way into some aspect of his work. What are, for example, the concomitants of the mid-century plain style? The famous quotation from Robert Conquest’s anthology New Lines (1956), where some of the first Movement poems were collected, gives the best account of what was at the time considered to be the relevant frame of reference:

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If one had briefly to distinguish this poetry of the fifties from its predecessors, I believe the most important general point would be that it submits to no great systems of theoretical constructs nor agglomerations of unconscious commands. It is free from both mystical and logical compulsions and—like modern philosophy—is empirical in its attitude to all that comes. This reverence for the real person or event is, indeed, a part of the general intellectual ambience . . . of our time. One might, without stretching matters too far, say that George Orwell with his principle of real, rather than ideological, honesty, exerted, even though indirectly, one of the major influences on modern poetry. On the more technical side, though of course related to all this, we see refusal to abandon a rational structure and comprehensible language, even when the verse is most highly charged with sensuous or emotional intent. (XV)

Although Conquest’s Introduction to the Anthology has met with some refutation even by the very poets who were included,11 this particular description of the new poetry of the fifties points to some general concerns which are usually uncontested. We recognize in it two major features of the plain style: empirical attitude and comprehensible language. While the quality of comprehensibility and rational structuring isn’t ascribed to any particular tradition, it recalls the main points of Yvor Winters’ theory, which later also appeared in a modified form in Donald Davie (see Chapter One). As for empiricism, Conquest defines it as the opposite of any theoretical systems, and as an interest in the “real.” We have seen such an “intellectual ambience” in the earlier contexts of the plain style, but it is now specifically related to “modern philosophy” and George Orwell. Modern philosophy in 1956 was Ordinary Language Philosophy, which flourished from 1945 to about 1960 primarily in Oxford, where some of the Movement writers (Larkin and Amis, for example) went to university in the early forties. The school of Ordinary Language Philosophy, which has a number of similarities with the Movement’s attitude to language, is often considered a descendent of the brand of Logical Positivism developed by A. J. Ayer in the thirties, when he taught philosophy at Oxford. Ayer’s principal work, Language, Truth and Logic (1935), is an open attack on metaphysics, which, unlike true philosophy, is interested in a “reality transcending the world of science and common sense” (Ayer 45). Putting forward what he regards as the commonsensical philosophy of John Locke and the empiricism of David Hume, Ayer proposes his famous “criterion of verifiability,” which

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is a test of whether a sentence expresses a genuine proposition about a matter of fact: . . . a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express— that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false. (48)

A statement is “verified,” in other words, by testing it against one’s—real or imagined, but relevant—“observations” in a similar real-world situation. The statements for which we can’t determine this aren’t “literally significant,” and can’t tell us anything meaningful about the world. We recognize here a potential source of Conquest’s demand for a “real person or event” in poetry, which Crozier later refers to as a “verification requirement”: a reminder that the Movement belongs, though not in such strictly formal terms as Ayer develops them, to the general empirical trends in the contemporary intellectual milieu. This can partly explain why Larkin took seriously those instances in which his poems failed to be verified by some of his readers. While Ayer, as a Logical Positivist, remains within the framework of formal logic, Ordinary Language Philosophy offers some stylistic tenets which come closer to the Movement’s interests. The members of this philosophical school were against lofty or incoherent rhetorical style and whereas they accepted elegance in writing, they disliked “the riddle-spinning, paradox-delighting ‘deep’ discourse of most contemporary continental philosophers” (Craig 149). In their own version of the plain-difficult controversy, these philosophers believed that distortions of ordinary language, in fact, might even be the cause of many philosophical problems. This stylistic attitude was accompanied by a more strictly philosophical stance: rejection of philosophical “theories.” Wittgenstein, the most important representative of the school in the latter part of his career, said that theory imposes artificial theoretical preconceptions on the real world. In terms of procedure, this means “piecemeal,” step-by-step scrutiny of particulars, or, to use a term already used in connection with Ben Jonson and his admiration for Francis Bacon: induction (see 32–33 above). For Wittgenstein, in linguistic terms this means that “what we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday usage” (as qtd. in Craig 150). The power and resources of ordinary language are particularly valued by later philosophers, such as J. L. Austin, who believes that in the context of perceptual matters everyday language can show exquisite subtlety and complexity. Indeed, he might even be

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suggesting that if we use everyday language accurately, “we may in the end see no need for the invention of new terminology or the continuation of theories” (Craig 152). Even though the anti-theory, ordinary-language philosophical trend becomes increasingly unpopular after 1960, it does capture an attitude which has a lot in common with the plain style in general, and which seems to have been influential among the Movement writers. Their plainness and ordinariness is also linked with the important influence of George Orwell. As John Rodden suggests, Orwell is most popularly known as a champion of “the common man,” and this phrase itself suggests a variety of ideas: “common sense, decency, plain-speaking, accessible writing, justice for all, defense of the underdog” (176). Even though Orwell’s image and reputation has had a number of ups and downs in the last fifty years, it is widely accepted that many young British intellectuals in the fifties took their cue from Orwell in how they approached literature and their audience. As a down-to-earth man who was suspicious of academic institutions, Orwell contributed to the “Movement’s sense of responsibility towards the ‘large’ rather than the ‘small’ audience” (Morrison 131). This responsibility manifested itself not only in the avoidance of what was seen as Modernist linguistic obscurity, but also in stressing the commonality between the writer and the reader. Orwell’s explicit views on language are best known from his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1948), where he makes a direct link between bad language habits, unclear thinking, and political and ideological confusion. His ideas are not concerned with the literary use of language, but they overlap with some crucial aspects of the literary plain style. Orwell finds that the greatest enemy of clear language is abstractions, which allow for vague and ready-made phrases; significantly, as he says, “the whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness” (354). Resembling to a certain extent Aristotle in his advocacy of the “bringing-before-the-eyes” aspect of a good speech, Orwell advises: “Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures and sensations” (358–9). Even though this particular idea was (rightly) attacked as incorrect in the sense that it suggests an artificial separation between language and other mental processes, it shows that Orwell had a plain-stylist’s sense of the importance of the concrete (and visual) over the abstract in writing. Orwell’s attitude to language, however, has been one of the most hotly debated issues in Orwell studies, an issue which also contains a key question about the plain style. According to Rodden, there is something paradoxical in Orwell’s relationship to language: “Orwell sought fresh, powerful figures

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of speech and precise expression. . . . He wanted, as it were, the simplicity and economy of Newspeak without its distortions and semantic impoverishment” (40). This comment seems to imply that both things are not possible, and Orwell is often seen as self-contradictory, or in some extreme cases, as schizophrenic. But how impossible is it to reconcile these two demands, the demand for inventiveness and the demand for clarity? The viability of the literary plain style hinges on the assumption that the two can indeed be brought together, and it is the most important test to apply to any poem aspiring to the plain status. The particular critique of the plain style we have seen in Hugh Kenner, for example—that literary plainness is misleading and a perfect medium for hoaxes—originates in a related distrust in the plain style. There is no such thing as clarity, Kenner seems to be saying, since it is always riddled with complex implications or intentions. Accordingly, Orwell has been claimed equally by the intellectuals of the Left and those of the Right, and, as Rodden points out, the adjective “Orwellian” has assumed “a kind of oddly reversible figure of epideictic rhetoric” (32). It has been used both to praise and to slam a certain style or a certain ideology the particular critic is associating with Orwell. Is the plain style truly so easily conducive to such paradoxical interpretations? What is in earlier times perceived as a generally desirable lack of artifice, or “plainness,” in speaking and writing, seems to have undergone a reversal in the twentieth century. The apparent lack of artifice is seen by some critics as the most artificial of all artifices and therefore suspicious in ideological terms. In Orwell’s case, this suspicion was fed by his explicit and well-developed interest in politics and social issues: someone like that, the reasoning goes, must have a suspicious agenda in speaking plainly. When we add to this the backdrop of the turbulent thirties and forties when most of Orwell’s writing was done, we get a good idea of the confusion the plain style might engender when it overlaps with certain social trends. How does one write or read any text in an environment threatened by the communist and/or fascist totalitarianisms? Larkin and the other Movement writers, who come some twenty years after Orwell and write in fairly different circumstances, seem to have inherited some of the critical distrust originally associated with Orwell’s plain style. First, to some, their place in the canon is dubious, and second, their plainness and ordinariness are sometimes perceived as a studied pretence motivated by a particular agenda of “winning over” the mass audience (see Tomlinson’s comments on page 3). It is important to recognize that, while certainly relevant to the consideration of any plain style, the views on the plain style similar to Kenner’s come from a specific critical tradition of the twentieth century, which is particularly related to Orwell. The commonality between the writer and the reader, considered as part of that “responsibility” the Movement writers were encouraged to feel towards

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their readers, is best expressed in the idea that the poet is not a Romantic seer. To borrow Alvarez’s phrase, “he is just like the man next door—in fact, he probably is the man next door” (25). The treatment of heroes as “nonheroes” (Morrison 172), noticeable in Orwell’s characters such as George Bowling from Coming Up For Air (1939), contributes to this idea of ordinariness and is often found both in the Movement prose and the Movement poetry. Just as Bowling, in every sense average but curiously likeable, decides after numerous temptations not to walk out on his family and to remain within the bounds of his small life, Larkin’s speaker in “Poetry of Departures” soberly decides traditional heroism is overrated: Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand, As epitaph: He chucked up everything And just cleared off, And always the voice will sound Certain you approve This audacious, purifying, Elemental move. And they are right, I think. We all hate home And having to be there: I detest my room, Its specially-chosen junk, The good books, the good bed, And my life, in perfect order: So to hear it said He walked out on the whole crowd Leaves me flushed and stirred, Like Then she undid her dress Or Take that you bastard; Surely I can, if he did? And that helps me stay Sober and industrious. But I’d go today, Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads, Crouch in the fo’c’sle

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” Stubbly with goodness, if It weren’t so artificial, Such a deliberate step backwards To create an object: Books; china; a life Reprehensibly perfect.

The tension in the speaker between a certain attraction to the swaggering-heroic “chucking it all up” and the sobering realization of the artificiality of such a stance, which is resolved in his remaining “industrious,” becomes clearer in the light of the contemporary sociological context. On the one hand, the democratic ideals of the Welfare State ushered in by the Labour Party in post-war Britain encouraged the representation in poetry of an ordinary “non-hero” like Larkin’s speaker, who in his feelings probably stands for the majority of people. In the atmosphere of egalitarianism, everyone, including the poet, was to be “a civil servant, a responsible citizen, responsibly employed” (Morrison 178). Larkin’s speaker who most explicitly, though begrudgingly and somewhat ironically, expresses such a work ethic is, of course, the one in “Toads Revisited”: in the end he addresses the “old toad” work, asking it to “help [him] down Cemetery Road.” Even though this responsibility may have been enforced by the circumstances which discouraged any attempts to “transcend” reality—Larkin found his job as a librarian after he got a letter from The Ministry of Labour in 1943 inquiring about what he was doing (Required Writing 51)—it seemed to have developed into a genuine world-view. As Larkin himself says, like most Movement writers, he came from “a solid background in which everybody worked. No question about it. It was immoral not to work” (as qtd. in Morrison 177). However, the very existence of the tension in Larkin’s speakers who deal with this issue, and their inevitable reconciliation with the situation, has also been branded as “a failure of nerve,” regarded by some as typical of the Movement writers. Caught in between their reputation as the new poets on the post-war British literary scene and their education at the “old Establishment’s” universities, they reputedly verge on a certain social impotence in their writing, an inability to go beyond a “limited revolt” (Morrison 86). Larkin’s speaker in “The Poetry of Departures,” for example, hates his “life, in perfect order” and is “flushed and stirred” by other possibilities, but some part of him overrules this small rebellion and he chooses to obey the authority of work. However symptomatic of the Movement’s state of mind, this poem records sincerely the different motions such a state of mind entails.

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The Movement’s distrust of extreme individuality taking over communal interests comes partly from its specific historical position, and has particular stylistic implications. In the wake of the Second World War and its chaotic horrors, what was needed was self-control and moderation. Donald Davie’s speaker in “Creon’s Mouse” wonders “if too much daring brought . . . the war” and concludes that what is now needed is “a self-induced and stubborn loss of nerve” (as qtd. in Morrison 87). To Davie, the loss of nerve is a positive attribute and he will “stubbornly” pursue it. He says this even more clearly in his New Lines piece, “Rejoinder to a Critic,” where the speaker wonders who can possibly be “injured by [his] love;” recent history gives him a crushing answer: “half Japan!” The extreme carefulness with everything, including the feelings, after the massive disaster of the forties is embedded in self-qualifications typical of many Movement writers. Always a little sceptical about the authority of the individual, even when it’s oneself, they leave a margin for a possible mistake. As we will see, Larkin’s poetry is full of such qualifications. To his mind, such a poetic procedure was part and parcel of the honesty and clarity he felt was necessary in poetry. Asked in an interview to comment on this, Larkin says he wouldn’t want to write a poem which made him look different from who he actually is, and adds: . . . you have to build in quite a lot of things to correct any impression of over-optimism or over-commitment. For instance, take love poems. I should feel it false to write a poem going overboard about someone if you weren’t at the same time marrying them and setting up house with them, and I should feel bound to add what you call a tag to make it clear I wasn’t, if I wasn’t. Do you see what I mean? I think that one of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another, a false relation between art and life. I always try to avoid this. (as qtd. in Hamilton “Four Conversations” 75)

Being true to who you are, and making it clear, is obviously what Larkin holds important in writing, and who they all were, according to Davie, was to a significant extent effected by the war. This ideology of scepticism and caution has its repercussions in Davie’s own poetics, expressed in Purity of Diction in English Verse, where he advocates coherence and order in writing. As we have seen in Chapter One, Davie finds orderly syntax to be one of the key elements not only of pure diction, but also of lawful society. In an interesting, if somewhat stretched, comparison, Davie claims that “to dislocate syntax in poetry is to threaten the rule of law in the civilized community”

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(99). As Davie sees it, Pound’s putting faith in individual words and broken phrases in his imagist poetry leads naturally to his putting faith not in human institutions but in individuals, such as Mussolini. Davie, therefore, calls for a neo-classical aesthetic where coherence and “accepted meanings” (100) win over the raw material of personal experience, prominent in Symbolism, Imagism or Modernism.12 This attitude, even when it is only vaguely present in the Movement prose or poetry, leaves them open to charges of conservatism, which have indeed been heard in the criticism especially after A. Alvarez’s Introduction to his anthology The New Poetry from 1962. Describing the Movement poetry as “polite, knowledgeable, efficient, polished” and “quiet” (23), Alvarez diagnoses their deficiency in the persisting “gentility principle”: “a belief that life is always more or less orderly, people always more or less polite, their emotions and habits more or less decent and more or less controllable . . .” (25). At a safer distance from the war, Alvarez calls for a “new seriousness” in poetry, which is the poet’s willingness to face the contemporary “forces of disintegration” such as the two wars, concentration camps, genocide, the threat of nuclear war, and so on (28; 26). In other words, someone with Larkin’s ideology and poetic expression is a polished poet, but not a poet of social urgency. What we have come up against here is a clash between two different understandings of what literature is or should be. On the one hand, there’s Alvarez, who, in the tradition of Sartre or Orwell, believes that social commitment is a raison d’être of literature.13 On the other hand, there is Larkin, who believes that a “prime mover” in literature should be the imagination which is not the servant of “the intellect and the social conscience . . . and may even be at variance with them” (Further Requirements 4). Good social and political literature has to originate in the imagination, he claims; and if the work is not about “the changes in social structure,” then these changes should be “no more than background, and as such should be implicit rather than stated” (3). Larkin’s poems, for the most part, do not originate in the social conscience, but often display such an implicit social background. The fact that Larkin chooses to write the poems moved by his imagination in the plain style, confirms our earlier suggestion that the plain style transcends any one motivation. Rather than explicit social or political engagement, the source of Larkin’s plain style seems to be a wish to record honestly and accessibly himself and his experiences in his time and place. In both cases, however, the necessity for intelligibility is emphasized: in the socially committed literature, because what is felt to be of communal importance is being conveyed to the general readership, and in Larkin’s poetry, because he finds it his

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duty to show and promote the relationship between art and life which can be meaningful in everyone’s life. Larkin’s personal artistic preference is in line with a wider cultural context of his time. The Movement’s reluctance to be socially engaged, for example, is sometimes attributed to the ambivalence of their social position we have already mentioned. With one foot in the “old,” pre-war world, which also provided their education, and the other in the new, pro-democratic society, they found themselves between the two or in both worlds. The old one was marked by what seemed to be a stable, hierarchical society, while the new one was permeated with an egalitarian spirit and the resulting “individualization.” This clash of the old and new ideologies sometimes results in a curious ambivalence or a potential ambiguity in some Movement writing. In Larkin, for example, there is a certain joy in mentioning the sheer physicality of things, mass-produced and displayed in a world of modern economy, and lists of these are not unusual in his poems: (Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose, In browns and greys, maroon and navy) .................... But past the heaps of shirts and trousers Spread the stands of Modes For Night: Machine-embroidered, thin as blouses, Lemon, sapphire, moss-green, rose Bri-Nylon Baby Dolls and Shorties Flounce in clusters. (“The Large Cool Store”) Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies, Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers (“Here”)

At the same time, as Alan Sinfield remarks, “Larkin’s characteristic tone is a bemused alienation from the modern world” (93). “The Large Cool Store” items and what is related to them are eventually seen from a distance as “unearthly,” “synthetic,” and “natureless,” while the observing eye in “Here” swerves past everything and ends up in a “bluish neutral distance,” away from it all. In other poems, such as “Church Going,” this alienation seems to be resolved through conscious looking back to some constants of the “old” world: religion, for example. But this, too, is qualified. The pragmatic,

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market-oriented England of the fifties and the sixties did not uphold the traditional, organized religion of before, and the feeling which Larkin’s speaker recuperates in “Church Going” is a kind of “personal religiousness,” or a “privatized religion” (Sinfield 93). The church the speaker is looking at is “A serious house on serious earth” and is “proper to grow wise in” but not so much because it is a place of God as because “so many dead lie round.” The spirituality sought for and found by the speaker is not gained through an explicit link with the divine but through a personal bond with other humans (even if it is the dead he has in mind), naturally revealed in the church graveyard, where the aura of the “earlier” attitude to religion still lingers. Such ideologically complex places pose important questions for us. Does the clarity of similar Larkin poems suffer or gain from what might at first sight seem to be an ambivalence, or a non-commitment? Does a complex set of feelings or attitudes have to be resolved—the way it is in “Church Going,” for example—for a poem to be plain? Before we take a close look at how Larkin’s poems work, we can suggest that Larkin has a coherent poetics which, in important aspects, has affinities with certain earlier plain style traditions. His open disagreement with the main tenets of Modernism points, first of all, to an anti-elitist concept of art and poetry in particular. In avoiding specialized references and “institutionalized” difficulty, poetry is primarily seen as a means of expressing and inciting emotion and providing the reader with pleasure, and a commonsensical response to life. Communication to the general audience–-the audience that doesn’t consist exclusively of professional, academic readers–-is attempted through an empirical approach to the subject-matter and intelligibility in writing. The stress Larkin generally puts on observation, particularity and ordinariness is in line with a more comprehensive intellectual environment of his time, which was dominated by anti-theoretical, ordinary-language philosophy. Intelligibility and effectiveness, on the other hand, are achieved through the employment of a commonly used lexis and syntax and a blending of prosaic explicitness and poetic intensity. The appeal to large audiences and the idea of the popularization of poetry, which are implied in Larkin’s statements and poetic techniques, can be placed within the context of post-war democratic ideals. Just as the egalitarian spirit of scientific development in the seventeenth century resulted in an advocacy and practice of the plain style, the egalitarian spirit of Britain in the fifties and the sixties promoted the revival of a neo-classical aesthetic, in which order and commonality (communality) are emphasized over individuality. These are, however, only general tendencies functioning in Larkin’s poetry. As is the case with other Movement authors, his writing is occasionally

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informed by tensions arising from the environment: the struggle to find the general reader between the academic and sensationalist extremes; the double position of the last witnesses of the old ideologies and the first witnesses of the new ones; and the hesitation between the impressive attraction of Modernism (or Dylan Thomas—see 50) and the felt necessity for reestablishing a more genuine contact with the readers. In other words, even though Larkin is undeniably “plainer” than the Modernists, places of ambiguity or ambivalence have been highlighted by different critics, who ultimately question the plainness of such poetry or its appropriateness to the modern world. The next chapter categorizes and examines the plain and other strategies in Larkin’s poems, attempting to delineate the quality of plainness and ultimately answer the question whether the plain style can be complex without being difficult.

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Chapter Three

Rhetorical Strategies I

LARKIN VERSUS LARKIN: A LOOK AT TWO POEMS Larkin’s stylistic plainness is undoubtedly an artistic feat which demanded the development of skill and constant practice over the years. This becomes clear if we read his poetry chronologically. Clumsy echoes of older literary voices (Dylan Thomas, Yeats, Lawrence), sometimes awkward expression of a poetically-minded adolescent, and an occasional hint of later interests and directions in his early poetry, give way in his later poetry to a firmly established voice of his own, one that is gradually perfected into a precise tool of lyric expression. We can easily see this if we put side by side a thematically related pair of his poems, written at different stages of his career. The two poems below were written within ten years of each other: “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb” is from 1943, while the centerpiece of The Less Deceived, and probably the most frequently anthologized Larkin poem, “Church Going,” is from 1954. Both poems attempt to express the speaker’s attitude to religion, but even a cursory look at how this is done in the two versions will show us vast differences in style and, consequently, quality of the poem. “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb” Planted deeper than roots, This chiselled, flung-up faith Runs and leaps against the sky, A prayer killed into stone Among the always-dying trees; Windows throw back the sun And hands are folded in their work at peace,

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” Though where they lie The dead are shapeless in their shapeless earth. Because, though taller than the elms, It forever rejects the soil, Because its suspended bells Beat when the birds are dumb, And men are buried, and leaves burnt Every indifferent autumn, I have looked on that proud front And the calm locked into walls, I have worshipped that whispering shell. Yet the wound, O see the wound This petrified heart has taken, Because, created deathless, Nothing but death remained To scatter magnificence; And now what scaffolded mind Can rebuild the experience As coral is set budding under seas, Though none, O none sees what patterns it is making? (1943)

“Church Going” Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church, matting, seats, and stone, And little books, sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now, some brass and stuff Up at the holy end, the small neat organ, And tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.

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Rhetorical Strategies I Mounting to the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce ‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for. Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end up much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches fall completely out of use What shall we turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer; or on some Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort or other will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die, And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky, A shape less recognisable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh? Or will he be my representative, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” So long and equably what since is found Only in separation—marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these—for which was built This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round. (1954)

A formal similarity between the two poems is in their nine-line stanzas, while in terms of ideas and tone, they both highlight a certain reverence for the church on the speaker’s part. This, however, is where the similarities end. ”A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb” belongs to a more rhetorically elevated poetic diction, perhaps in the tradition of Dylan Thomas. Even though the title is as explicit as it can be about the object of the speaker’s gaze or thought, the poem itself is not as clear. The speaker does tell us at the end of the second stanza what the motivation for his lyrical-emotional outburst is—“I have worshipped that whispering shell”—but his description of the related feelings is often somewhat obscured by oblique or overblown expression. The first stanza, for example, suffers from mixed metaphors: the church is referred to in terms of something planted, with the possible suggestion of being alive (“Planted deeper than roots”), but the semantic field then switches to the idea of fixity, and later, stone (“chiselled”; “A prayer killed into stone”), to shift yet again to the concept of motion and activity (“Runs and leaps against the sky”). Although the title and some key-words (“prayer,” “faith”) help the reader understand what is (indirectly) referred to, the images lack a certain conceptual consistence. Another cause of the blurred meaning in the poem are a few clumsy or insufficiently contextualized phrases. For instance, the metonymic “hands . . . folded in their work at peace” in the first stanza can, of course, be made to make sense but are a little problematic. Are they the hands of worshippers

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folded in prayer? Or are they the hands of the dead folded “at peace”? Or, perhaps, the hands carved in headstones? And, in relation to this, what kind of contrast or qualification does the logical connective “though” in the following line introduce: is the adjective “shapeless” ascribed to the dead and to the earth in the last line of the stanza supposed to be contrasted to the “folded” hands, or to the fact that their work is done “at peace”? In the third stanza, the effect aimed at through the use of traductio doesn’t really come off: the logic of “created deathless / Nothing but death remained / To scatter magnificence” isn’t completely satisfactory; the paradox of “deathless” and “death” is intriguing but somewhat puzzling (a little like Dylan Thomas’ “immortal hospital” was puzzling to Larkin—see 50). And how exactly are the “patterns” the budding coral under seas is making related to the rebuilding of the damaged church and “the experience”? How would these patterns translate into a religious experience, which seems to be what the speaker is focused on? The second stanza is the clearest in its meaning, not just as a result of the fairly uncomplicated imagery but also as a result of a more explicit use of logical connectives, such as “because.” The opening “Because” in the first and the third lines helps show the connection between the string of images in the first six lines and the speaker’s feelings expressed in the last three: the constancy and solid presence of the church amidst the transitoriness or indifference of life is what makes the speaker admire and worship it. This logical connectedness (however basic or “mechanical” even in this stanza) is not equally built into the other two stanzas, so for the most part the poem reads as a string of images and an occasional statement, such as “I have worshipped this whispering shell.” This procedure certainly points to the strength or depth of feeling on the speaker’s part, but it remains on the level of idiosyncratic sentiment and fails to create empathy—the key element in getting the reader committed to the full body of the poem. True, the reader is invited to participate in the speaker’s experience—“O see the wound / This petrified heart has taken,” appeals the voice in the third stanza—but the mainly associative, image-dominated procedure in the poem doesn’t facilitate the reader’s complete engagement. What we come away with after reading the poem is an impression of the speaker who feels strongly about the church and its current fate, some of whose associations we might perhaps share— but, on the whole, we look at him and his experience from a slight distance, not completely drawn into his rather stagy self-expression. The main reason for this is a lack of further (or preceding) development of his stated feelings or ideas. He doesn’t ease us into the depths he is trying to express, his language sounds consciously poetic and forceful, and instead of understanding

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how he got to feel the way he does (which would help us identify with him), we are left with only an option of judging summarily his statements as either applicable or inapplicable. In terms of the Movement poetic discourse, Larkin had not yet adopted the Movement aesthetic credo, aptly put by D. J. Enright in “On the Death of a Child,” where he confines “the greatest griefs” to “the smallest cage” since “the big words fail to fit.” They fail to fit because they take up “improper room.” The use of the word “improper” is, of course, very telling: “proper” expression is not only an aesthetic choice (propriety is one of the key elements in Cicero’s definition of the Attic orator), but also an ethical one. “The big words” are immodest and a kind of waste, and, in fact, they are self-celebratory and aren’t suited to the occasion. Though dealing with essentially the same issues, “Church Going” is very different in all important aspects of poetic form, structure and diction. Unlike “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb,” where (except for the title) the church is referred to exclusively through metaphors, “Church Going” takes us into an actual (that is, recognizable) church in line 3. The first two stanzas serve the purpose of an exposition: through almost prose-like narration and description, the scene is set. Perhaps even more importantly, the speaking voice is deictically anchored in a clearly defined subjectivity: between the early appearance of “I” in the first line of the poem and the beginning of the third stanza, we get a fair number of clues as to what kind of personality lies behind this “I.” Even though he is not fond of services (he first makes sure “there’s nothing going on”), this person is a frequent visitor of churches, who perhaps feels a slight dose of monotony in these visits (“another church”). He isn’t a specialist on church matters, and quite probably not a regular worshipper (he sees “stuff / Up at the holy end”). This somehow seems to be reinforced by his emphasized ordinariness (he is just a guy with “cycle-clips”). Despite all this, there is something in churches which always makes him feel “at a loss” and entices an “awkward reverence” in him—a feeling which he then proceeds to explain and analyse in the following three stanzas, and which leads him to a kind of epiphany in the last two stanzas. This exposition in the first two stanzas is fleshed out with minute details observed by our speaker, who empirically records auditive (“the door thud shut”), visual (“brownish” flowers), and olfactory (“musty” silence) impressions. The speaker’s sensory and mental processes in the opening serve to make us feel “at home” in his subjectivity, and identify with his perspective. A good example of this is the beginning of the second stanza, where our perspective is literally limited by the speaker’s physical position, movements, and knowledge (or lack thereof ): [I] “Move forward, run my hand around

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the font. / From where I stand, the roof looks almost new—/ Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.” This gradual but firm establishment of subjectivity not only helps towards the reader’s identification with the speaker but also serves as one of the most important structural principles in the poem: it is the coherence of the central subjectivity that dictates the order and logic of the described impressions and thoughts. These, since they seem to be coming from a unified and conceivable source, appear to the reader as “natural” and easy to follow. In short, the persona developed minutely in the first two stanzas of “Church Going” is an efficient device for the creation of empathy1 in the reader, and a more successful structural principle than the loosely linked images in “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb.” The empirical exposition, focused primarily on the speaker’s physical experience, is then followed by a three-stanza-long reflective section, aptly introduced by the verb “reflect” in the last line of the second stanza. The superficial reflection, still on the level of physical realities, that “the place was not worth stopping for,” is then cut short by a contrasting thought, introduced by “yet” in the third stanza. Identifying in himself a feeling of being “at a loss” and “wondering,” the speaker goes on to consider analytically the fate of churches in his time, which swiftly turns out to be “our” time too, after the use of the more-inclusive pronoun “we” in line five of the third stanza. Clearly moving from a sensory, concrete level to a speculative, abstract level, in these three stanzas the speaker presents us with a thought process of one who is asking questions, wondering, and imagining different possibilities. Even though the central structural principle in this section is the associative train of thought in the speaker’s mind, his associations are shown in an orderly manner, with links supplied between them (churches as museums, alternative uses, different superstitions, types of future visitors). Importantly, the same semantic field opened up in the exposition is holding together this section too: the speaker’s abstract thinking is strewn with imaginable and relevant details such as “churches,” “cathedrals,” “parchment,” “plate,” “pyx,” “cases,” “rood-lofts,” “Christmas-addict,” “gown-and-bands,” “organ-pipes” and “myrrh.” In other words, even though the speaker’s physical sphere has been left behind, the reader is still moving fairly easily along the well-plotted paths of the speaker’s inner world. (This somehow works even when we bump into an occasional more difficult word, such as “pyx” or “ruin-bibber”). The last line of stanza five opens the final section of the poem: a bringing together of the persona subtly developed in the exposition, and the midpoem speculation in an epiphanic conclusion. Sustaining the position of a

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non-worshipper (“I’ve no idea / What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth”), the speaker claims a certain universality for the modern atheistic type who is nevertheless genuinely aware of “A hunger in himself to be more serious,” assuaged in “this ground,” the church. This is not, however, because of its institutionalized aspects, such as the service, but because of some deep truths about human life implied in religion, and symbolized by the dead in the church-yard. The final two stanzas of “Church Going,” where the speaker achieves a glimpse of understanding about his feelings and related thoughts, are a toned-down and much more memorable version of “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb.” The height of the speaker’s revelatory feeling is the quiet line “It pleases me to stand in silence here,” which is in perfect accord with his psychological profile developed up to that point, and which makes the praise for the place and for people elaborated in the last stanza more striking, and more lasting. The empirical outlook, retained until the very last line, with the observation of the graves, keeps us firmly in the imaginable and the real but also in a certain way enhances or brings closer the transcending spiritual discovery in the end. “Church Going,” then, is a more successful poem than “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb” because it is easier for the reader to relate to and yet more comprehensive and beautiful in its overall simplicity. While the early poem is a succession of images and the speaker’s feelings, “Church Going” is based on a predominantly narrative structure, a central and fullyblown persona, gradual logical development, and an empirical background. This last feature, among other things, means that there are comparatively few metaphors. The diction in general is characterized by predominantly “ordinary” words, expressions and syntax, or at least, those associated with the context. This gives a special “ring” to the more unusual or figurative uses of language, for example: “tense, musty, unignorable silence,” or “The echoes snigger briefly,” or the cathedrals kept “chronically” on show. Such more “traditionally” poetic language is strategically used a little more often in the last two stanzas, which elevates slightly the ordinary expression to the poetic one, appropriate for the final epiphany. Along the same lines, we could see the rendition of the apparently dialectic thought process of going from one premise to another in the preceding three stanzas as strategic in offering an analytic angle, which in the finale gives way to a more “synthetic” one. Similarly, the empirical description from the exposition could be seen as functional (that is, strategic) in establishing the “anchorage.” The fact that we are branding such poetic procedures as “strategic” or “functional” brings out an important point: “Church Going” is not as “stagy” as “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb” is since there are not very

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many, if any, rhetorical excesses in it, but it is certainly “staged.” First of all, the idea of a “persona” implies a performance, a putting on of an act: as many have noticed, Larkin’s persona in “Church Going” is perhaps a little too emphatically “average”; sometimes this “mask” shows a little—the speaker, though he claims to be “uninformed,” is nevertheless aware of the existence of, say, “rood-lofts.” Furthermore, the poem’s structure and diction have been carefully planned and employed, and the same goes for the metre and rhyme. Unlike the earlier poem which is in free verse, “Church Going” has a strict and orderly metre of about 10 syllables in each line, and the ababcdece rhyme scheme. As is usual for Larkin, however, the poem has an unrhymed, prose-like feel due to enjambment, and an intricate rhyme pattern. Such a technique allows him to achieve a double effect: a present, though subdued, regularity and suggestiveness of poetic form, and the felt ordinariness of prose or conversation. The conversational tone, which enhances intelligibility and contributes to our impression of the “average” speaker, relies on the prosaic syntax, often achieved through hypotactic arrangement of semantic units. The opening sentence in the first two lines, for example, contains three subordinate clauses (Once I am sure; there’s nothing going on; letting the door thud shut), qualifying the main clause (I step inside). It is the syntactic arrangement that makes this sentence, duly finished off with a period, sound like the beginning of a prose paragraph: the temporal clause with the embedded object clause is followed by the main clause, which is then qualified by an adverbial clause of manner in a participial form. Such an embedded and subordinate sentence construction has a prosaic ring to it. This property of “stagedness” reminds us of some key issues regarding the plain style. Achieving the right balance between the ordinary and the poetic, which is the goal of a plain stylist, demands strategizing. On the one hand, the reader must not be alienated by difficulty or idiosyncracy; on the other, some striking or meaningful idea needs to be conveyed. Larkin seems to strike this balance perfectly in “Church Going”: the different spheres of existence (observation, speculation, revelation/faith) of the “relatable” persona take us gradually to the beautiful ending, which we are able to understand and enjoy as our own. Compared to “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb,” “Church Going” is an example of a more skilled dealing with both the material and the audience. In terms of literary appreciation, a more “proper,” subdued, and mature tone can be only a subjective basis for favouring “Church Going,” or the basis coming from a specific literary tradition; there are, however, some more objective reasons too. “A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb” offers a dynamic, vigorous and emotional response of the

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speaker to the matter at hand, but it comes nowhere near the experiential and communicative scope of “Church Going.” While the speaker of the earlier poem remains focused largely on himself and his feelings, the speaker of “Church Going” takes a more comprehensive look within and without, and goes beyond the self(-expression), making the poem more universally relevant and accessible. In fact, the comprehensiveness and intelligibility of the poem allow perhaps even the non-atheistic, deeply religious reader to understand and connect with the speaker, without sharing all of his feelings. The techniques in “Church Going” are only some of Larkin’s repertory of plain-style features and procedures. As the comparison of the two poems suggests, Larkin’s later poetry (written after his first collection North Ship) is the body of poetry in which plainness is more clearly enacted, so most of our examples to follow will come from his last three collections of poems. Following the main ideas in Larkin’s theory of poetry, as expressed in “The Pleasure Principle,” we can classify his plain-style features based on the key concepts extrapolated from the essay (see 47–48 above): skill, emotion, and timelessness. In Larkin’s view, these help the poem speak to the reader and are, therefore, essential in what he considers poetry of any true worth. We will focus on two broad categories within which we can view these desired properties of good (and communicative) poetry: • rhetoric2 (which overlaps with some essential aspects of the concepts “skill” and “emotion”), and • themes (which is roughly aligned with Larkin’s concern with “timelessness”)

In the examination of Larkin’s rhetoric, a few categories will help describe the core of his plain style most comprehensively: • narrative composition • empiricism, which has two main manifestations: particularity, and visualization • analytical thought • tone of voice, with particular emphasis on persona and empathy.

These categories comprise Larkin’s key rhetorical strategies and fall into two groupings, based on their function within the text. Thus, narrative composition and empiricism are linked under “perception”: they supply a certain kind of realistic anchorage and invite verification on the part of the reader. On the other hand, analytical thought and tone of voice are linked under “cognition” because they are the most responsible for the expansion of the empirical lay-out and because they enable an introduction of discursive and variable elements. In this

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chapter we will examine Larkin’s strategies of perception, while in the next one we will focus on his strategies of cognition. PERCEPTION: WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET Narrative composition One of the first striking features of many good Larkin poems is the storylike, narrative structure, which is often used to open the poem, or is, in some cases, sustained throughout the poem. The opening of “Church Going,” where the first two stanzas give us a narrative introduction, could be seen as a pattern for a number of poems, characterized by an anecdotal or circumstantial opening. Such openings often contain descriptive elements as well (the speaker in “Church Going,” for example, describes the inside of the church after he enters), but their backbone is a narrated brief plot of some kind, which introduces the main issue the poem deals with. In this respect, such openings resemble the rhetorical device paradiegesis (“incidental narrative”), which is a “narrative [d]igression used to introduce one’s argument” (Lanham 107). As we have seen in “Church Going,” such an introduction can be defined as a narrative “anchorage” (instead of “digression”) in our case, since it “anchors” the poem with respect to time, space, and/or subjectivity, allowing the reader to construct the basic situation in which the contemplation, which almost always follows, takes place. The range of different formats of incidental openings is wide in Larkin’s poetry. The purest examples are the poems resembling “Church Going,” in which the opening narration seems to concern a situation so specific that we wouldn’t be surprised if it could be precisely dated. These introductions are comparatively long and consist of a detailed narrative description. The first three stanzas of “I Remember, I Remember” (minus the last two lines in stanza three) are an excellent example of this technique: Coming up England by a different line For once, early in the cold new year, We stopped, and, watching men with number-plates Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, ‘Why, Coventry!’ I exclaimed. ‘I was born here.’ I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign That this was still the town that had been ‘mine’ So long, but found I wasn’t even clear

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates Were standing, had we annually departed For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went: Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots. ‘Was that,’ my friend smiled, ‘where you “have your roots”?’

We seem to be reading a chunk of realistic prose narrative. The basic story is constructed in a few quick strokes: the main first-person character was taking the train in the winter, passed through the place he was from, tried to recognize in it what he remembered while the train was in the station, even had a brief flashback, and the train then pulled out of the station. What enhances the novelistic feel in this section of the poem is the inclusion of dialogue or, at least, the direct speech, with such reporting clauses as “I exclaimed,” or “my friend smiled,” which make perfectly clear who says what and how. This straightforward narration, which remains largely on the surface of things, is then followed by a more emotional section, an inner monologue, whose more personal and less “ordinary” status is heralded by the adjective “unspent” the speaker uses to describe his childhood. The narrative line from the first three stanzas, here suspended by the speaker’s mental reckoning triggered by the sight of his birth-place from the train, is picked up again in the middle of the last stanza. The speaker’s train of thought is interrupted by his companion, who continues the dialogue: “‘You look as if you wished the place in Hell,’” he judges from the speaker’s face. Appropriately, we are not only back to the opening narrative-line, but also to the exteriority of things (the face, as opposed to thoughts, for example). The more imaginative middle section, which is more striking in its negative expression and negated experience, is thus nestled in between two “instalments” of the story which provides the narrative backbone to the poem. This compositional technique allows us to relate to the poem on a few levels: through positioning and contrast, the outlined story helps us construct a possible—and not unusual—situation, within which we can enjoy the more personal and unusual expression of a unique though familiar subjectivity. In other words, the narrative compositional parts pave the way for the expressive ones. Another version of an incidental narrative opening can be seen in “Mr. Bleaney” and “Dockery and Son.” Both poems open with reported speech and seem to thrust us in the middle of a conversation, which itself happens in the middle of a specific set of circumstances. As in “I Remember, I Remember,” these circumstances enable us to construct the basic plot, within which the reflexive “heart” of the poem takes place. The first three

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lines of “Dockery and Son” are packed with information about the kind of circumstances we are to imagine: ‘Dockery was junior to you, Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’ Death-suited, visitant, I nod.

A middle-aged speaker has come for a visit to his former college after one of his slightly younger fellow-students has died; as we soon find out, after looking around, he catches the train back. Parts of this basic story which occasioned the poem alternate in the first three stanzas with short flashbacks (“Or remember how / Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, . . .”) or musings (“But Dockery, good Lord, . . .”). The end of this introductory narrative— . . . and walked along The platform to its end to see the ranged Joining and parting lines reflect a strong Unhindered moon.

—is a smooth transition to the second half of the poem, in which, spurred by Dockery’s death and perhaps affected by the sight of the moon, the speaker falls into a contemplative mood and considers his own, and then more general human existence. As in “Church Going” and “I Remember, I Remember,” the narrative in “Dockery and Son” contextualizes the contemplative or expressive sections in the poem, places them within imaginable or familiar situations, and helps the reader get into the traditionally more difficult poetic discourse springing from the narration. “Mr. Bleaney”‘s narrative opening is somewhat more complex. The quoted voice we hear at the beginning, and thus the initial situation, is perhaps not completely identifiable until its next occurrence in the second stanza:”‘Mr. Bleaney took / My bit of garden properly in hand.’” By this point the basic context is clear: the reported speech is attributed to a landlady, talking to a potential tenant (the speaker of the poem), and mentioning the previous tenant. Interestingly, we could say that the first five (out of seven altogether) stanzas in this poem are the incidental narrative, which leads up to the contemplative and syntactically difficult two-stanza finish. The five stanzas, with their alternation between bits of conversation, descriptions of the room, and narrative about Mr. Bleaney (held together by the basic situation of a tenant in new lodgings) serve two purposes. They create an atmosphere of dinginess, and they place the

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speaker and Mr. Bleaney into a relationship of similarity or parallelism.3 Both the atmosphere and the suggested relationship developed through the narration and description of the opening contextualize the more difficult stanzas six and seven. These, like the speaker’s “mental reckoning” with his childhood in “I Remember, I Remember,” show us the speaker’s inner monologue, whose convoluted linguistic form signals the speaker’s confusion, uncertainty, and dread, all of which slowly build up through the first five stanzas narrated more straightforwardly. Again, the reader seems to be eased into the more difficult part through a well-developed situation and an outlined story. Not all of the incidental narratives in Larkin’s poems are as long as the ones mentioned so far. The opening of “Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album,” for example, sets up the introductory situation before the second line is over: At last you yielded up the album, which, Once open, sent me distracted.

The rest of the poem is the result of the “distraction” the album created in the speaker, who is inspired by the sight of the photographs and speculates about time and memory. The setting quickly created at the beginning, however, remains present throughout the poem, and serves as a sort of reference point, or “anchor,” for the speaker. Even though he is carried away in a world of contemplation almost from the very beginning, he is constantly referring to what he sees in front of his eyes, and keeps the context alive for the reader. This is achieved mainly through the extensive use of demonstrative adjectives, and the present tense: “these disquieting chaps who loll / At ease,” “Those flowers, that gate, / These misty parks and motors,” or “the theft / Of this one of you bathing.” Particularly interesting in retaining the immediacy of the context is the use of exclamation marks, suggesting emotion incited by the situation, which is yet another link keeping the reader, through the speaker’s subjectivity, in close contact with the basis for the poem. In other words, the speaker’s contemplation is intertwined with, and pushed forward by, the very physical context opened up in the first two lines, which helps us follow the movement of the speaker’s mind in the rest of the poem. Most anecdotal openings, that is, the openings consisting of a longer or shorter narration of the speaker’s personal experience, are also devices for getting the reader’s attention.4 What immediately incites our curiosity in “Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album” is the fact that the addressed “you” needed to be persuaded to finally show the album (she “yielded it up,” “at

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last”) and that the speaker is “sent distracted” by it. What are the photographs like, and why is the speaker so affected by them? Or, at the beginning of “Dockery and Son,” when by the second word we realize that Dockery is dead, we are curious to find out who he was, and how he was related to the speaker—and, indeed, this becomes clearer as we read on. In the case of both these poems, however, our attention is then gently redirected from this more “pedestrian” interest of who’s who, what they are doing and why, encouraged by the narrative, to a consideration of such metaphysical ideas as time or fate. Following, as it were, naturally from the introductory narrative, these “huge” abstract concepts are made more familiar: time as a bridge between the present moment and the preserved image in a photograph, and fate as an inevitable form each life takes, producing in one case Dockery, in another the speaker. The most extreme are the anecdotal or incidental openings where the “attention-grabbing” specificity of context is enhanced by eye-catching diction, as in “Sad Steps”: Groping back to bed after a piss I part thick curtains, and am startled by The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

As we recognize the basic situation in the exposition of “Sad Steps,” a midnight waking which must have happened to everyone, we are startled by the offensive “piss” and immediately wonder—who is this person? This becomes even more intriguing as he goes on to create the scene in soft, lyric tones, invoking “the rapid clouds” and “the moon’s cleanliness.” In other words, we are engaged through the “story” and the tone, and want to read on and find out what it is all about. In poems like “Sad Steps” (or, for example, “High Windows”) the attention-catching obscenities perform two interconnected functions. Structurally, they are the core of the exordium: they provoke and engage the reader from the very beginning of the poem, securing active participation in the rest of the poem. Tonally, they set up a particular kind of subjectivity, which is ultimately crucial in shaping the main idea the poem is trying to express. Just as in “Church Going” the final idea benefits from our initial perception of the speaker as an awkward non-worshipper, the achieved maturity and softness at the end of “Sad Steps” gain in depth after we compare and contrast them with the more crude aspects of the speaker. The latter consideration opens up the question of tone of voice and persona—we will examine it in more detail in later sections. So far we have dealt with incidental narratives which mostly just open the poem, setting up the basic context or story and thus preparing the

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ground for a certain lift-off, a controlled “flight” into the philosophical or emotional realms. Narration, which here seems to perform a “preparatory” function, is in some other cases sustained throughout the poem and resembles omniscient story-telling. Whereas in the poems with opening narratives the subjectivity of the speaker plays a crucial role (that is, there is often a persona, acting as a structural principle), the poems with sustained narratives don’t seem to rely on a developed subjectivity for coherence. Rather, they are like narrative/descriptive vignettes where the story or description is supposed to be the main “vehicle” of the poem’s point. “Hospital Visits,” for example, is a story about a man dying slowly in a hospital, where his wife comes to see him every day; she slips one day and breaks her wrist, but while her bone is healing, he is getting worse, until he dies in the end. Unlike the poems we discussed previously, “Hospital Visits” is from beginning to end a narrative: a story which doesn’t shift noticeably to a contemplative or epiphanic mode. The most rudimentary gist of the poem—that some die sooner than others and there is nothing anyone can do about it—is laid out by means of the story, which contrasts the wife’s curable injury and the husband’s terminal disease. However, what makes the overall idea clearer are a few “cracks” where the otherwise omniscient narrator turns subtly into an intrusive one, to use the novelistic terms. One of the most noticeable intrusions is in stanza two where the narrator/speaker loses objectivity by being emphatically indifferent or casual: “I don’t know what was said;/ Just hospitaltalk.” Claiming not to know what was said, he quickly dismisses it as “just” hospital-talk, giving the impression that it isn’t worth listening in on. The veneer of indifference, or “matter-of-factness,” is reinforced by “naturally” in the last line of the stanza, in which the woman’s broken wrist is described as “curable/ At Outpatients, naturally.” The inevitable nature of things, in other words, is presented a little too emphatically as inevitable; the narrator’s casualness in these instances is set out against the more objective (unintrusive) parts of the narrative, and has a curious counteracting effect of eliciting feelings while it is apparently trying to subdue them: we are struck by the contrast between the two lives a little more than we would otherwise be. This somehow prepares the ground for the last two lines offering the speaker’s explicit interpretation of the wife’s last act in the hospital—finishing a mat started while the man was still alive—as a re-enactment of his death. In other words, narration in this poem provides an unmarked background against which some (marked) interpretative gestures are foregrounded, allowing for a symbolic and emotionally effective way of presenting the end of the narrated story. A similar poem with a predominantly narrative structure and an omniscient narrator who occasionally becomes intrusive is “Long Last.” The

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story about the older sister’s confusion after the younger one dies in old age is different from “Hospital Visits” in the sense that the interpretative intrusion, which takes our attention away from the story and directs it towards the speaker, doesn’t filter in through small cracks during the story, but is left for the last stanza. The speculation in this stanza about old age—referred to metaphorically as “long last childhood”—is of a different kind compared to the contemplative/transcendent endings of the poems with narrative openings since it isn’t attached to a full-blown subjectivity or persona, as was the case in “Church Going.” In the latter, the last two epiphanic and thoughtstimulating stanzas are almost a logical extension of the modern atheistic and yet searching persona developed throughout the poem, and are to be understood within the parameters of this persona. The ending of “Long Last” has stronger affinities with the symbolic two-line ending of “Hospital Visits,” except that it is noticeably more figurative (death, for example, is “that imminent door” here). The two poems show a similar compositional pattern involving narration: what looks like straightforward narration takes up most of the poem but also contains intrusions coming from an otherwise selfeffacing speaker. Interestingly, while the narrative parts seem to provide a starting-point or a direction for the contemplative/symbolic parts in the poems with narrative openings, it is the symbolic parts in the sustained-narrative kind of poems which give direction as to how to interpret the stories. A final version of narrative poems is possibly the most unusual since it does not involve an actual plot-line as was the case with most other poems in this section, and we will mention it only in passing. The 13 lines of the sonnet-length “The Card-Players,” for example, are an extended narrative description of a scene whose underlying “story” doesn’t in itself give rise to striking ideas: a few men are whiling away their time by playing cards during a rainy night. What suggests a certain significance to this basic and simple story—or, rather, setting—is the atmosphere, which turns out to be the most important thematic concern in the poem.5 In a poem like “The Card-Players,” or, to a certain extent, “Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel” and “Absences,” it is a certain mythical dimension, created through narration, which helps with interpretation. It is harder to see the main point in these poems since the “stories” are described moments rather than real stories, and since the speaker’s intrusions are minimal. The “bestial peace” of “The CardPlayers,” the loneliness of exile in “Friday Night,” and the independent life of the elements in “Absences” do not so much come out through the plot as through the narrated or described atmosphere. In conclusion, a significant number of Larkin’s poems are characterized by narration in some form or other. In some cases, a story opens the poem in

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what comes close to a novelistic fashion (as in “I Remember, I Remember”), setting up the context for the ideas that follow, expressed in a more discursive mode. In other cases, the narrated story seems to be the main vehicle for conveying the ideas, occasionally helped by an intrusive narrating voice (“Hospital Visits,” for example). In the poems without an actual story-line (as in “The Card-Players”), evocative narration of the scene constitutes the core of the poem. However different, all these poems have one thing in common: in them, Larkin employs the narrative as one of the basic ways in which most people make sense of the world and apprehend ideas. If readers can imagine a scenario emerging from the story, especially if it is a familiar or a recognizable one (remembering the past while travelling through a known place, conversations with a landlady about former tenants, someone dying in the palliative ward in a hospital), they will be more personally interested in the poem and they will more easily reach an interpretation. A few discourse analysis concepts may help explain effects achieved by Larkin’s poems relying on narration, or story-building. In interpreting any kind of discourse, we regularly fall back on our general “knowledge of the world,” and the principle of analogy with what we have experienced in the past. The text (or speech) which facilitates access to such background knowledge is perceived as more coherent. Although there are numerous theories about the possible formats in which such background knowledge is represented in the mind, most presuppose the existence of certain “frameworks” or sets of facts about the world, labelled as “frames,” “scripts,” “mental models” or “scenarios” (Brown and Yule, Chapter 7). All of these, with nuances, attempt to explain the role and methods of conceptualization in comprehension, but a particularly interesting is the notion of “scenarios.” As Sanford and Garrod suggest, this term describes “the ‘extended domain of reference’ which is used in interpreting written texts, ‘since one can think of knowledge of settings and situations as constituting the interpretative scenario behind a text’” (as qtd. in Brown and Yule 245). More importantly for our case, “the success of scenario-based comprehension is dependent on the text-producer’s effectiveness in activating appropriate scenarios” (246). This is precisely why the Larkin poems we have considered in this section are reader-friendly: their narrative nature manages to activate an “appropriate scenario,” within which an understanding of the entire poem is made easier. Such a poem is perceived—through analogy—as a truthful and concise expression of things we have witnessed, or heard about, or think possible. The poem, in other words, becomes an expression of our own lives: the narrative composition facilitates such identification.6

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EMPIRICISM In a certain sense, making the poem more comprehensible by framing it within a recognizable scenario through narration, is in itself “empirical” since it brings the poem closer to the reader: it invites or allows readers to verify the poem against their own experience. Empiricism, which is in Larkin and other plain stylists one of the main methods of speaking to readers and keeping them in the poetic equation, is even easier to notice on levels more specific than the general scenario or situation we examined in the section on narration. What makes the world of the poem imaginable and relatable on a more immediate level is the way in which this world is described. This aspect of Larkin’s empiricism can be examined both in scenario-based poems (that is, those with the narrative structure) and the poems which are primarily descriptive vignettes. We will term the two related manifestations of this empiricism particularity and visualization. Particularity Generally speaking, in our examination of Larkin’s style particularity refers to the quality of many Larkin poems which aligns them with the novel: in many of his narrative poems in particular, we are offered a web of minute details which help us build a specific or imaginable context.7 This precision and specificity is what David Lodge identifies as the reason why some of Larkin’s poems may look unpoetic (214): poems are traditionally understood as metaphoric discourse, which, on the face of it, does not leave room for literal specificities. Another way of putting it would be to say that Larkin often replaces the generalized with the particularized (or at least, less generalized). A good example of this de-generalizing principle is “None of the books have time”: None of the books have time To say how being selfless feels, They make it sound a superior way Of getting what you want. It isn’t at all. Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning. Selfishness is like listening to good jazz With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.

Abstractions such as “selflessness” and “selfishness” are here explained through similes involving brief but specific and imaginable situations. These

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assume a more general status as part of a poem (in other words, the described scenes could be seen as “symbols” of selflessness and selfishness), but they certainly retain their more specific, particular dimension created through well-chosen details (a hospital, “badly-fitting” suit, “cold wet” morning, “huge” fire, etc). This shift in poetic expression from generalized to particularized comes in this poem as a result of a certain attitude: the defiant speaker rejects the too abstract notion of selflessness offered by “books.” Not only do books seem to be remote from actual life (they never describe how it “feels” to be selfless), but they are also untrue to his own life: the vague bookish idea of the “goodness” of selflessness is not applicable to his experience. Even if we suppose that the speaker is somewhat petulant and partly wants to create an effect, the basic point remains: books, or “literature,” are often too theoretical and do not seem to be describing real, concrete life. A number of poems, particularly those with a narrative, incorporate very specific details in an attempt to create an impression of “concreteness,” or an actual event, something that really happened, and is therefore not only a theoretical speculation. “The Whitsun Weddings,” for example, is packed with such details. The very first word in the poem suggests a specific occasion: it is not just any Whitsun that the speaker recalls, but “that” Whitsun. We aren’t told how long ago this happened but we presume that this day is well-defined, and “real,” in the speaker’s mind. This is helped by the seemingly meticulous details the speaker mentions: it was a “sunlit Saturday,” his train was “three-quarters-empty” and pulled out “about one-twenty.” We even know that the train was supposed to leave earlier, since we are told it was “late.” Now that the scenario of a train journey is invoked, the speaker fleshes it out with the recordings of numerous sensory impressions, similar to the opening of “Church Going”: the cushions are hot, the windscreens he can see from his window are blinding, he can smell the fish-dock, and, later, grass, which “displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth,” and, in accordance with the noonish hour, he can see the “short-shadowed cattle.” In the midst of this highly specific and graphic description, however, there is room for a more lyrical, more figurative expression: they travelled southward “through the tall heat that slept / For miles inland.” Nicely foregrounded against the more literal description, this personification, together with “sky and Lincolnshire and water” which “meet” in the previous line, introduces a more poetic, dreamy, voice which resurfaces every now and then in the poem. In fact, if we look closely, we will see that this combination of the empirical and the ethereal is one of the main compositional principles in the poem.

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In stanza three, the narrative continues with more details: while reading, the speaker starts noticing slowly the “whoops and skirls” at each station and realizes those are wedding-parties, which he goes on to describe. The solid and imaginable “broad belts” of fathers, “loud and fat” mothers, “the perms, / The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, / The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres” give us a detailed representation of what the speaker sees. The “seamy foreheads” is a little less straightforward, perhaps, since it is metaphoric and ambiguous, but within the context of an exterior scene it is easily interpreted as “lined” foreheads. The “pedestrian,” literal description, however, is preceded and followed by the more ethereal poetic voice, setting the tone. The girls outside watch the train go “As if out on the end of an event / Waving goodbye / To something that survived it,” and they are marked off “unreally” from the rest. A sense of something deeper, more significant than the concrete surfaces begins to build up. This is reinforced more firmly in stanza six, when, after the “cafés / And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed / Coach-party annexes” and “confetti” in stanza five, we encounter the most serious breach of an empirical outlook yet. The speaker begins to interpret what he thinks the faces of those outside express, and is most figurative when he describes the women and the girls: The women shared The secret like a happy funeral; While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared At a religious wounding.

The unspecified but definite “secret,” the oxymoronic “happy funeral” and the “religious wounding” used as a metaphor for weddings, all emphasize this under-the-surface, non-empirical undertone. It is as if the speaker—for all these qualifications come from him—is beginning to notice something more beautiful or more serious behind the “grinning and pomaded” faces and “parodies of fashion” which initially capture his attention. That, indeed, we are dealing with a juxtaposition of the empirical and the ethereal, the real and the transcending, becomes even more visible at the end of stanza six and the beginning of stanza seven. We first get another accurate description of the outside: “poplars cast / Long shadows over major roads.” The level of specificity and concreteness is again high—these are not just any generalized trees but “poplars,” and not any roads but “major” roads, while the “long” shadows signal the passage of time since the short shadows in the second stanza. But then the speaker summarizes and says that for

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The empirical temporal designation, “some fifty minutes,” is shown to be unstable in its perception: in time it will seem much shorter than fifty minutes really is, as short as the time necessary for a quick dramatic exclamation. This hinted instability of the “objective” empirical perspective allows for a further statement the speaker makes: in only fifty minutes, a dozen marriages, with all the vast array of implications each marriage carries, “got under way.” This more contemplative frame of mind the speaker gets into— which suggests an enormous potential contained in each moment, for example—is still “grounded” in particular things he notices: an Odeon, a cooling tower, someone running up to bowl. In other words, we are still on the train, and within human limits, even if we by now firmly feel there is something more behind this experience. Even though it is not exactly spelled out, this “something more” gets a clearer shape in the last stanza. The prosaic and perhaps not very pretty “standing Pullmans” and “walls of blackened moss” are a line away from the speaker’s lyric assessment of the experience as “this frail / Travelling coincidence.” A miniature version of the whole poem, these two lines are a meeting ground of the actual, unembellished, empirically-seen world and the capacity for beauty and transcendence that that very world contains. Within this context, the “arrow-shower” which somewhere becomes rain in the last line seems a natural ending to the speaker’s physical and metaphysical journey. Such an ending also asserts the place of that “pavilion of mystery” young Larkin wrote about, in the world of the empirical and the rational. The use of the empirical and ordinary, then, has two functions in “The Whitsun Weddings.” First, it creates a detailed and believable context which, together with the more general scenario of a summer train ride and weddingparties, activates our “background knowledge” and makes us recognize what is described. Second, it serves as a foil to the metaphysical or figurative elements which become more and more noticeable as the poem progresses. As we have seen, at one point (the instability of fifty minutes) the hegemony of the empirical breaks down, but the empirical itself is never abandoned: it instead forms a solid basis for the speaker’s deeper insight. A philosophical conclusion about life firmly grounded in the recognizable or the commonsensical—which is what empiricism is concerned about—somehow gains in

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credibility. Again, Larkin manages to have the reader “cooperate,” and, most probably, enjoy the poem. As Terry Whalen puts it, this is a “sophisticated empiricism” (“Relocating Larkin’s Movement Poetic” 16). Or, as Reibetanz reminds us, quoting Donald Davie: “vivid exactness in descriptive images counts for nothing, unless moulded and if necessary subdued by a current of strong feeling through them” (as qtd. in Reibetanz, 170). In other words, “particulars” are joined with a certain “vision,” and we will return to this in the consideration of themes in Chapter Five. Similar instances of particularity, with various effects, can be seen in other poems. In “Wild Oats,” a poem with a narrative and a developed subjectivity, the speaker tells us his story with a peculiar attention to some details. About twenty years ago Two girls came in where I worked A bosomy English rose And her friend in specs I could talk to.

He ends up taking the latter one out, even though, or precisely because, she doesn’t deserve a metaphoric description like the other one, the “bosomy English rose.” He continues: And in seven years after that [I] Wrote over four hundred letters, Gave a ten-guinea ring I got back in the end. . . .

Such particularity makes for a casual, ordinary telling of a story. It supplies enough details to make a case, but it isn’t pedantic: it is about twenty years ago, over four hundred letters, and later, about five rehearsals of the parting. Other than creating a story-telling feel, this kind of “offhand” particularity helps build up the subjectivity, or, more precisely, the persona in the poem. It suggests someone who, in this confessional-like story, is trying to tone down his expression, keep it low-key. Acutely aware of details—to the point of remembering them twenty years later—he talks about them in a casual way which gives the impression of letting go, of being resigned, without bitterness. This approach, and the touch of self-irony, as in “Well, useful to get that learnt,” are most likely to engage the sympathies of his audience. Particularity in Larkin’s poems, then, has multiple purposes: in this case, it is a sophisticated device for outlining the persona.

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Creating the setting—vital for the general idea—through attention paid to details is masterful in “Mr. Bleaney.” The atmosphere of bareness and grimness of Mr. Bleaney’s room is invoked quickly and precisely, in a few lines: Flowered curtains, thin and frayed, Fall to within five inches of the sill, Whose window shows a strip of building land, Tussocky, littered. ...................... Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook Behind the door, no room for books or bags -

The dinginess of those thin and frayed flowered curtains, and the loneliness of that sixty-watt bulb give us a graphic description of the room but also reflect Mr. Bleaney’s life, and, by analogy, suggest things about the speaker who occupies the same room, stubbing his fags “on the same saucer-souvenir.” The subsequent details about Mr. Bleaney’s life, which the speaker gets from the landlady, deepen the feeling of emptiness—Mr. Bleaney’s habits seem to be the habits of a lonely man. They also suggest the speaker’s anxiety about being closed in: within the physical space that used to be Mr. Bleaney’s, and within the traces of his life-style which seem to haunt the speaker. Following the shift from coherent narration to less coherent contemplation in stanza 6 (see 89–90 above), this overall impression of squalor and anxiety finds its release in the last two stanzas. As we have seen earlier, the speaker’s meandering thought, finishing with “I don’t know,” is in fact well-contextualized as a result of this careful and detailed development in the previous five stanzas. Torn between the fear of, and disgust for Mr. Bleaney on the one hand, and being in the same position on the other, the speaker is not certain how to, or whether to actually judge Mr. Bleaney in the end. In that sense, the poem is rather clear. What is, however, left for the reader to ponder is how to perceive or judge the speaker and his dilemma. In other words, the poem is rich and efficient enough to present a situation and raise a question, but it does not offer a categorical answer. Minute or pedantic details can also serve as a vehicle for conveying the main idea. In “Going, Going,” for example, the speaker is pessimistically contemplating the future of England in an age of industry, business and consumerism. Allowing for the possibility of being negative simply as a result of

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his age, he describes these new trends with a profusion of relevant details, at times mimicking the new jargon too: The crowd Is young in the MI café: Their kids are screaming for more More houses, more parking allowed, More caravan sites, more pay. On the Business Page, a score Of spectacled grins approve Some takeover bid that entails Five per cent profit (and ten Per cent more in the estuaries): move Your works to the unspoilt dales (Grey area grants)!

The listed demands of the “MI café” crowd and the meticulous rendition of “the Business Page” with the details about percentages look informative, even wellresearched. What this wealth of facts is supposed to do, however, is “expose” the business world for what it is: an unabashed profit-hunting, commercial-sounding enterprise. The parenthetical addition of yet another numerical nuance of the advertised deal, and the exclamatory advertising jargon promoting the “unspoilt dales” evokes this even more clearly. In other words, the speaker is piling up details in order to show the reader why he is feeling pessimistic. His own attitude is expressed more powerfully through a rather dismissive synecdochic reference to businessmen: “a score / Of spectacled grins.” This reduction of businessmen to their public-relations aspect, and the overwhelming precision of the description of their dealings are both there to make the speaker’s case clearer, and more convincing, since he seems to know what he is talking about. A list of particulars in the penultimate stanza, again, is intended to have an effect on the reader. This time it is as an invocation of what the speaker feels is being lost, or, more precisely, “auctioned off,” as the title of the poem suggests: And that will be England gone, The shadows, the meadows, the lanes, The guildhalls, the carved choirs.

This England which is “going, going,” the speaker is claiming, will be replaced by “concrete and tyres,” which here stand for what the new age is

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like. With a predicted “cast of crooks and tarts” from the previous stanza, such sad remains highlight the worth of “England gone.” In the last stanza, this general principle of creating a socio-historical commentary through carefully selected particulars allows for the punch-line effect of the zeugmatic but greeds And garbage are too thick-strewn To be swept up now. . . .

Pluralizing “greed” and juxtaposing it to “garbage” particularizes it, and makes it a concrete, tangible threat, instead of an abstract concept. Breaking down the remote general problems into daily-felt particular occurrences (along with the metaphor of the auction signalled by the title) gives this poem a social urgency familiar in a number of Larkin’s poems, and we will come back to it in the discussion of themes. The description of “England gone” in this poem brings up the question of cultural particularity and its role in Larkin’s style. Is cultural specificity— which in “Going, Going,” however, remains on a generally-understandable level—a complication in the “plainness”? As we have seen in one of Larkin’s essays on Betjeman, he praises Betjeman’s tendency to describe people and places he knows well, offering “a sharply-realized background” in each poem (Required Writing 212). Attention paid to such particulars reflects human life, emotions and society, and this is what poetry should aim for. Larkin even quotes T. S. Eliot, who, in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, mentions a ‘whole way of life’ that a poet should (presumably) concern himself with expressing[.] He was obliging enough to leave us a list of its properties:’Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut in sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century gothic churches, and the music of Elgar.’ (Required Writing 218)

Larkin adds that, in theory, Betjeman and Eliot are similar in that they have both “chosen to emphasize the identical element of cultural inclusiveness in describing what they most value” (218). In practice, however, Betjeman is quite likely the best representative of such an aesthetic creed, which is why he is held in such high esteem by Larkin. Larkin admits that these “sharplyrealized backgrounds” might cause difficulty, not only for non-English readers but for the English ones too. He claims, however, that “the crucial point

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is whether the reader gets enough out of the work initially to make it worth his while solving the references to deepen his enjoyment” (215). Larkin obviously believed that such is the case with Betjeman’s poetry (and, quite likely, not with Eliot’s), and we can maintain the same for Larkin’s poetry, where the cultural/English references add authenticity without hampering understanding. A case in point is “MCMXIV,” a poem which attempts to recreate the mythical pre-Great-War innocence in England. It is full of specific temporal, spatial and cultural references, all of which form the basis of the poem. The most specific ones, and potentially the most opaque, are the proper nouns, such as “The Oval,” “Villa Park,” “August Bank Holiday” or “Domesday lines.” Referring to particular buildings, type of state holidays, or historical events, they can be precisely interpreted only if the reader already knows what they are, or finds out. “Farthings and sovereigns,” though not proper nouns, are also highly specific since they are not only English money units, but they are also somewhat archaic or unusual. On a higher level of generality, but still within the context of “Englishness in 1914,” we find “children . . . called after kings and queens,” “tin advertisements for cocoa and twist,” “pubs wide open all day,” and “differently-dressed servants with tiny rooms in huge houses.” Do these references, with higher or lower levels of cultural specificity, complicate understanding? Even though it is strewn with such particulars, the poem offers a number of interpretative clues which rely on a more general knowledge, and which help us make our way through it, with or without the exact knowledge of what, for instance, “The Oval” is. The title itself sets the tone: it is not only an evocative, watershed year, but it is also recorded in Roman numerals, which subtly suggests tombstones and the years engraved on them. Our frame of mind thus being set for the catastrophe of WWI, we don’t have trouble identifying “those uneven lines” as people waiting to enlist for the war. The prototypical image of “moustached archaic faces” is nicely set off against the more specific details of the stanza and helps us cast our minds back to those “olden” times. However, it also shows that what we are getting here is a somewhat stylized, “mythical,” representation: moustached archaic faces are probably the most common generalized notion contemporary readers have of men in the early 20th century. It is, in other words, used strategically here to quickly elicit the “appropriate” response. The main idea of (lost) innocence, which is explicitly presented in the last stanza, is already introduced in the first one: knowing what we know about what followed 1914, we have an insight which people who are standing “patiently” to enlist, and “grinning” as if this was a holiday, lack. To use the term reserved mainly for

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prose and plays: this is a case of dramatic irony. We realize immediately that theirs is a different world. The following two stanzas are built around the same main idea of something traditional that has passed. In the second stanza, this “passing” of the old in an urban area is embodied in the generally accessible image of “the bleached / Established names on the sunblinds,” while in the third one, the disappearance of the old in the countryside is suggested through “The placenames all hazed over / With the flowering grasses.” Importantly, the most general images open both stanzas, allowing for initial understanding, which is then supported by the following, and often more specific, images. The last stanza gives a summary and an assessment of what is described: there will never be such innocence again as there was in this passing world, here symbolized by the “tidy” gardens. Tidiness, as we know from our more informed position, would soon be replaced by chaos and was pointless in the face of the coming disaster. This reinforces the innocence those men who left the gardens tidy are said to have had. In other words, “MCMXIV” does have some very particular references but it manages to strike that balance between detailed and general that the Movement advocates as important for good poetry. The poem is constructed in such a way that not getting the exact reference of some culturally specific item (“Domesday lines,” for example) doesn’t prevent the comprehension of the principal idea, whereas getting those references is mainly a “bonus,” and adds to enjoyment (for example, knowing what exactly people used to do in “The Oval” or “Villa Park,” which otherwise we contrast in general terms with war-enlistment). The fact that the most particular references are not crucial for understanding is in line with the Movement’s idea of the modified myth or tradition. The central parts of Larkin’s “myth” in this poem aren’t the specific allusions, but the world before the Great War, which was a wide-spread affair, and has resonance with most of the planet’s population. It is perhaps also important to notice that the cultural references in this poem, other than the topographical ones, are likely to be within the grasp of a general reader, just as is, for example, “the Beatles’ first LP” in “Annus Mirabilis.” Larkin certainly builds his world within the limits of Englishness, but not in a way which would prevent the average reader from understanding. “MCMXIV” suggests a few more details about Larkin’s style and particularity. As we have seen in the poem, more specific levels of reference are nestled within the more general or universal ones. The help provided by a wider context in deciphering specific particulars, known as “top-down processing” in linguistics, is one of the main facilitators in the interpretation of

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texts. The universal qualities of “MCMXIV,” which act as a context for the particular ones, are not only embedded in several widely-applicable images, but are also more subtly created through the feeling of immediacy. Even though the title already announces that the poem is about the past, the tenseless language sustained in the three stanzas without a main verb and supported by continuous -ing forms (standing, grinning, not caring, flowering, leaving, lasting) suggests timelessness. Despite the fact that we recognize the scenes as “past,” they unfold before our eyes and encourage imaginative participation. The past, through such empathy, has the feel of the universal, and since we do have that extra information about WWI, the tragedy implied in the poem strikes us even harder. In conclusion, particularity is attention paid to specific details, which comes from an empirical impulse in Larkin’s poetry. Following one of his guiding principles—bringing poetry closer to actual, ordinary, as opposed to theoretical life—Larkin often fills his poems with precise or concrete details. These are, however, rarely offered for their own sake. In “The Whitsun Weddings,” for example, they serve to establish the credibility of the speaker, which makes his cautious transcendence of the empirical and his final insight more acceptable. Specific details are also crucial in creating the setting or the subjectivity through which the main ideas are suggested. The “sixty-watt bulb” in “Mr. Bleaney,” for instance, is a concrete detail which helps create the setting, but which is also marked against the generally non-empirical nature of poetry; as such, it is a vehicle of the main idea or tone and therefore can be seen as symbolic. To invoke Reibetanz again, “the language of poetry is a medium through which encountered experience is translated into symbolic terms” (167).8 Finally, cultural particularity is a frequent phenomenon in Larkin, which contributes towards “sharply-realized backgrounds.” Enhancing authenticity, such an approach aims to capture actual life, as certain people in a certain place and time live it. Importantly, all of these nuances of empirical particularity interact with different types of universality, which helps understanding and makes Larkin’s poetry approach the plain-style quality of urbanity. The “commerce between the particular and the generalization” (see 31 above) is a vital characteristic of Larkin’s best poems. Visualisation References to “seeing” or “looking”—such as the claim that “succeeding eyes” soon “begin to look, not read” from “An Arundel Tomb”—abound in Larkin’s poems and show Larkin’s awareness of the importance of the visual.

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We react more readily and more spontaneously to the visual, or more precisely (since reading usually involves the eye, too), the imagistic. The “strategic” incorporation of imagery in Larkin’s poetry is yet another manifestation of his guiding empiricism. Getting to know the world through one’s own experience, especially when it is based on the senses, is one of the main empirical tenets. Believing that Modernism discourages the senses in order to create the need for professional explication, Larkin aims to base his world-view precisely on the senses, particularly vision, to make his poems widely accessible and understandable. In this sense, Larkin is what Terry Whalen calls “a poet of observation par excellence” (“Philip Larkin’s imagist bias: his poetry of observation” 29). Drawing a parallel between Larkin and T. E. Hulme, Whalen quotes from the latter’s influential “Romanticism and classicism”: Poetry . . . is not a counter language, but a visual concrete one. It is a compromise for a language of intuition which would hand over sensations bodily. It always endeavours to arrest you, and to make you continuously see a physical thing, to prevent you gliding through an abstract process. (as qtd. in Whalen 32; Whalen’s emphasis)

What the passage reminds us of is the plain stylists’ stress on the visual we have seen in Aristotle, with his concept of “bringing-before-the-eyes” which helps the listener with processing (see 26), or Orwell, who advocates the concrete and the visual in the interest of clarity (see 67). Larkin himself would have “the eye lead the spirit” in poetry (see 57). A strong point of resemblance between some of Larkin’s poetry and Hulme’s ideas is in this frequent attempt to prevent the reader from “gliding through an abstract process.” Larkin often brings abstractions down to a concrete, visualizable level, as in “Send No Money,” which deals with three “big” concepts: time, life, and truth. From the very beginning, “Time” is not exactly anthropomorphized—it is not presented as entirely “human”—but it is given distinct and concrete attributes: Standing under the fobbed Impendent belly of Time Tell me the truth, I said. . . .

Time’s “fobbed belly” attests to its physical existence, reinforced by the words he says to the truth-seeking speaker in the second stanza. Time “booms” the offer out, which, together with the fact that the speaker is “standing under”

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his “impendent” belly, creates the impression of the enormous, superhuman size that Time has. A “huge” concept of time, and also the one which might at times seem menacing to humans, is thus appropriately given a huge and threatening physique. What Time tells the boy in the second stanza continues the “materializing” of the immaterial: he directs him to “watch the hail / Of occurrence clobber life out / To a shape no one sees -.” The “hail of occurrence” is a metaphoric translation of something usually intangible, fate (“what happens to happen”), into a concrete image of “hail.” Its literal meaning of “icy precipitation,” even though modified through a combination with “occurrence,” is kept as a result of the final positioning in the line. What follows is a similar interaction of the concrete and the abstract: we are first invited to imagine “life” as something physical that can be “clobbered out” so that it gets a particular “shape”; but the shape is immediately qualified as the one “no one sees.” The boy, it seems, is given this opportunity to see the actual “shape of life,” which ordinarily we can’t see, life in its most general sense being an abstract concept. This shape is then specified in further imagery in the last stanza, where life is reduced to a distorted object: The bestial visor, bent in By the blows of what happened to happen.

If Time gets an imposing embodiment in the first and second stanzas, and life gets a tragic one in the second and third, truth gets a wry, ironic one in the very last line. The speaker, who is transformed from an earnest knowledge-seeking boy to a middle-aged cynic by time and the sight of clobbered life, concludes: In this way I spent youth, Tracing the trite untransferable Truss-advertisement, truth.

In the final metaphor, truth is represented as an advertisement for a truss, which doesn’t work for everyone or in the same way; thus the title, “send no money.” You cannot subscribe to the perfect or clear truth, just as you cannot order a perfect truss.9 By such linkings of the abstract and the concrete, of the philosophical and the everyday in the poem, what is essentially a metaphysical speculation gets a witty and “palatable” poetic expression. While in “Send No Money” the process of making abstractions concrete is accompanied by a basic story-line, “concretization” can also be found in poems which convey ideas through vignettes rather than stories. “Triple

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Time,” for instance, describes the three basic timelines in everyone’s life— the present, the future, and the past—one in each stanza. Even though each description contains certain more abstract thoughts, the key image is concrete and imaginable. The present is thus “This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,” which in the second stanza become “the future furthest childhood saw / Between long houses, under travelling skies,” which is yet again transformed in the third stanza into “the past, / A valley cropped by fat neglected chances / That we insensately forbore to fleece.” Even this last description somehow “feels” concrete and visualizable: the adjective “fat” gives the otherwise intangible “chances” a body, which is in the next line associated with “sheep” through “fleece.” In a process rather similar to the alteration of the general and the particular in “MCMXIV,” these concrete images are followed and modified by more metaphysical lines. After being equated with an empty street, the blandness of the present becomes “A time unrecommended by event”; the promise of the future in childhood, at first constructed through the vista of “long houses,” is then described as “An air lambent with adult enterprise”; and the unharvested “valley” of the past is followed by a general conclusion which brings together the spatial and temporal “perspectives” presented and contemplated in the poem, On this we blame our last Threadbare perspectives, seasonal decrease.

Thus, the final effect of the poem is not unlike its main idea: while the same space offers different perspectives at different points in time in one’s life (that is, it contains “triple” time), the poem itself has a “dual” existence of an image and a thought, the visual and the cerebral. These feed into each other, and reinforce the main idea. A certain duality also exists in poems which are extended metaphors: in them, a literal—and often visual—description gives rise to a figurative reading. On the literal level, “Wires” tells us how young steers lose some of their vitality, virility, and individuality, becoming old cattle after they experience the pain of electric fences in their youthful desire to go beyond the wires. This is easily transferable to the human world and behaviour: while we are young, we crave things beyond our reach and get hurt in the process, which inevitably makes us a little older and more reluctant to stand out from the mass of humanity and push our limits. The “purer water” plays the role of the proverbial grass which is “always greener on the other side of the fence,” itself a metaphoric image standing for something we don’t or shouldn’t have.

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The basic principle of understanding at work in such a “dual” text is an implied analogy between the literal story/image and a more widely applicable idea. In this sense, “Wires” and similar poems can be seen as parables, which have recently been redefined as not only a literary device but also “a basic cognitive principle” which participates in the interpretation of “every level of our experience” (Mark Turner, as qtd. in Abrams 7). The fundamental role of analogy in comprehension, however, has long been recognized. When he talks about the persuasiveness of the uneducated who argue “on the basis of what [particulars] they know and instances near their experience,” Aristotle has precisely analogy in mind (see 25 above). And, as we have seen in the section on narration in Larkin’s poems, narrative scenarios are comprehended through an analogy with our own past experiences and other “data” from our general knowledge of the world. Similarly, the literal and the figurative are in an analogous relationship in our mind. Analogy is what gives the otherwise narrow meaning of “Tops” the beauty of a concrete yet insightful description. Even just the narrow frame of reference, however, is engaging: the movement of the tops is recreated so accurately that we can easily “see” it as we read. This accuracy—or recognizability—of the way tops work is achieved through a combination of two methods. First, there is the abundant use of precise verbs and nouns capturing all nuances of physical motion: heel, yaw, squirm, draw up, falter, flicker, wobble, reel, sprawl, etc. Second, the tops’ movements are conjured up through more figurative language: personification (they “gravely” draw up, they’re “asleep,” they look “hopelessly tired,” they start to “die”); graphic simile (“like candle-flames”); and paradox (“Moving, yet still”). This second, figurative way of describing the tops is perhaps the most important cause of analogy—this is what widens the semantic reference of the description. Invited to think about the tops in terms of other things, in particular human beings, “we” (the inclusive observers first appearing in the last third of the poem) don’t find it difficult to feel sympathy and transfer the meaning from the objects to something larger or more important. It could be our own or other lives, or the existence of anything with a limited amount of energy and motion, whose “tiny first shiver” “appals” since it announces a cessation, a death. What is a description of a simple object is thus given a larger resonance in the poem. Understanding the parable in Larkin is not always a simple “translation” from one level of meaning to another. “First Sight” is a case in point. Lambs without experience about nature and its processes can easily stand also for young human beings who, in Blake’s terms, go from “innocence” to “experience.” But within this analogy, there are some unclear spots, affecting

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both literal and figurative levels. What, for example, is “Earth’s immeasurable surprise,” which is hidden around them and waiting, and which seems to be the climax of the poem? Partly because its visual content is very low, this phrase—which determines the tone of the whole poem—is rather ambiguous. Perhaps imitating the limited “knowledge” of the lambs aware only of the snow, this mysterious reference is given only a few clues in the last three lines: They could not grasp it if they knew, What so soon will wake and grow Utterly unlike the snow.

The most obvious thing which will soon “wake and grow / Utterly unlike the snow” in its greenness is, of course, the grass. In this sense, the “Earth’s immeasurable surprise” gets warm, generous, benevolent tones. But the very last line also suggests a threat or a dark promise. The snow is often seen as an epitome of purity and innocence, and something “utterly unlike” it would be the opposite, and potentially destructive. Considered together with the grass, this possibility suggests that the “surprise” is the inevitable and cyclic exchange of one season for another, and a natural process of growth, which brings experience and death with it. The poem, however, does not give any clear indication and, like the lambs who “could not grasp” Earth or nature, we too are left with what we feel is a mystery of life, hinted at, but unsolved. This final effect is achieved through lack of a direct, concrete referent on the literal level of description. Careful “calibrating” of the degree of visualization or concreteness opens up a full scale of possible nuances of clarity, which in Larkin depends on a particular context or a particular overall idea. In “First Sight” the lack of clear reference could be called functional; it recreates the lack of certainty people often feel about some fundamental issues. When the images are used, however, they are frequently employed as conveyors of “truth” in Larkin. This practice has been labelled as Larkin’s “imagist bias” by Terry Whalen (“Philip Larkin’s imagist bias: his poetry of observation”). Many of Larkin’s poems use words “that invite the mind toward the image and toward the physical world,” making the poems “imagist paintings” (“Relocating Larkin’s Movement Poetic” 8). Pointing to an important influence Larkin’s friend J. B. Sutton, a painter, had on the poet in his formative years, Whalen quotes the last stanza of “High Windows” as a “painterly” ending to a poem; and, indeed, examples are numerous. The short poem “Days,” which begins with a series of intellectual questions and assumptions, ends with a verbal “canvas,” with “the priest and the doctor/ In

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their long coats / Running over the fields.” The last question in the first stanza (“Where can we live but days?”), and the fact that it is the priest and the doctor running in the last stanza, suggests what the answer could be, but what ends the poem instead of an explicit answer is this beautiful image, one which would fit into a painting perfectly. A canvas-like status can also be ascribed to some parts of “To the Sea.” “The miniature gaiety of seasides” in line four already indicates a smaller rendition of the actual thing, and the rest of the stanza, with its blue, red, yellow and white bits of colour, reminds one irresistibly of the beach paintings of, say, Boudin: Everything crowds under the low horizon: Steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps, The small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapse Up the warm yellow sand, and further off A white steamer stuck in the afternoon -

The static nature of a painting is here suggested through that white steamer which is “stuck,” motionless, in the afternoon, as it would be on a canvas. Indeed, that we don’t get to see the steamer’s movement becomes even clearer when, the next time it is mentioned, we are only told “The white steamer has gone.” The poem, of course, has other developments, including the speaker’s flashbacks and reflections, but this introductory painting-like stanza serves as a visual cue to the reader: we easily build up the scene as we read. The idea of something static and unchanging is also relevant to the content: the speaker is excited to find that “half an annual pleasure, half a rite” of going to the seaside is “Still going on, all of it, still going on!” Just as a painting preserves a moment in time by “freezing” it on the canvas, so does the speaker wish to see the “gaiety of seasides” preserved and unchanged year after year. Larkin’s visual poetic techniques include more than just painterly renditions of static scenes. In a number of poems, the visualization has a dynamic, almost cinematic sweep, producing appropriate effects. Probably the best example of this is “Show Saturday,” one of Larkin’s later poems, depicting in great detail a provincial show or fair. From the very beginning, the observer’s eye presents the scene in the way a camera lens would in “classical” cinema. In the first stanza we get an “overview” of the whole scene, by the lens moving from one smaller part of it to another, in what could roughly be called a series of “shots,” or perhaps a “panning” shot. After the introductory “Grey day for the Show, but cars jam the narrow lanes,” we are first shown what is probably the central area, and then move to other distinct locations, each one introduced

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with a spatial adverbial phrase (“inside, on the field,” “over there,” “by the hedge,” “in the main arena”). These phrases are verbal equivalents of the physical movement of the camera, or, potentially, signs of a “cut” from one shot to another. The use of the semi-colon is of particular interest—it suggests that these are all distinct but not entirely separate areas: Inside, on the field, judging has started: dogs (Set their legs back, hold out their tails) and ponies (manes Repeatedly smoothed, to calm heads); over there, sheep (Cheviot and Blackface); by the hedge, squealing logs (Chain Saw Competition). Each has its own keen crowd. In the main arena, more judges meet by a jeep: The jumping’s on next.

Parenthetical comments in the stanza serve a particular purpose: while the main parts of the text give the basic spatial configuration and the minimal information about each separate section, the parentheses open up an additional layer of particularity and explicitness, increasing the realistic effect. What follows in the next couple of lines is a further specification of auditory and visual details, which we notice in any scene where the camera stops for a while, allowing us to have a better look: Announcements, splutteringly loud, Clash with the quack of a man with pound notes round his hat And a lit-up board.

This continues with the addition of even further details enumerated in a listform which creates a spatial contiguity; this is helped also by the formal means of alliteration in the second line below: There’s more than just animals: Bead-stalls, balloon-men, a Bank; a beer-marquee that Half-screens a canvas Gents; a tent selling tweed, And another, jackets.

The resulting spatial contiguity allows for comic suggestiveness: the fact that a beer-marquee is close to “a canvas Gents” brings a smile to one’s face. The comprehensive view of the scene includes even the “empty” space, which is put in relation to other areas:

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For each scene is linked by spaces Not given to anything much, where kids scrap, freed, While their owners stare different ways with incurious faces.

While we are certainly getting a highly visualizable, dynamic and realisticlooking scene, we are, nevertheless, reminded every now and then that this is not only an objective recording but also an interpretation. “Folks sit about on bales / Like great straw dice,” says our speaker, in an attempt to offer a more striking description of what he observes, and it is an image which the camera lens wouldn’t have made without an optical manipulation of some kind. Calling the kids’ parents their “owners” in the last line of the second stanza, the speaker reveals himself again as an interpreting subjectivity. The line can, of course, be read as offensive, implicitly comparing children to animals, but in the context created so far, it could also be seen as a natural understanding of this delineated space where everything is linked to everything else. The following stanza imitates cinematic techniques very successfully. It introduces a wrestling scene—probably one of the highlights of the show— through an invocation of a panning shot: The wrestling starts, late; a wide ring of people; then cars; Then trees; then pale sky.

The wrestling arena is placed in a larger spatial context, and thus linked to other parts of the show, through this brief pan where the camera/observer’s eye moves from closer to further objects, verbally suggested through a succession (indicated by the repetition of “then”) of nominal syntagms. It then comes back and centres on the wrestling act itself in what could be termed a “medium” shot—the most typical one for the representation of action, in between the long shot and the close-up: Two young men in acrobats’ tights And embroidered trunks hug each other; rock over the grass, Stiff-legged, in a two-man scrum. One falls: they shake hands. Two more start, one grey-haired: he wins, though. They’re not so much fights As long immobile strainings that end in unbalance With one on his back, unharmed, while the other stands Smoothing his hair.

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The centrality of the wrestling match in the show and a sustained description in it, point to the relevance of the scene to the whole poem. By the end, we realize that the earnest but harmless playfulness of the wrestling, and the ethics it embodies (respectful shaking of hands, for example) capture something essential in the show itself. This is more explicitly stated in the last stanza, and we will come back to it. Our gaze is being shifted again, to “other talents”: The long high tent of growing and making, wired-off Wood tables past which crowds shuffle, eyeing the scrubbed spaced Extrusions of earth.

Here our camera lens (supplemented by the speaker’s occasional intrusions) changes focus and zooms in on the smallest details, presenting in a close-up: blanch leeks like church candles, six pods of Broad beans (one split open), dark shining-leafed cabbages—rows Of single supreme versions, followed (on laced Paper mats) by dairy and kitchen; four brown eggs, four white eggs, Four plain scones, four dropped scones, pure excellences that enclose A recession of skills. And, after them, lambing-sticks, rugs, Needlework, knitted caps, baskets, all worthy, all well done, But less than the honeycombs.

After it overwhelms us with this richness of details and products, the camera zooms out and takes us outside again for one last tour around the showgrounds, where things are still happening but are beginning to wind down: Outside the jumping is over. The young ones thunder their ponies in competition Twice round the ring; then trick races, Musical Stalls, Sliding off, riding bareback, the ponies dragged to and fro for Bewildering requirements, not minding. But now, in the background, Like shifting scenery, horse-boxes move; each crawls Towards the stock entrance, tilting and swaying, bound For far-off farms. The pound-note man decamps. The car park has thinned. They’re loading jumps on a truck.

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From this point on, what the speaker offers is not so much a description of what’s unfolding before his eyes, as it is a projection, an imagination (though still consisting of specific particulars) of what happens after the show is dismantled; the spatial contiguity doesn’t seem to be the primary cohering principle as before. This means that the speaker’s personal comments get a freer range and are intensified. In what looks like a shift from cinematic to more properly verbal poetic devices, he summarizes: Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday.

The beautiful and appropriate phrase “the ended husk / Of summer,” is not dependent on cinematic elements for its effect—it carries the idea through a poetic combination and spacing of words. It metaphorically suggests the end of summer and its “goods.” This shift of modes, as it were, leads naturally to the final section in the poem, in which the speaker’s main point and attitude get a more explicit expression. “Private addresses” and “local lives” that people go back to after the show are in the last six lines contrasted with the collective and public nature of the show. The ending of the poem is almost a prayer: Let it stay hidden there like strength, below Sale-bills and swindling; something people do, Not noticing how time’s rolling smithy-smoke Shadows much greater gestures; something they share That breaks ancestrally each year into Regenerate union. Let it always be there.

Equated with an “ancestral” “strength” and “regenerate union,” Show Saturday is here presented as an event which connects people with each other and with their past in a healthy way (it is deeper and therefore more important than all the superficial acts of swindling, for example). It is for the speaker a genuinely human act of sharing space and time, and it has a collective, larger-than-individual, resonance. This brings us back to the cinematic techniques Larkin uses in this poem. The connectedness of people, which is in the end singled out as the highest value of the show and the reason for the poem, has been amply, though indirectly, created through the use of cameralike verbal devices in a good deal of the poem. The sense of a sweeping camera we often have in “Show Saturday,” in moving from one scene to another,

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or panning, creates and emphasizes connection. As Louis Giannetti says in his book Understanding Movies, “Pan shots tend to emphasize the unity of space and the connectedness of people and objects within that space” (108), and can suggest epic grandeur. In fact, we “expect a panning shot to emphasize the literal contiguity of people sharing the same space” (108). Having his observer behave like a camera in the first half of the poem, Larkin helps the reader construct this literal, spatial contiguity, which then in the course of the poem and especially in the end assumes larger and more figurative dimensions. The poem is certainly not an epic, but the large-scale extent of the described space, and the small-scale richness of detail (in “close-ups”) give at least a passing impression of an epic scope. This reinforces the importance of the collective and the ancestral suggested in the end. The underlying restorative power of the Show achieved through subtle connection even seems to undo the occasional unfavourable look of the observer when he is in his more subjective mood. People with “incurious faces,” “mugfaced wives,” and husbands “watchful as weasels,” as well as the speaker himself, are all “regenerated” and restored to the state of human dignity in such connecting moments. Dynamic visualization, although perhaps less obviously cinematic and orderly, is very striking in “Here,” a poem whose syntax in the first three stanzas is as vertiginous as the movement described. In “Show Saturday” what we termed camera-like movements are signalled through adverbial phrases, spatial (e. g. “outside”) or spatio-temporal (“then”), contextualized within standard syntax, where the subject and verb are usually easily identifiable in a sentence. This makes the movement itself mainly functional and hardly noticeable: it is there simply to shift the gaze of our mind’s eye from one scene to another, and subtly suggest connectedness. In “Here,” whose deictically stable title belies the shiftiness of three quarters of the poem, we seem to be dealing with a different kind of movement. Made more difficult to follow through piled-up participial clauses and big intervals between syntactic subjects and verbs, the undefined movement in the first three stanzas almost becomes the agent, the doer in the poem. A couple of clues (“traffic”; “a harsh-named halt”), however, suggest that the source of the movement is a vehicle, perhaps a bus, travelling north-east. Made to look frantic and spedup, the movement seems to “conjure up” the landscapes it zooms by: fields, stops, the river, the clouds, and the “gull-marked mud” which then “Gathers to the surprise of a large town.” In the town, an overwhelming procession of objects, places and people passes by—or, more precisely, we pass by them, caught in the whirlwind motion, which ultimately whips “out beyond” the town’s “mortgaged half-built edges” and past “fast-shadowed wheat-fields,

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running high as hedges.” The speed and forcefulness of the motion, emphasized by “fast” and “running” in the last-quoted line (even if “run” here means “reach”), come to a crashing halt in the last stanza where “Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands / Like heat.” If the movement through the space of the show-grounds in “Show Saturday” serves to connect people and objects meaningfully and comfortably, the movement in “Here” connects so many things so quickly and apparently randomly that it creates the feeling of claustrophobia. Landscapes, objects and people flash, gather, cluster, disperse and disappear before our eyes so furiously that by the time we are brought to that uneventful, silent and motionless space in the last stanza, we sigh with relief. The different quality of this space is also achieved through a more orderly syntax: syntagmatic units are shorter, and subjects and verbs more easily brought into a relationship. “Here” in the last stanza is thus defined through a contrast with the somewhat disorienting movement in the previous three. If the visualization technique in “Show Saturday” is “classical,” relying partly on an unnoticeable and functional movement which helps create a unified though diverse human space, “Here” is more “alternative” in this respect. Zooming by various landscapes uncontrollably, we are very aware of the movement, which takes us to the disconcerting “half-built edges” of our world, and, eventually, to an empty space at a “bluish neutral distance” which Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

The feeling of giddiness and confusion from the beginning of the poem turns into a certain kind of “existential angst” at these “edges” of the world. The sight of “untalkative” “unfenced existence,” which is “out of reach,” is less frantic than the previous speedy movement, but it isn’t any more comforting—it is a completely dehumanised space.10 Like “Show Saturday,” “Here” uses the verbal invocation of movement (or lack thereof ) to create a space before our eyes, which is in itself a vehicle of meaning and tone in the poem.11 What we have seen in these examples of Larkin’s imagist practices suggests that the visual elements in his poems are closely aligned with his frequent emphasis on the empirical. One of their main functions is to present abstract or metaphysical ideas in an imaginable, concrete form. Being part of a poem, however, these images often assume a deeper suggestiveness and

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exist on two levels. For instance, “Tops” is a graphic description of a simple object on the literal level but it also opens up a metaphorical frame of reference, which gives the literal description a wider applicability. Poems with this “dual” nature, like “Tops,” or “Wires,” can be regarded as extended metaphors, which function similarly to parables in that a coherent meaning sustained on one interpretative level (e. g. literal) is “naturally” transferred to another (e. g. figurative) through the principle of analogy. “Naturally” here means that, since analogy is one of the primary cognitive principles, the reader doesn’t have to engage in any “special” process of interpretation: the text lends itself to projection and “widening.” In this connection, it is useful to remember Aristotle’s and Cicero’s belief that metaphor is a common linguistic practice in everyone’s language (see 28 above). We are all rather wellversed in executing metaphoric translations of meaning, as long as they remain within some ordinary, every-day use parameters. In more general terms, the duality noticeable in extended-metaphor poems is a characteristic of any good plain-style poetry: there is the concrete, particular (and often visual) aspect which is easier to grasp, and then there is the abstract, general (and often metaphysical) aspect, which gives depth and illumination to the former. The literalness of the concrete, which is necessary in interpretation of such texts, is achieved through the consistent employment of the denotative semantic values: understanding “young steers,” “old cattle,” or “electric fences” in their primary meanings is the basis for any secondary or connotative extensions, which take the text to a figurative level. The visual, in this case, helps establish the denotative basis. The degree and kind of visualization guides the reader’s interpretative process in many Larkin poems. For instance, in “First Sight,” an otherwise “visualizable” poem, a couple of key lines have a low visual content and give the whole poem a more open-ended meaning. Poems like “To the Sea,” “Show Saturday,” or “Here” rely for effect on different types of visual presentation: static (painterly) or dynamic (cinematic) techniques are invoked verbally to facilitate and direct comprehension. In the latter two poems, Larkin is following not only Aristotle’s general principle of “bringing-before-theeyes,” but also his more specific advice of doing so through creation of motion or energeia (see 26). While a great number of Larkin’s poems are image-laden/led, not all of them are. In fact, a more frequent occurrence in Larkin is an interplay of imagistic (descriptive) and analytic (discursive) modes. This is probably the most notable difference between Larkin and Imagist or Modernist poets, and it needs further elaboration within the context of clarity and plainness.

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COGNITION: BEYOND THE SEEN Analytical thought While the narrative and the imagistic elements are vital parts of Larkin’s stylistic strategies, equally “Larkinesque” is a certain cerebral quality: a rational, dialectic, or abstract thought. It is enough to look at a few endings to get a distinct feel of this thinking, philosophical mind: Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age. (“Dockery and Son”) Truly, though our element is time, We are not suited to the long perspectives Open at each instant of our lives. They link us to our losses: worse, They show us what we have as it once was, Blindingly undiminished, just as though By acting differently we could have kept it so. (“Reference Back”)

This abstract quality of a mind trying to think coherently about the world or the self has often been noticed in Larkin’s poetry. In her 1974 study of Larkin’s poetry, Lolette Kuby locates Larkin’s “linguistic break with modernism” in his reintroduction of “the speech of thought” into modern poetry (32, 37). According to Kuby, 119

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” Larkin writes poetry which communicates primarily to the mind, not the intellectual mind, but to the understanding, the mind that apprehends idea in experience. To do so requires a language that derives from thought rather than from dream or from the Freudian or Jungian unconscious. It cannot be a language which by its very nature resists being understood. It is exactly that language which defenders of modernism object to. (32)

The distinction Kuby establishes between “the intellectual mind” and “the understanding” is significant. Since in some key respects she opposes Larkin to Modernists, “the intellectual mind” for her is most probably the erudite, learned, “Golden-Bough” type of mind, so typical of Modernist poets. What distinguishes the mind represented in Larkin’s poems, which inevitably deals with ideas too, is the “apprehension” and the “experience.” This excludes another Modernist feature: emphasis on dreams or the unconscious, which are certainly suggestive and symbolic, but which don’t necessarily reach the level of “understanding,” and which don’t come from “waking/real-life” experiences. The mind at work in Larkin’s poems reveals itself in coherent thought, a thought which tries to relate intelligibly things perceived or felt. For Kuby, the most important difference between Imagists and Larkin (who also uses images) is in the fact that the former attempt to capture the “thingness” of things (36) through almost absolute emphasis on sensory detail, particularly images. Larkin, on the other hand, reintroduces “thought into the surface of the poem,” which “produces a symbiotic relationship between idea and image” (40). Importantly, recreating “an experience that involves not only seeing, but cognition” allows for a “connectedness between the internal and external world, not only of the speaker, but of the reader” (40). Hence Kuby’s main claim that Larkin’s poetry is “communicative.” The vital role of cognition in Larkin is also recognized by Terry Whalen, for whom this is precisely what adds further quality to Larkin’s imagistic and empirical basis: The mistake of many of the Imagist poets was that they mistook simple selection of objects for actually saying something profound. The quality of freshness is there as part of Larkin’s authenticating reality, but the expressive dimension of his poetry transforms the empirical glance into something much larger, more interesting and coherent. For Larkin, an impression of the world is at the stimulating base of the work, but there is also a process of thought regarding the impression which he also conveys. (“Philip Larkin’s imagist bias: his poetry of observation” 33)

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This “coherence” and “process of thought” so integral to Larkin’s poetry, is what we will regard as the discursive aspect of his style. A thought-process trying to make sense of the perceived or the experienced is often complementary to the descriptive aspects of his poems (such as the narrative, or the particular and often sensory details). In other words, this discursive element enhances intelligibility, since it allows the reader to understand the speaker’s mind better, and connect with the poem. As a facilitator of the reader’s understanding, this analytical thought could be seen as part of the classical invention or proof (and more specifically, of logos—the means of proving a case before an audience). One specific form Larkin’s analytical mind-set takes is an epigrammatic or proverbial expression, which sometimes ends longer speculations. Concise and memorable, such lines resemble maxims, which, as we have seen, Aristotle recommends as part of the common-sense pisteis (proof ) in argumentation: their commonality makes them “seem true” and appeals to the audience (see 25 above). In their universal values, maxims and proverbs are closely related to the so-called commonplaces (loci communes) of the classical rhetoric, which are part of invention. Expressing some kind of traditional wisdom, “the commonplaces are always the places where we are ‘on familiar ground’” (Lanham 170). In Larkin, such lines join two qualities: they speak about some universally relevant topic, and they are expressed in a condensed, epigrammatic way. Most often, they are concerned with life and the related idea of destiny: Life is first boredom, then fear. (“Dockery and Son”) Life is an immobile, locked, Three-handed struggle between Your wants, the world’s for you, and (worse) The unbeatable slow machine That brings what you’ll get. (“The Life with a Hole in it”) . . . the million-petalled flower Of being here. (“The Old Fools”)

They can be about happiness: In fact, may you be dull If that is what a skilled,

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” Vigilant, flexible, Unemphasised, enthralled Catching of happiness is called. (“Born Yesterday”)

Or old age and death: Smiles are for youth. For old age come Death’s terror and delirium. (“Heads in the Women’s Ward”)

Larkin’s epigrammatic lines can also have a ring of a more general statement—in this particular case, this is indicated by the single quotation marks: ‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.’ (“I Remember, I Remember”)

Other than tackling particular loci communes, these lines also express more or less recognizable ideas or attitudes towards such topics. Fear of old age and death, life as a helpless predetermined state, but also as a rich, flower-like phenomenon, or happiness as a sized-down but active state of mind, are all thoughts which have crossed our minds, even if we don’t subscribe to them entirely. On the one hand, we are attracted by the familiar ideas, and on the other, we are struck by the condensed, articulate and often memorable way in which they are expressed. Strategic use of metaphoric language is the key to Larkin’s success here. Well-placed in their immediate context, the terse figurative turns of phrase such as “the unbeatable slow machine” (“destiny”), or “the million-petalled flower / Of being here” (“life”) manage to say a lot in a few words. Metaphoric and striking selection and combination of words here save familiar ideas from a clichéd status, and result in a fresh mixture of the old and the new. In some poems, however, Larkin’s main strategy isn’t to rely on traditional wisdom or widely-accepted ideas, but to examine them consciously, thus proving his “modern” poetic position. As Lanham says, paraphrasing Howell, the commonplaces are much less used in modern times, “because we no longer trust traditional wisdom, [and] are far more interested in investigating the world anew” (170). Larkin’s “Vers de Société” is an interesting examination of such sayings as “All solitude is selfish,” or “Virtue is social,” which are italicized in the poem and thus brought to our attention. Like many Larkin poems, “Vers de Société” has an occasional opening: a speaker,

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who is soon seen to be grouchy and in love with his solitude, reads an invitation to a soirée, which he at first plans to reject bluntly. Again, as with many Larkin speakers, he then moves into a speculative state of mind where he considers and analyses related ideas—something which simultaneously reveals him as a personality. Considering beliefs such as All solitude is selfish or Virtue is social, he wonders (with an admirable mixture of abstract thinking and parenthetical real-life illustration): Are, then, these routines Playing at goodness, like going to church? Something that bores us, something we don’t do well (Asking that ass about his fool research) But try to feel, because, however crudely, It shows us what should be? Too subtle, that. Too decent too.

And then concludes: Oh hell, Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things.

The poem ends tellingly with his imagined reply accepting the invitation to the soirée, indicating he has changed his mind about not going: “Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course -.” Even though the speaker’s disgruntled and at times offensive tone and his probing thought-process suggest that the italicized sayings are meant to be investigated critically and perhaps disapprovingly, the whole “collective” mentality embedded in such sayings is, in fact, not rejected in the end. Perhaps in an answer to a much younger speaker in an earlier poem “Best Society,” the older and more realistic speaker in “Vers” leaves the rebellion against the societal precepts to the young, those who are perfectly capable of “viciously” locking their door and enjoying “uncontradicting solitude” (“Best Society”). The crucial difference between “Best Society” and “Vers de Société” is, of course, the type of personality behind the speaker. In the earlier poem, the speaker is young and mentally remote from death so he can “afford” to

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replace social activities with “uncontradicting solitude” and thus reassert his individuality over societal mentality. The later speaker is older and in need of human company precisely during the self-examining moments which the younger speaker craves. In both cases, nevertheless, collective rules of conduct, more clearly verbalized in “Vers,” are despised. This brings up an important nuance in Larkin’s attitude to the traditional or communal.1 Such collective sources of argumentation in Larkin’s poetry are most valuable tools of communicating to the reader as long as they represent some universal, human quality which we experience and recognize as individuals. On the other hand, if such common and traditional places step into the ossified form of a stereotype restricting human individuality, they are branded as such and often ridiculed. This is particularly visible in poems which graphically delineate the stereotype through italics or quotation marks, to suggest even more strongly the ossification and dubious status of such sayings (see, for example, “Sympathy in White Major,” “Poetry of Departures,” “Fiction and the Reading Public,” or “Vers de Société”).2 In other words, Larkin relies on the traditional in that he often treats familiar human concerns in a common-sensical way and through an epigrammatic expression. This is very different from the ready-made wording of stereotypes (whether about life, or about literature) received as an imposed precept, and consequently avoided or criticised. Larkin’s common-sensical treatment of his subjects is often the backbone of his analytical approach in certain poems: a reliance on familiar logic. Just as Aristotle is interested in an informal argument from probability (or enthymeme) which could be easily followed by a general audience (see 25 above), Larkin builds the arguments in his discursive poems not on impeccable logic but on a recognizable analytical movement of the thinking mind. The most recognizable is an argument built from experience, and in this respect, Larkin frequently resembles literary or philosophical champions of the inductive method, such as Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, or later Wittgenstein (see 32, 66 above). An excellent example of such an inductive process, which goes from a particular experience through analytical thought to a generalized conclusion is “The Mower”: The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world

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Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.

The first stanza describes the event which prompted the succeeding thoughts through a few vivid details: we are told that the mower stalled “twice,” and that the hedgehog which had been in the “long” grass was “jammed up” in the blades. In other words, we imagine a specific occasion. The first line of the next stanza is a short flashback, still in the realm of personal experience, which is meant to emphasise the hedgehog’s death through the contrast between feeding and killing. The last line of the second stanza and the first one of the third stress the finality of the situation even further in a brief summary of what happened after the killing. The last four lines of the poem express the speaker’s thoughts generated by the occasion and mark a move from the particular to the general. In fact, we can even notice a move from a lower to a higher level of generality in these four lines. “The first day after a death, the new absence / Is always the same” is a kind of a bridge between the concrete death described in the preceding lines and a more abstract situation, applicable to any death (here signalled by the indefinite article). The speaker’s thoughts are moving according to the recognizable logic of going from the specific to the universal. The last two and a half lines, “we should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time,” are an even more obvious shift to the general realm of thinking, where the connection with the unfortunate hedgehog from the beginning still exists but is now expanded into a more widely applicable thought. The use of the plural “we” and the advice format (indicated through the modal “should”) universalize this final thought on mortality in the poem. Because we can follow the “logical” stages of experience-thought-conclusion, the poem’s main premise seems appropriate and its conclusion simple and sensible. And because of this logical development of ideas, the very last thought, which has the form and the tone of a precept or a stereotypical saying, fits in naturally and powerfully. Most poems which end with analytical speculation are also examples of this inductive method—for example, the poems whose endings opened this chapter can certainly be seen in this light. The first three stanzas of “Dockery and Son” are a very well developed narrative opening, which presents a specific

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occasion and serves as the foundation for the rest of the poem. Stanza four and about four lines of stanza five are the same kind of “bridge” we noticed in “The Mower,” where the speaker still thinks firmly along the lines of the narrated event but begins to shift slowly towards the more general thinking about the related subjects. Inspired by Dockery’s death, the speaker begins to think over his own situation (“no son, no wife, / No house or land”), and compare it implicitly with Dockery’s, which is then done explicitly at the beginning of stanza five. That we are still in the realm of the speaker’s subjective reactions towards the recent event and the first thoughts that occur is evident in the imitated thinking process the speaker’s mind goes through. This is indicated through the modality of verbs, unfinished or shifted thoughts, pauses (signalled by dots), use of exclamation marks, and questions: Dockery, now: Only nineteen, he must have taken stock Of what he wanted, and been capable Of . . . No, that’s not the difference: rather, how Convinced he was he should be added to! Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution. Where do these Innate assumptions come from?

The last question opens up a more properly abstract reflection about fate, an extrapolation from Dockery’s or the speaker’s case (they are mentioned only once more in the rest of the poem, but as part of a larger picture). The use of the plural pronoun “we” gives this part of the speaker’s speculation a more universal objective aura, while still keeping the universal in close contact with the personal through the first person. The “innate assumptions” come Not from We think truest, or most want to do: Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style Our lives bring with them; habit for a while, Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got And how we got it; looked back on, they rear Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying For Dockery a son, for me nothing, Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage.

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Interestingly, even though the speaker’s mind is here moving on more abstract levels of thought, he still uses a few very concrete images: in the similes in which he compares “assumptions” to “doors” and “sandclouds,” or when he gives these assumptions a further concrete quality by saying that they “harden” and “embody” something. The last four lines climb even higher on the ladder of abstraction—they offer a general conclusion based on what has been said previously, and there is an epigrammatic or proverbial feel to them. Unlike a more authentic record of the movement of the speaker’s shifting thoughts in stanzas four and five, the last four lines sound well thought-out, articulate, and, so to speak, “premeditated.” Again, we can clearly follow the stages in the poem: (narrated) specific event  related thoughts  more general thoughts  epigrammatic conclusion. A similar, though perhaps not as minutely developed, inductive movement from an event or experience to a general conclusion can be seen in “Reference Back” and “The Importance of Elsewhere.” In the first stanza of “Reference Back,” the speaker invokes an occasion when he visited his mother’s home. The second stanza builds on the reference to music and records in the first one, and takes the speaker to an associated speculation about the links between different times and people, formed through music. This naturally leads him to a more general consideration of time as “our element” in which the plural pronoun again enhances the universalizing process. The speaker, however, ends up claiming that “we are not suited to the long perspectives” opened by our element: by establishing links, they leave more room for regret. The shortest of the mentioned poems, “The Importance of Elsewhere” follows the same logic in a more sketchy way. The description of a particular experience in the first stanza is followed by an elaboration based on sensory details in the second (“draughty streets,” “smell of dockland, like a stable,” “the herring-hawker’s cry”). The final stanza offers a more general and abstract speculation on the difference between living at home and abroad, which grew out of the preceding particulars. While in the “inductive poems” the analytical and general thought derives from a particular experience, there are also discursive poems in Larkin’s oeuvre which seem to be a rationalization, a thinking-through of an idea, from beginning to end. Poems like “Ignorance,” or “Places, Loved Ones” are more noticeably full of abstractions, and even their opening lines are already in the reflective realm, unrelated to any specific occasion: Strange to know nothing, never to be sure Of what is true or right or real

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” But forced to qualify or so I feel, Or Well, it does seem so: Someone must know. (“Ignorance”) No, I have never found The place where I could say This is my proper ground, Here I shall stay; (“Places, Loved Ones”)

In both cases, the speaker introduces a familiar attitude or an idea in the first stanza—indicated by the use of italics—which he then goes on to ponder in the rest of the poem. In “Ignorance,” he is contemplating the human condition of not knowing everything with certainty, ultimately suggesting a predetermined state, which we can’t do much to change:3 “things” have a “skill at finding what they need,” while “our flesh / Surrounds us with its own decisions.” “Places, Loved Ones” treats a related subject of choice (or lack thereof ), which enables us to claim either that we have found the “right” person/place, or that we have been bogged down by the circumstances in our life. As in some poems mentioned earlier, the use of plural or generalizing pronouns is a significant indicator and creator of the abstract, universalizing quality: “we” is used in the last stanza of “Ignorance,” while the general “you” quickly replaces the “I” in “Places, Loved Ones.” Although they don’t exhibit the same inductive movement as the earlier-mentioned poems, the poems belonging to this discursive type are similar in that they attempt to develop and convey an idea through what looks like a common thought-process. The speaker’s mind moves in an orderly and “logical” fashion, each thought deriving from the previous one, and often capturing a recognizable “pattern” of thoughts on a certain subject. “Aubade” is probably the best example of such an analytical style. In five 10-line stanzas, with a regular meter and a rhyme scheme, “Aubade” is a thorough study of, in the words of a later poet, “the dawn thoughts of an atheist.”4 From beginning to end, the speaker’s mind is revealed in an elaborate contemplation of one subject—death. Although the first four lines don’t immediately plunge into a speculation—as was the case with “Ignorance,” for example—they introduce the general nature of the situation and of the succeeding reflection through the use of the Present Simple Tense:

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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. 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:

The Present Simple indicates a habitual action, or one that is repeated regularly—this is the speaker’s typical situation, which recurs night after night. The thought heralded by the colon has derived not from one specific occasion or experience but from a repetitive state of mind and thus assumes a certain generality. The six remaining lines of the first stanza are, so to speak, a “general introduction” of the subject-matter: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

At this very thought, “The mind blanks” in the opening line of stanza two. The rest of the stanza is a detailed explanation of such a reaction, first defined through “negated” possibilities: Not in remorse - The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

Remorse or despair thus being rejected as possible causes of the mind’s “blanking,” the speaker goes on to define in more assertive terms what it is that frightens him about death the most. Following the preceding statements after a semi-colon and introduced with “but,” this thought feels like an opposition, or a binary counterpart of the previous: But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

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While remorse and despair imply the existence of at least some content in the mind, something to hold on to at the moment of fear, what actually frightens the speaker about death is the thought of “the total emptiness,” and “the sure extinction”; that is, the absence of any content. After the initial explanation in the second stanza, this idea is then elaborated in the third. The first statement in the third stanza is a brief assessment of the way the speaker feels, and is directly linked to the previous thought through the demonstrative pronoun of proximity: “This is a special way of being afraid / No trick dispels.” The two long-standing “tricks” the speaker then describes are religion and philosophy, both presented as misleading, and both seen in metaphoric terms, revealing the speaker’s attitude: Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel . . .

In an ironic turning of the tables on philosophy, the speaker then very “rationally” points out that it is precisely the prospect of “not feeling” that frightens (the generalized) us: . . . not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with. The anaesthetic from which none come round.

In a logical structure similar to that of the previous stanza, the speaker first presents an argument (or arguments) in the first half of the stanza, which he then refutes with his own counter-arguments in the second half, clarifying his point of view through contrast. His point of view, announced early on when he says that his mind “blanks” at the thought of death, is linked in both stanzas semantically and grammatically. The “total emptiness” and “extinction” which frighten him in the second stanza, are closely bound up with the terrifying absence of any sensory, intellectual, or emotional human content he anticipates in death in the third stanza. In both cases, the denial of any existence is emphasised through the use of negation: not, anywhere, nothing, no, none. After an explanation and an elaboration of such an attitude to death, in stanza four the speaker gives an “overview” of the consequences of this attitude

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in daily life. The consequential relation is appropriately introduced with the connective “And so”: And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink.

The otherwise intangible and vast idea of death is here made concrete, as a “blur” on the edge of “vision,” or a constant “chill,” or the pictorial “furnacefear.” The traditional comfort of courage or bravery in this situation is undone in the closing lines of the stanza—they don’t change anything about the certainty of death: Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Having gone through all the analytical stages on the subject, the speaker’s mind seems to wrap up the examination with these short, clear statements at the end of stanza four, denying the possibility of any relief. The last stanza takes us back to the original context of this contemplation: “Slowly light strengthens and the room takes shape.” The speaker’s mind slips out of the strictly analytical, logical mode, which gave the previous stanzas an essay-like structure, and, probably coloured by the preceding thoughts, slips into a curious mix of the objective and the subjective, the proverbial and the fantastic. Taking his cue from the room which takes shape (in another instance of the general/habitual Present Tense), the speaker generalizes: It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

The finality of our helpless situation is then placed in the imagined context of an indifferent and hostile world of the personified “crouching” telephones. This world, nevertheless, seems to be the only thing that keeps us going

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when faced with thoughts of death; only work and routine can offer temporary healing: Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

These last six lines feel noticeably different from the rest of the poem since instead of explicitly stating an idea in what we termed an analytical mode, they only suggest ideas through figurative or impressionistic language. The description of the external world is not meant to be realistic: it embodies the speaker’s state of mind. The reader’s interpretative faculties are thus given a somewhat more challenging task, but since the relevant state of mind has been thoroughly and coherently laid out in the previous parts of the poem, it is not difficult to understand this final section. And perhaps the shifting of the modes of expression in the end conveys an additional idea: thinking through the subject of death in an orderly, analytical way does not dissolve the fear; in fact, it might even exacerbate it. This style of thinking and writing, however, makes for highly communicative poetry. One of the most common loci communes, fear of death, is treated in a common, or more precisely, unspecialized way. Together with the rejection of religious or philosophical ideology, the speaker also rejects their “specialized” language, but still expresses a myriad of ideas intelligibly. This comes as a result of two things. First, the speaker bases his main argument about death on the most universal human qualities: sensory, mental, and spiritual faculties. When imagined, the absence of these strikes us all on some level. Second, the poem has a coherent, reader-friendly structure in the sense that the ideas are put forward with a certain logical development: the subject is introduced within a relevant context, then explained, then developed with further nuances, and then concluded with a consideration of how this applies to daily life. The logical movement is helped with connectives such as “yet,” “but,” “because,” or “so”; even the 6-line idiosyncratic finish is introduced with an appropriate conjunction, “meanwhile,” which suggests a shift of some kind, a change of one narrative track for another. The clarity of ideas is enhanced through the use of colons or dashes followed by a further explanation of the previous thought, or with the phrases such as “this is,” indicating a clear reference to what precedes or follows. Or, in discourse

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analysis terms, coherence is ensured through anaphoric and cataphoric reference. Though “sentences” in which the speaker expresses his ideas are long, they consist of relatively short syntagmatic units often separated by commas to ease the processing of the text. At times, the expression is so concise (for example, the last four lines of stanza four) that we could hold it up as an excellent example of the classical “brevity and perspicuity.” Where the ordinary syntax is incomplete, as in “Not to be here, / Not to be anywhere, / And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true,” it is easily recoverable from what is previously said, as it would be in a conversation. “Aubade,” in other words, is a very successful combination of an analytical thought-process and an intelligible expression—but it is also very noticeably a poem. It has a strict stanzaic form, it is written mainly in the iambic pentameter (the ninth line in each stanza is shorter, and not all the verses are iambic), and it has a consistent rhyme scheme (ababccdeed). Considered together with the more free-ranging, almost surrealist, quality of the end which builds on the previous analysis, all these aspects of “Aubade” contribute to the richness and accessibility of it as a poetic text. Analytical thought, then, is frequently a key ingredient of Larkin’s plain style. Whether used as a complement to descriptive and narrative techniques, or as a predominant poetic mode, it is important for the expressive, intelligible dimension of Larkin’s poetry. The discursiveness and accessibility of such poems is founded, most generally speaking, on what Aristotle calls the common beliefs or the common sense, in the subject-matter, in the logical treatment, and in the verbal expression. Larkin’s discursive poems treat universally relevant topics, they rely on familiar logic (for example, induction) or an invocation of a basic analytical thought-process, and they often express the main idea in the succinct and striking fashion of an epigram. These qualities are supposed to provide a common cognitive ground for the readers, which facilitates understanding and can thus be considered as part of the classical invention. An important difference between Larkin’s representation of the mind and that of the Modernists is that, even when he is trying to imitate an authentic thought-process, Larkin does it in an orderly, reader-friendly, or stylized fashion. In other words, his aim is not to approximate the verisimilitude of our mental processes for the sake of psychological realism, but to use clear textual prompts for the sake of triggering off the recognition in the reader of the common thought patterns, with the ultimate goal of conveying an idea which could be shared. Communication, once again, is the guiding principle and the “final destination.” This, however, does not exclude the use of more idiosyncratic and less “common” elements: as we have seen in

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“Aubade,” when placed within an analytical and articulate structure, these elements can add to the tonal richness of the text, without taking away from its intelligibility. TONE OF VOICE Quite a number of Larkin’s poems carry a distinct tone of voice, which adds to the overall meaning. In most general terms, the existence of a recognizable and believable “voice” is a facilitator in the comprehension process—as Bruce Martin claims: The speaking voice of his poems comes across as natural, encouraging the reader to believe that the style is indeed the man and that it represents a man with whom one can identify and from whom one can learn. (91)

More specifically, some commentators, for example Kuby, argue that it is precisely such elements as “fluctuations in tone of voice” that ensure freshness, precision and individuality of Larkin’s otherwise ordinary vocabulary (35). Gary Day, who considers Larkin’s language generally “conservative,” points to Larkin’s “characteristic irony, hesitation and doubt” as the means of going beyond his usual “empirical” language characterized by a “strong link between word and thing” (43). There is no doubt that the tonal quality of many Larkin poems is vital, and is often a key factor in interpretation. The question is: how does something so intangible as a “tone” fit into the context of plainness, or even, does it fit into this context? It does and it doesn’t. Depending on how it is achieved, a tone of voice can be a clear indication of how to interpret a statement, or it can be a cause of ambiguity, and in Larkin, we can find examples of both. Tonality in his poetry is a flexible device: in some instances it is employed to enhance clarity, aligning him broadly with a “pre-Modernist” use of language; in others, it complicates the apparently straightforward meaning and produces certain indeterminacies, more typical of modern writing. In other words, if there is one area of Larkin’s poetry which is a potential complication to the overall plainness, it is tone of voice. Whether such tonality seriously hinders understanding, or whether it brings out important complexities, is the crucial question we will explore in the following pages. Two related concepts to be examined with regard to tone of voice are persona and empathy. Empathy is, of course, a broader term and refers to the facilitation of the reader’s identification with the speaker/subject through various textual means. Persona, as a speaker embodying a particular fictional

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personality, can be one of these means of creating empathy but is such an important occurrence in Larkin’s writing that it merits a separate examination. Additionally, persona (involving a speaker) and empathy (involving emotion in the audience) could be associated with the classical concepts of ethos and pathos respectively, both of which are a part of invention or convincing the audience that something is the case. Persona A distinction between subjectivity and the persona must be made. The two are often intertwined but while the persona implies a certain recognizable “psychological profile,” or a “type” of person, subjectivity is more of a formal, structuring principle in a (Larkin) poem. It denotes the presence of sensory or mental impressions coming from a unified source—someone’s consciousness—and introduces a certain order into the material of a poem. As we have seen earlier, the subjectivity of the speaker in “Church Going” gives the poem coherence and “logical” movement from one sensory impression, or thought, or feeling, to another. To use Andrew Crozier’s terms, the poetic tradition of “empirical lyricism,” which includes Larkin, is based on “the authoritative self,” or the guiding and controlling presence of a speaking subject—constructing the poem’s framework of interpretation around its personal authority, and furnishing its empirical experience as the horizon of the poem’s range of reference. . . . (229, 228)

For Crozier this is the most important difference between the Movement poets and the “New Apocalypse” poets. In the case of the latter, Crozier finds certain advantages in the sense that “the self (the subject, the poet) does not stand at the centre” and “the poet does not constitute at one and the same time the poem’s protagonist and boundary” (228). The guidance and “authority” of the speaking subjectivity are certainly a significant contribution to coherence and intelligibility on the formal level in the Movement poetry. This, however, does not necessarily imply, as Crozier seems to suggest, a reduction in an experiential dimension of a poem, where the poet is “a mastering intelligence” rather than “an experiencing creature” (228). The subjectivity in Larkin, for example, is never a monolithic, absolute entity, dominated only by the intellect, and this is where a specific and developed persona helps. The term subjectivity is best understood as part of the formal principle of presenting the poetic material since it provides a “deictic anchorage”; but the full impact of the speaker, on the level of content, is achieved through the psychological depths, or quirks, of a persona.

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The most typical personae in Larkin are the ones reflecting to a certain extent contemporary socio-historical realities (see 68–72 above): a common, “non-heroic,” man, someone a little awkward, or unsure about himself, or, in some extreme cases, a person who feels detached and even unfit for life. In “Church Going,” we have seen an average, slightly awkward person, who is also somewhat self-deprecating, as he seems to be not as ignorant as he claims; a detached, hesitant person, who doesn’t seem to be completely honest even with himself is best represented in “Reasons for Attendance”; a person who thinks of himself as a failure is captured in “Skin,” “Mother, Summer, I,” or “Reference Back”; in “Wild Oats,” “Spring,” or perhaps even “Posterity” the speaker might apply the label “loser” to himself. The speaker’s detachment, non-heroism, awkwardness, self-consciousness and hesitancy are masterfully combined in “Reasons for Attendance,” which also exemplifies Larkin’s (and the Movement’s) strategy of using “deflationary” devices. These are vital in the shift of tone or meaning, and are directly related to the Movement’s ideological and cultural background characterized by scepticism and distrust in individual authority (see 71 above). From the second line, the speaker of “Reasons for Attendance” is literally and symbolically detached from the others in the poem: he is just an observer, behind “the lighted glass,” watching the dancers. Probably the fact that they are “all under twenty-five” is another point of separation. The happiness he perceives in the dancers is then brought into question in the second stanza, revealing his uncertainty through an inner monologue: - Or so I fancy, sensing the smoke and sweat, The wonderful feel of girls. Why be out here? But then, why be in there? Sex, yes, but what Is sex? Surely, to think the lion’s share Of happiness is found by couples—sheer Inaccuracy, as far as I’m concerned.

Qualifications such as “Or so I fancy” and “as far as I’m concerned” weaken or disable any authoritative statements on the issue and suggest the speaker’s self-consciousness. His hesitation is revealed through a dilemma (“Why be out here? / But then, why be in there?”), and questioning (“Sex, yes, but what / Is sex?”), which he attempts to resolve by convincing himself to take one side, indicated by “Surely.” The third stanza is the continuation of this thought-process, with the speaker trying to take a firm position: he sides with art over sex, as it asserts his individuality. The triad of art (music), the

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speaker, and the others (dancers), which also opens the poem in the first stanza, is broken in the fourth stanza through binaries and parallelisms: But not for me, nor I for them; and so With happiness. Therefore I stay outside, Believing this; and they maul to and fro, Believing that; and both are satisfied, If no one has misjudged himself. Or lied.

Until the very last line, “he” is divided from “them” not only by semi-colons and commas, but also by staying outside, and holding on to his beliefs. The punch-line and the “deflation” of this carefully constructed attitude is, of course, the last line. Just after he has convinced himself (and perhaps even the reader) that he is fine with his choice, and that both sides are therefore satisfied, he destroys the argument once more through the last two qualifications. The way they are put, however, suggests a deeper meaning, and changes the tone of the last two stanzas and perhaps the whole poem. Since they have the final and most striking placement, such uncertainties almost turn into their reversed certainties: yes—we are tempted to think in the end—someone has misjudged himself, and someone has lied. That last two-word sentence, after the period-break, almost audibly clinches the issue. The fact that the speaker doesn’t use the first person pronoun although he clearly refers to himself in the end, suggests that he is aware of, and uneasy with his “bad faith”: selfconsciousness is in this case mixed with a trace of self-disgust. That last line, therefore, can be seen as undoing the attempt to build up a firm stance ever since the third line of the second stanza; not only that, but it also suggests that the speaker, in fact, knows all the while that people inside are happier and yet feels the need to go through this intellectual exercise. The idea of a cerebral exercise is also hinted at in the title, which sounds methodical and formal, and is a little awkward when applied to the context of a dance club. Through the whole poem, then, we get small clues as to what kind of persona we are dealing with, but this persona gets its final illumination in the last line. This ending is vital to the poem’s fuller meaning. A similar strategy producing similar results can be seen in a number of other poems. In “Mr. Bleaney,” as we have seen, the last three words (“I don’t know”) deal a final tonal blow resembling that of the punch-line in “Reasons for Attendance.” The difference, however, lies in the fact that the full two stanzas at the end of “Mr. Bleaney” are a sort of preparation for this deflationary finish, due to the convoluted and suspense-building syntax. This

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suggests that the speaker, who is, we gather, at first rather repulsed by the previous tenant, gets caught up in a psychological turmoil, which naturally leaves him unsure of what to think about Mr. Bleaney, or himself. The tone of voice, in other words, has changed from critical, or at least distanced, to involved and perhaps even sympathetic. Again, the gradual revelation of the persona is essential for this tonal fluctuation.5 In “Self ’s the Man,” the speaker is playfully and condescendingly comparing his own life to a married man’s, trying to prove authoritatively who is more selfish. Starting with the platitude that a married person is undeniably less selfish, the speaker then works his witty way in the opposite direction, claiming self-assuredly that the two of them are just the same; that he, in fact, is in a better position since he, at least, won’t need them to send “a van.” And again, as with “Reasons for Attendance,” the bravado is undercut in a single, qualifying line at the end: “Or I suppose I can.” In a way, this transfers the final laugh onto the speaker and changes the tone from the ironic and scathing to the modest and self-questioning. On the level of ideas, such a tonal shift achieves two things. The first part of the poem concisely and sharply depicts and criticizes a complacent, takenfor-granted, or uncritical life-style, whereas the very end questions the authority from which the previous critique was made. This disables any absolute, inhumanly intractable judgments, and yet leaves room for a clear-sighted vision of what some lives are like. The speaking persona in this case remains detached and somewhat awkward compared to others, or, as the speaker says in “Spring,” in the face of the reawakening life and nature, he is “an indigestible sterility” despite his vision being “mountain-clear.” The “mountain-clear” vision in the poems with a developed persona, however, does not always entail a complete detachment and a note of self-pity. In “Church Going” and “The Whitsun Weddings,” the speaker’s detachment and awkwardness are to a certain extent overcome in the end through the establishment of some kind of genuine connection with the others, in the graveyard or on the train. Here, the tone also shifts, but not through a quick deflationary “jab” at the end; instead, the persona experiences—through a longer narrative—a temperate epiphany which modifies the opening attitude. While deflation and epiphany are essential in the creation of the awkward and hesitant (and yet insightful) persona, the sardonic, crude and bitterly cynical persona which features mostly in Larkin’s later poetry is created with the help of another strategy: the use of obscenities. In “This Be The Verse,” “High Windows,” “Sad Steps,” “Vers de Société,” or “Love Again” words of differing degrees of impropriety that the speaker uses, define the tone and the way the reader connects with the speaker and the poem. As

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Stephen Burt suggests in his article on the use of four-letter words in Larkin’s poems, such words break rules of discourse and establish the speaker’s desire to épate whatever parent surrogates can be found. Dirty words are thus signs of affiliation with other speakers and listeners who have the same “enemies,” who want to offend or drive off a given authority. This makes them signs of disaffiliation from, or not-being-like (because not talking like) that authority. By saying “fuck” in a room or on a record, an utterer invites his or her listeners to ask: Who does this speaker belong with? Who does this speaker emphatically not belong with? (“High Windows and Four-Letter Words” 2)

In other words, one of the purposes of crude words is to serve as a sign of a certain ideological slant expressed by the speaker. “Dirty words” are not only a sign of an anti-authority position, but are also “subcultural indicators” (Burt 2), revealing the speaker’s desire to sound like a particular stratum of the general population: for example, the younger generations. This is most obvious in “This Be The Verse” and “High Windows,” which treat the generation gap as one of the themes. “This Be The Verse,” for example, even seems to be addressed to someone young, or at least, takes the perspective of the young. Hence the use of not only the improper “fuck up,” but also of the colloquial words in the idiolect of the young, such as “mum” and “dad.” The perspective of a young and rebellious generation is sustained in the second stanza through the disrespectful reference to parents as “fools in old-style hats and coats” who were either “soppy-stern” or “at one another’s throats.” The speaker’s aggressive and offensive tone of the young in the first two stanzas duly shocks, then shifts in the third to the tone of an older person; aphoristic lines, a beautiful image and the absence of crude expressions replace the aggressiveness of the previous stanzas, but end the poem on a cynical, weary note: Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can. And don’t have any kids yourself.

It is as if the speaker first vented the remembered dissatisfaction of his youth in the appropriate language, with which the present young generation can connect, and then changed this idiolect for the one more adequate to his

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own age; appropriately, the dissatisfied tone from the beginning turns into a disillusioned one in the end. The perspective is that of a sad man, but at least the youthful verbal violence he adopts for the sake of creating an effect and establishing connections in the beginning gives way to a more mature expression in the end. To quote Burt, “Larkin not only appropriates the way kids talk, but also talks about his not being like the kids whose speech he has appropriated” (2). This deepens the persona, and gives it more credibility; it also reaches out to the other, not so robustly young part of the audience. In “High Windows” this sliding from the younger to the older generations, which is also accompanied by the shifts in tone, is even more visible. “Kids,” whose modern beliefs are embodied in their language represented by the word “fucking,” are contrasted to “everyone old” fittingly associated with the image of “an outdated combine harvester.” The generational and tonal contrast, however, is negated through the claim that the older generations have always coveted what the younger ones have—that, in fact, they are not essentially different. This is reinforced in the associated thought the speaker has after he mentally shifts forty years to the past, when he himself was young and when the then older generation probably envied him his freedom from religion. Interestingly and consistently, the imagined thought-process of such an older person contains the tone equivalent to his own when he thinks of the young: harsh and crude, but with the suitable lexical changes (the “bad” word is “bloody” instead of “fuck”). The recursiveness, or, more precisely, the unchangeability of human nature despite the diachronic changes of ideologies and language, causes the speaker to leave behind for a moment any possible judgements (which could have been expected after the harshness of the opening three lines): And immediately, Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

A certain neutrality, or perhaps an impossibility of grasping, is thus recorded in the speaker’s mind not in words, but in images. Emptied of “charged” words or controversial beliefs, such an ending does not resolve the discussed issues in an articulate or ideologically committed way. But it does suggest that verbal aggression and the use of an “angry” or inappropriate tone is just

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a gesture. The appropriated linguistic register (that of the young) says more about the persona and its dilemmas than about the “owners” of the register. Larkin’s tonal gestures directed at the audience and used to build the persona are not limited only to “dirty words.” Very often, slang, informal or colloquial words are deployed to create the feeling that the speaker is “one of us” and not just a poet trying to make a point in a poetic language, remote from our everyday linguistic identity. This is directly related to the establishment of the speaker’s trustworthiness, and helps convey his ideas. “Going, Going,” for instance, has its fair share of articulate, even bookish turns of phrase: “Such trees as were not cut down” exhibits, for example, a rather formal and literary use of “as” instead of the relative pronoun “which.” Such expressions and the well-communicated thoughts are in accordance with the speaker’s attitude which might be perceived as “old-fashioned” or perhaps even “conservative” by some. But the sprinkling of such informalities as the slangy idiom “before I snuff it” or the conversational “I just think it will happen, soon” mixes in an additional tone, which adjusts the idea of the persona a little. He isn’t as “stiff ” as it might seem, and from his awareness and use of different language registers, we can suppose that he is also aware of different points of view. The bitter and pessimistic statements he is making, in other words, can be seen not as the cynical tirade of an “outdated” old-timer who knows no better, but as the serious and strongly felt concern of someone who has thought enough about the situation. The speaker’s thinking through also includes self-examination (“-But what do I feel now? Doubt? / Or age, simply?”), which is another signal for the reader that what he is saying comes as the result of a well-rounded consideration and should be taken seriously. The conversational tone in “Going, Going,” as in some other poems mentioned so far, is achieved despite rather regular formal elements. The stanzas are sestets, whose lines are 7 syllables long on average, with a consistent rhyme scheme (abcabc). The regularity is not too strongly felt since the rhyming words are two lines away, and since there is a significant amount of enjambment in the poem; this strengthens the impression of someone engaged in a conversation, or thinking aloud. A similar informal impression despite the formal regularities can be noticed in “A Study of Reading Habits”—another good example of the use of colloquialisms to delineate the persona. The rhyme scheme is in these sestets a little different but still existent—abcbac—while the enjambment is limited mainly to the last stanza. The informal quality of the speaking voice, however, is high, due to a consistent use of colloquial terms which at times verge on the crude or offensive. The examples are numerous and strewn across the entire poem: “dirty dogs,” “specs,” “lark,” “ripping times,” “the dude,” “the chap,” “get stewed,” or “a

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load of crap.” While in “Going, Going” the few examples of colloquial language serve to give the speaker a certain “in-the-know” credibility and soften his otherwise strict and serious voice, the informalities in “A Study of Reading Habits” produce a harsher effect. Even though most of the slangy or violent words are an echo of the language used in the books the speaker read as a young man, he successfully creates the impression of identification with that language, which he felt at the time. When he exclaims at the end of the second stanza: The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues,

some traces of his old excitement and thrill with such lines in fiction can still be felt, however vaguely. And when in the end he claims, from his more mature position, that he doesn’t “read much now” since all the tropes of such fiction “seem far too familiar,” we are not entirely convinced that he hasn’t been permanently affected by some of that literature. The final “Get stewed: / Books are a load of crap” resembles a little too closely the jargon he is apparently rejecting or ridiculing. Hence, perhaps, the word “habits” in the title: what and how we read turns into a habit which ultimately goes beyond the mere reading act and has an impact on the entire personality. Thematically associated with “Fiction and the Reading Public,” “A Study of Reading Habits” is a commentary on the so-called fiction, second-rate literature which caters to the basic escapist or sensationalist needs of the public. The latter poem, however, is also a more serious commentary on a member of such a public since it opens up questions regarding the “psychopathological” aspects of the persona as a reader. These concerns are conveyed almost entirely through the tone of voice. The recognition of the tone of voice, then, is of vital importance for understanding the persona, and is also necessary for the creation (or discouragement) of empathy in the reader. Certain Larkin poems carry clear formal signals with respect to tone or empathy; such signals can be classified into two groups. One relies on typography and involves the use of italics, quotation marks, or (more properly in the area of lexis) unusual phraseology to indicate an instance of echo; the other exploits such formal properties as metre or rhyme to indicate the tone or direct the reader’s sympathies. The typographic textual clues are often bound up with another frequently mentioned characteristic of Larkin’s poetry: its incorporation of “other people’s words” (Swarbrick, quoting Bakhtin, in Burt 4). The visual and auditory clues are meant to help the reader identify the plural voices featured in some poems.

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Italics are often used by Larkin to mark off a particular saying or thought from the rest of the text in order to hold up to inspection and criticism its stereotypical value. In “Poetry of Departures,” for example, all the italicized lines are a conventional way of expressing an attitude (He walked out on the whole crowd), or shortcuts for setting up a recognizable scene (Then she undid her dress); but both the mentioned attitudes and the invoked scenes are so remote from what the speaking persona is like that the italics almost carve these lines into lifestyles which the speaker will never attain. The point in the poem, of course, is that the speaker, after investigating such alien but desired possibilities, rejects them as “artificial” and clings to his “life, in perfect order,” reasserting the value of ordinariness over hackneyed adventurousness. In “Sympathy in White Major,” the italicized phrases are almost a chorus of other voices, expressing clichéd toast-like attitudes to the speaking persona, who is inwardly bitter and sardonic about his reputation as a “decent chap.” The sayings or attributes such as He devoted his life to others, or: A decent chap, a real good sort, Straight as a die, one of the best, A brick, a trump, a proper sport, Head and shoulders above the rest; How many lives would have been duller Had he not been here below? Here’s to the whitest man I know -

are not only a heap of conventional terms of praise which don’t say much about the person’s individuality—couching it in a coat of generalities and sounding like a eulogy or a funeral speech—but are also designated by the speaker as the untruth in the very last (unitalicized) line: Though white is not my favourite colour.

The fact that the speaker knows that what has been said about him is untrue, or, at least, that he finds something wrong with it, makes the italicized repetition of such words ironic and critical. This feeling, however, is not directed only at these phrases and people who utter them, but is also directed at the speaker himself in what looks like an implicit self-examination. Italics in Larkin are not used as exclusively ironic or satiric tools. In “High Windows,” for example, they might contain a trace of irony within

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the context, but their primary purpose is to demarcate somebody else’s (imagined) thought-process. Making this distinction clear in this case is vital, since the poem’s meaning is generated from the comparison (and, ultimately, parallelism) between the speaker’s thoughts and those of a member of an older generation. Italics, and the introductory sentence (“I wonder if anyone . . . thought”) clarify this embedded mental scenario. Italics can also be used to indicate not a particular other voice, but to represent a sample of a specific discourse or register, invoked in the poem for a certain reason. In “Compline” the italicized lines in the first stanza are a snippet of a religious service which in the poem stands for the entire discourse of religion and belief: Behind the radio’s altarlight The hurried talk to God goes on: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, Produce our lives beyond this night, Open our eyes again to sun.

The use of the word “altar” in connection with the radio, and the fact that the talk to God is “hurried,” makes the whole first stanza (and the attitude to religious services) ironic. This, however, is reversed or at least neutralized when in the rest of the poem the speaker does not reject the belief behind the discourse since there is a possibility, however slight, that God will grant a wish. Significantly, this final stanza offering some comfort to the speaker through a comparison between nature and God, is unitalicized and suggests an honest and unmocked personal expression. A similar use of italics to delineate a religious discourse and state of mind is present in “The Explosion.” The difference is that in this poem there is no irony or criticism behind the marked typography: the somewhat mystical nature of the entire poem contextualizes the religious tone fittingly and without irony.6 Quotation marks are an alternative visual aid to the recognition of different voices or tones. In “Fiction and the Reading Public,” quotation marks are employed in a similar way to the italics which are meant to signal distancing and an ironic speaking voice. The phrases and words enclosed in quotation marks are certain stereotypes coming from the popular “lingo” of discussing books, or more precisely, fiction. The twist is in the fact that the distance, scepticism or ridicule expressed through the quotation marks are not coming from the speaker of the poem, but are attributed to “the reader” who is addressing a writer throughout the poem. The existence of the main speaker is indicated only in the opening line: “Give me a thrill, says the

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reader.” The explanatory clause “says the reader” points to the overarching presence of a “narrator,” and makes the speaking reader in the poem just a “character” whose words, even though in the first person, are only reported. Understanding that the quoted terms come from “the reader” is crucial, since the tone they give rise to is supposed to outline the reader’s expectations and attitudes when it comes to writing. Even though they are aware of the artificiality of the fictional world, implicit in the existence of writerly intentions or creative attempts, readers still demand fiction. In fact, they are shown as bullies, blackmailing the writers financially into writing the kind of fiction they need (the kind that makes them “feel good”), and revealing a dose of scorn in the process. By presenting the reader’s voice without any apparent interference or editing, the main speaker thus makes an indirect comment on “the reading public” from the title. This public is unsophisticated and thoughtless, but knows how to manipulate the writing and publishing markets. When italics and quotation marks are used in the same poem, they signal different things. For example, at the end of “I Remember, I Remember” the italicized line in the last stanza is an imagined sentence which someone, according to the “twisted” negative logic of that part of the poem, did not utter and which exists entirely in the speaker’s mind. This is followed by a return to the introductory narrative section, and the actual, unimagined level of reality, when the speaker’s travelling companion is quoted as saying “You look as if you wished the place in Hell.” The switch from the italics to the quotation marks here signals the switch from a hypothetical to a real conversation. The shifts in this poem between the “actual” reality and the speaker’s “mental excursion” are accompanied by shifts in the tone of voice. While what really happens is told straightforwardly or rather neutrally, the speaker’s inner reckoning is marked by a self-ironic and bitter tone. The tone is also somewhat rebellious, since he is destroying the idea of an “idyllic” childhood by negating it. An interesting point about this poem is revealed in the very last line, which is within quotation marks: is this a continuation of what the speaker actually says in reply to the companion? Or is it a generalizing, concluding statement, which is not even part of the narrative in the poem—an epigram almost, based on the preceding? The graphic isolation of that last line— ”Nothing, like something, happens anywhere”—would argue in favour of the latter interpretation, but the use of quotation marks would point to the former. Linking the first and the second possibilities, we could also think of these particular quotation marks as signals not of somebody’s actual words any more, but as signals of a different poetic “mode”: an epigrammatic line,

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which could stand on its own and have a meaning irrespective of the poem. Importantly, however, these are nuances, and the fact that it is difficult to determine precisely what voice is uttering the last line does not complicate or change the meaning in this poem. The last statement the speaker makes in the seventh stanza (“Oh well, / I suppose it’s not the place’s fault”) already points to a certain reconciliation and acceptance on his part. The last line adds to it, either as the continued expression of his attitude, or as an overarching general thought on the matter. Perhaps the possibility of both readings allows the end to both keep the particularity of this speaker’s situation, and broaden the frame of reference. “Mr. Bleaney” is an example of one of the most complex structures with respect to issues of tone and voice. Quotation marks are here a sign of a direct citation of somebody’s words: twice it is the landlady, describing Mr. Bleaney and the room, and once it is the speaker, taking the room. The quoted words are presented straightforwardly, without any accompanying commentary from the speaker—not even the introductory clauses such as “she said,” or “I said.” The speaker’s attitude, however, is almost tangibly present from beginning to end and it develops and shifts throughout the poem. First, we get an idea of what the landlady is like through her own words, and the absence of the speaker’s direct comments on her builds a certain distance between her and him (and, by extension, us) from the very beginning. She is one of those “familiar” landlady types: a little talkative, and a little self-righteous, believing in the right to know everything about the tenants, and even “appropriating” them a little (she, for example, uses the abbreviation “the Bodies” to refer to Mr. Bleaney’s workplace as someone with the “inside” knowledge would do). Even though the speaker makes no comments about her, his attitude is indirectly created through the alternation between the landlady’s words and the speaker’s (silent) description of the room. Rather grim and sparse, the room reeks of loneliness and failure and marks the landlady’s “familial” words as out of place or farcical. The speaker’s further distancing, accompanied by increasing annoyance, is made clear when he says he is “stuffing [his] ears with cotton-wool,” and proceeds to report indirectly the additional things the landlady told him about Mr. Bleaney and the way they lived in the same house. In some of this indirect report, the speaker’s feelings of scorn and annoyance are more obvious: for example, the disparaging words in “The jabbering set he egged her on to buy” are probably his own, and not a repetition of the landlady’s. However, the rest of it sounds like a slightly edited paraphrase of the landlady’s actual words, and produces a peculiar effect:

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I know his habits—what time he came down, His preference for sauce to gravy, why He kept on plugging at the four aways Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk Who put him up for summer holidays, And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke.

This is an instance of an “echo”—an indirect but only lightly edited repetition of someone’s words usually used to create an ironic or bothered undertone. It happens when the speaker has a disapproving attitude towards the person he or she is echoing, but doesn’t want to show it openly. Instead, the disapproval is registered by recording accurately the colloquial or incorrect words or phrases of the “echoed” person, and leaving it to the readers to draw their conclusions. Unlike the use of informal language or slang in order to make the reader feel that the speaker is “one of us,” the echoed linguistic peculiarities serve to create a distance between the speaker (or us) and the person to whom they belong. The lines from “Mr. Bleaney” quoted above exhibit a few details which could have come only from the landlady, and the speaker’s way of “cataloguing” them already shows his dismissal and irritation. The first line of the fifth stanza (“He kept on plugging at the four aways”) is a good example of the “echo” effect. While the colloquial “the Bodies” from the first stanza is straightforwardly and more neutrally attributed to the landlady by means of the quotation marks, the colloquial, idiomatic and slangy use of “plugging at” and “four aways” presumably also comes from the landlady and her inside knowledge of Mr. Bleaney and his doings (in this case, betting in football pools). This time, however, the speaker is not reporting her words objectively, but imitating or echoing her expressions and linguistic mannerisms. The fact that the speaker doesn’t explain or edit the highly idiomatic phrase, and doesn’t put it within quotation marks, suggests that he wants to poke fun at her in an underhand way. It almost looks as if he were secretly sniggering at her and Mr. Bleaney (for knowing the phrase and, in his case, for participating in the game), trying to involve the reader as well. The echo, in other words, encodes his feeling of buried resentment. Finally, the switch from the indicative mood (description of the actual present and past) to the conditional mood in the last two stanzas, marks a shift to a hypothetical, reflective, and uncertain realm in the speaker’s mind. The long-winded and convoluted expression adds a somewhat hysterical note to his state of mind in the end, which arises from his gradual identification with Mr.

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Bleaney. In other words, the tone in “Mr. Bleaney” moves from distance, through annoyance and resentment, to fear (which perhaps includes even sympathy for Mr. Bleaney), and is created and signalled by the use of such textual means as quotation marks, echo, and syntactical/grammatical shifts. Probably because the poem constructs such a complex tonal “universe,” it is hard to see what could possibly be the final word on the presented people and situations. Larkin makes it fairly easy to follow the meanings captured tonally, but he makes it as difficult to pass judgments as it would be in a personal, real-life situation. Instead of the “visual” (that is, mainly typographic) signs of tone, a certain number of poems exploit the “auditory” poetic features such as metre or rhyme to establish a tone. In these poems, Larkin exploits the possibilities in poetry of choosing and arranging the words in such a way that an audible quality of extreme regularity or repetition of structure is achieved. Because of the sing-song and simplistic “ring” to it, and perhaps because of its association with nursery rhymes, such a structure is conducive to the creation of an ironic tone. The particular nuance of the tone depends on the subject-matter treated in the poem. As we have seen in Chapter Two, “Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses” uses a regular metric and rhyming structure, enhanced by the proximity of the rhymes (ababcdcd) and a general absence of enjambment, to suggest to the reader that the speaker should be ridiculed. This is reinforced by the speaking lecturer’s pompous and arrogant attitude. In “Self’s the Man,” for example, the rhyme is even more obvious, since it is contiguous (aabb), and even though the metre isn’t particularly regular in the first few stanzas, the irregularities are actually used for additional comic effect. A couple of times a long line is followed by a short one which almost acts like a punch-line: a quick release of comedy after a laborious explanation. For example, a 14-syllable third line in the first stanza is followed by a 5-syllable one, and this discrepancy brings out the irony behind the latter line: He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she’s there all day

A similar effect is achieved at the beginning of the second stanza: And the money he gets for wasting his life on work She takes as her perk

Where the lines are more “harmonized” with respect to syllable-length, a certain dramatization of expression gives rise to comic effects, as in:

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But wait, not so fast: Is there such a contrast?

In this poem, the comedic formal features are primarily used to ridicule the married man Arnold and his “less selfish” life, which is the butt of the speaker’s satire. But then, when the speaker switches in stanza six from the description of Arnold’s “less selfish” life to a sudden consideration of how Arnold is actually not much different from himself, the similar formal structure, in a sense, “backfires.” It begins to transfer some of the irony onto the speaker himself, which is reinforced in the final stanza, where the speaker talks about himself in the same comic rhyme and metre. As we have seen earlier, the very last line strengthens this impression of irony turning into selfirony through the deflationary uncertainty. Such turning of tables can perhaps illuminate the title: not only does “Self ’s the Man” apparently assert the preference for selfishness, but it also indicates that the speaker (the “self ”) is, in fact, the “man” who is being ridiculed. Fairly regular formal features, such as short metres, short stanzas, and noticeable rhymes, can be made to convey a spectrum of tones if they are modified (that is, made less regular) in small ways. “Toads” and “Toads Revisited,” for example, both use mainly short metre, they are structurally organized into short (4–line) stanzas, but, most importantly, their rhymes are a version of the so-called “half-rhymes,” where the phonetic match between the rhyming words is close but not perfect (e. g. work-pitchfork, or life-off, from the first stanza of “Toads”). This imperfect match gives a certain “off ” note to a poem, and is, for example, used masterfully to suggest the surreal quality of war in Wilfred Owen’s poetry, much respected by Larkin. Larkin’s two “Toad” poems are, of course, far from such a tragic scope, primarily because the persona featured in them exhibits a dose of humour and self-irony, and contemplates some ordinary things. The half-rhymes, however, contribute to a softening of the cynicism and satire embedded in the much more regular rhymes of “Self ’s the Man.” This auditory quality, together with the fact that the speaker is much more openly examining himself instead of someone else in a sort of interior monologue, makes for a less scathing tone, one tempered with sadness and disappointment in the self. Even though the speaker occasionally directs his critical and ironic gaze at the others (as, for example, when he lumps “lecturers” together with “losels,” “loblolly-men,” and “louts” in “Toads”), the weight of his critical examination is on himself. A version of Larkin’s famous nerve-lacking persona, the speaker of the “Toad” poems expresses dissatisfaction with himself for complying with an oppressive workethic, but in both cases resigns himself to the situation. The shortness of

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metre and stanzas, and the imperfect regularity of rhyme, mix a gently (self-)ironic tonal nuance into this predominantly disillusioned outlook. The final impression is that of a perceptive man who feels self-disgust and self-pity but also disparages such feelings by not taking himself completely seriously, as the form indicates. Empathy Tone of voice, whether formally signalled or not, is the crucial element in creating empathy, one of the most important comprehension facilitators. Obnoxious tone usually makes it harder for us to identify emotionally with the tonal source and allows us to be more critical (as in “This Be The Verse,” or “Fiction and the Reading Public”), assessing the speaker or the situation from an “outside” point of view. A more vulnerable tone, coming from fear, sadness or disappointment with the self (as at the end of “Mr. Bleaney” or in “Toads”) often encourages our imaginative participation in the speaker’s mental predicament. Larkin uses tone of voice in even more complex ways. In “Mr. Bleaney,” for example, a sort of two-level structure is noticeable: there is the tone of the speaker, defining his attitude towards the landlady and Mr. Bleaney, and then there is the overall tone of the poem, determining our attitude towards the speaker. Because the speaker’s tone gradually gains in intensity and shifts in quality towards the end, the reader’s attitude and way of relating to the speaker are made more complicated. “This Be The Verse,” for example, is also not as straightforward as it might seem in this respect. On the one hand, the rebellious nature of “dirty words” appeals on some level to the youthful and angry aspects of most readers, especially the younger ones, but their crude and anti-social dimensions prevent complete identification on the other. To put this in more general terms, tone can be used to create empathy after initial distancing (in “Mr. Bleaney”), or to ensure understanding through bonding (via “forbidden” words) but ultimately discourage identification through distancing (through an extreme anti-social stance—in “This Be The Verse”). A complexity of human reactions is best represented in the poems which exhibit an intricate tonal structure or ambivalence. In these poems, it is usually difficult to determine whether the speaker is detached from or compassionate towards his subject. Typically written in metres and stanzas longer than the ones previously discussed and with frequent enjambment which suppresses the rhyme, poems like “The Old Fools” or “The Building” sound like informal but serious speculations on the speaker’s part. In “The Old Fools,” we recognize a strategy of facilitating the reader’s understanding

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we looked at earlier: while the tone of voice might not be accepted as a “common” one, the movement of the thought-process is based on common sense or recognizable logic. Inspired by a concrete situation or something he has witnessed (old people’s home, for example), the speaker first describes it, and then veers into an associated train of thought, applying first some analytical reasoning to the subjects of death and old age, and then following it by a more hypothetical consideration and an attempt at an explanation. These noticeable related movements in the speaker’s thinking are accompanied by a shifting tone of voice. In the beginning, the speaker’s tone is unmistakably distant and offensive: the old people he describes are immediately put at a distance as “they,” while the whole first stanza is full of offensive names or images the speaker associates with the old (“old fools,” who “drool” and “piss” themselves, and who look as if they were “crippled or tight”). The speaker’s scorn and utter lack of understanding are dramatized in the last, twelfth, line, which is shorter than the other eleven lines in each stanza, and serves as an emotional climax in all but one of the stanzas. “Why aren’t they screaming?” not only summarizes his lack of understanding, but also hints at his own deep anxiety about being old. In the second stanza, the speaker still uses unpleasant (though less offensive) images to describe the old: they have “toad hands” and “prune face[s].” Significantly, however, he begins to establish links between the old people, and the reader (the general “you”) and himself (the general “we”). In this philosophical-sounding stanza, old people become a symbol of humanity’s common fate: ageing and dying. Even though at the end of the stanza the speaker still finds it difficult to accept the physical aspect of old age, which is a reminder of our human condition, he seems to have begun to soften his harsh stance, and this is further developed in the third stanza. The opening “perhaps” introduces a tentative note of speculation, and the speaker, after establishing some kind of link with the old people in the previous stanza, now gets into an empathetic state of mind, attempting to dignify the old people’s position from “within.” This is helped by the initial use of the general “you,” which would here include imaginatively both the speaker and the reader. The stanza is made up of much more pleasing, lyrical images: Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only

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After the early irreverence and offensiveness, this whole stanza is like “a deep loss restored” in the poem: it is almost as if the speaker tangibly extended his humanity to include the idea of beauty and dignity which could be associated with old age. The last line of the third stanza, which carries over to the fourth, indicates that the speaker is now finally making an effort to understand and explain what perplexes or disturbs him about old age. The use of such phrases and conjunctions as “this is why,” “for” (in the sense of “since,” or “because”), or “this must be . . .” shows that the speaker is making conclusions and drawing logical inferences, based on his previous thoughts. The fact that the speaker has really attempted to change his perspective for that of an older person in order to understand, is symbolically captured in the image of mountain-climbing, and the physical perspectives which shift with position. Old people are “crouching below / Extinction’s alp . . . never perceiving / How near it is” and This must be what keeps them quiet: The peak that stays in view wherever we go For them is rising ground.

The speaker’s understanding of this makes the second, and last, use of the phrase “the old fools” here much different in tone from its first appearance in the first line of the poem: it is more forgiving and sympathetic. The fact that the speaker has reached some understanding of old age does not mean, however, that he has got rid of all his doubts and fears. On the contrary: the scorn and the anger he exhibited in the beginning (and overcame in the course of the poem) acted as a defence-mechanism, in the absence of which the ever-present fear takes over more noticeably. Hence the last string of questions: Can they never tell What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night? Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout The whole hideous inverted childhood?

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The very last line of the poem, emphatic since it consists of four one-syllable words, finishes this contemplation on the note of acceptance, and controlled dread: “We shall find out.” This inclusion of the self in the old-age predicament confirms the note of compassion which the speaker develops towards the old. The final and indirect placing of himself in this category suddenly opens up the possibility of applying everything he has said about the old people to himself. Even though the blade of his attack is still lacerating, it is now less narrow-minded or cruel. In other words, the poem’s end manages to retain a certain complexity: fear and dislike, but also an attempt at understanding and acceptance. Such a multi-faceted attitude, which we have seen evolve from an extremely negative initial position, strikes us as truthful and also valuable. We have witnessed the speaker fighting with himself to reach it. Empathy works on two levels in this poem in a manner similar to that in “Mr. Bleaney.” The readers are first made to feel empathy towards the old people the speaker is offending, in an act of distancing themselves from his aggression; but as he goes on to develop empathy for the old himself, the speaker is perceived less and less as an obnoxious eccentric, and more and more as “one of us.” In other words, the poem’s tonal development is the main guide of the reader’s response. In “The Building,” the speaker’s tone of voice does not fluctuate as much as it does in “The Old Fools”: it is more uniform in its overall sombre and feeling quality. The sympathy for the sick being an implicitly natural feeling in everyone, the speaker’s main intention seems to be a deepening and intensifying of such a response on the reader’s part. This is achieved through the build-up of suspense, and the creation of a detailed point of view which encourages identification with the sick. The suspense, which arouses our interest, is built throughout the first two stanzas, and primarily through an instance of “delayed decoding”: a clear reference to what the speaker is alluding to is postponed. The building from the title is a hospital, but the speaker does not tell us this directly; he first compares it with some qualifications to “the handsomest hotel,” “an airport lounge,” and “a local bus.” The qualifications are simultaneously the first clues, such as “a frightening smell” which hangs in the corridors, or the “restless and resigned” faces. The first clear sign that the place being described is a hospital, is “a kind of nurse” who makes her appearance at the end of the second stanza, and “fetch[es] someone away.” This effect resembles a jig-saw puzzle in the piece-meal construction of the whole, and it is reinforced by another strategy: use of small, synecdochic and metonymic details. People who are waiting are reduced to “faces,” and are defined by their “outdoor clothes,” or “half-filled shopping bags,” or

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“dropped gloves or cards.” As Hans Osterwalder suggests in his article “Metonymic ways of sympathizing with the underdog: Philip Larkin’s ‘Mr. Bleaney’ and Anthony Thwaite’s ‘Mr. Cooper,’” we can deduce the misery of an unknown personality from “synecdochic particulars,” which leads to identification (427). Osterwalder talks about the speaker’s identification with another person defined (or, ultimately, symbolized) through such selected details in the two mentioned poems; in “The Building,” however, there is a strong sense that the speaker has already reached such an identification with the patients, and is actively attempting to have the reader reach it too. This is already signalled in the second line, when the speaker addresses the reader through an imperative “but see”—this open attempt on the speaker’s part to direct the reader’s gaze in a certain direction, or from a certain angle, is present throughout the poem. This leads us to the next vital strategy in the poem: construction of an “inside,” empathetic point of view for the reader to take. The first few times the imperative is used, the reader is still allowed to look at the patients and their environment from the outside, as a looker-on: “see how many floors it needs,” “see the time,” or “see, as they climb . . . how their eyes / Go to each other. . . .” But in the sixth stanza, the reader is drawn even further “in,” is literally made to adopt the vantage point of a patient, standing on one of the hospital floors: For the moment, wait, Look down at the yard. Outside seems old enough: Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it Out to the car park, free. Then, past the gate, Traffic; a locked church; short terraced streets Where kids chalk games, and girls with hair-dos fetch Their separates from the cleaners -

Creating a physical perspective with objects seen in a certain relation to each other and at varying distances, this description facilitates the reader’s mental identification as well. The next stanza seizes on this and uses the invoked sharing of the physical perspective (emphasized again through the deictic “from here” or “these”) to make an emotional appeal in a brief summary of what life is: O world, Your loves, your chances, are beyond the stretch

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Of any hand from here! And so, unreal, A touching dream to which we all are lulled But wake from separately. In it, conceits And self-protecting ignorance congeal To carry life, collapsing only when Called to these corridors (for now once more The nurse beckons—).

Invoking some human commonalities (“we” are “all” lulled into a dream, but will wake from it “separately”), the speaker makes an implicit appeal to the reader to wake up, go beyond “conceit” and “ignorance,” and look around even before reaching one of “these corridors,” when things fall into perspective by force. The poem ends with another look at the patients, from an omniscient point of view (the speaker knows, though they don’t, that some of them will have to stay), which makes them seem even more helpless and in need of compassion. The last few lines are the speaker’s conclusion about what this place, still not directly referred to as a hospital, means: This is what it means, This clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend The thought of dying, for unless its powers Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes The coming dark, though crowds each evening try With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.

This conclusion intensifies the grim outlook pervading the whole poem—the speaker, though obviously an alert and emotional person, cannot help ending on a pessimistic note. He does not condemn the act, but the meaning he gives it is clear: the flowers that the “crowds” bring during visiting hours are futile. This indirect dismissal on the speaker’s part of what the rest of us can do about it brings both the sick and the healthy under the same umbrella of sympathy. Empathy built and encouraged in Larkin’s poems is complex but at times also controversial. An early example of this is the poem which gave the title to his first mature poetry collection The Less Deceived, “Deceptions.”7 The controversy in “Deceptions” arises from the empathy which the speaker shows and which the poem elicits from the reader. While the context makes it clear that the speaker identifies with the violated girl, who is addressed in the poem, the last few lines open up additional possibilities or tones:8

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” For you would hardly care That you were less deceived, out on that bed, Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair To burst into fulfilment’s desolate attic.

The speaker’s main (uncommunicated) consolation for the girl is based on his perception of her as “less deceived” than her violator. Even though the logic of the speaker’s statements suggests that he empathizes with her because of all things that make her less deceived, the implicit fact that the violator is “more deceived” does leave room for sympathy towards him. We tend to sympathize with those who are deceived, and it would follow that the more they are deceived, the more we sympathize. Basing the emotional response to this situation on the concept of deceit potentially exonerates, at least partially, the rapist since his agency can be blurred by some “deception” that he himself is labouring under. And, indeed, the plural in the title indicates that more than one deception (for example, the one associated with the victim) is being treated in the poem. This, of course, widens the poem’s thematic and emotional scope, but it does put the speaker out on a limb: showing even the most basic understanding for criminals, particularly rapists, is usually not a popular stance. Potentially controversial is also the fact that, even though he says he wouldn’t dare console the unfortunate girl if he could, the speaker does decide that a person like her should look for some kind of consolation in an abstract realization that her attacker is more deceived and therefore pitiable. Common sense, or self-righteous preaching? One or the other interpretation will in this case depend on the reader’s beliefs and extra-literary experiences, and in this (primarily ideological, not linguistic) sense, the poem is not plain. I would, in fact, disagree with Christopher Miller, who, in “The egotistical banal, or against Larkitudinising,” claims that “Deceptions” and indeed the whole collection The Less Deceived are characterized by “routine” and “automatic” compassion, allotted to the less deceived (77; 75). In other words, Miller seems to find the compassion arising from this poem too simple, or too predictable. “Deceptions” is not only a skilfully written poem dealing with a serious subject-matter which certainly deserves compassion, but it also contains a complex of tones and undertones which encourage a fuller consideration of the situation. We cannot extend the same kind or degree of sympathy to the rapist as we do to the girl (whose “less deceived” state refers to her suffering); however, the idea of deception (even if it is self-deception) as a factor in the rapist’s violence guided by desire, complicates an automatic and straightforward condemnation of him.

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Violence towards women is a highly delicate issue, which Larkin continues to treat with different nuances in his later poetry. “Sunny Prestatyn,” for example, is perhaps even more controversial than “Deceptions,” and, again, the key element to examine is empathy. The girl on the poster, who is the “centrepiece” of the poem (and literally: she’s exhibited in the advertisement), is presented as quietly provocative in the first stanza. In tune with the conventions of visual summer-resort advertising, she is seen as “desirable”: laughing, kneeling, with “tautened” swimsuit, and “breast-lifting” arms. The stanza is an accurate description of such an advertisement, but also— through the terms set by the advertisement—a representation of a particular “type” of girl. This is what gives the defacement of the poster that follows a deeper resonance, and a disturbing note of violence. The synecdochic dismembering of the girl starts already in the first stanza, and then continues to the end. The speaker’s linear description of the bodily alterations that the picture of the girl sustained (probably over time) imitates the gaze of those who did it, and who focused on particular parts. As a result, she is turned into a catalogue of body parts: thighs, breasts, arms, face, teeth, eyes, legs, lips, hand and the “added” ones, such as “a fissured crotch” and “a tuberous cock and balls”; the repetition of breasts in the offensive term “tits” also goes into this added category, since it probably denotes the graphic defacements. This objectification is reinforced through the passive voice used in reference to her: “She was slapped up,” and “her face / Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed.” While the passive construction still puts her in the spotlight, as it were, of the grammatical subject (though devoid of agency), she later becomes even grammatically objectified, as “scrawls . . . set her . . . astride. . . .” Other than emphasizing the violence done to “the object,” the passive voice also keeps the perpetrator(s) of this action anonymous and, therefore, generalizable. The mounting offensiveness and aggression culminate in the last stanza, when we are told that Someone has used a knife Or something to stab right through The moustached lips of her smile.

The indefiniteness (“someone”) and indiscriminateness (“or something”) of this lastly-mentioned addition underscores the violence behind the image of “a knife,” which “stab(bed) right through” her lips. The line that follows can be seen as the most problematic in the poem, since it expresses a judgement but it is unclear in whose voice. “She was too good for this life” is ambiguous

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because it could be either a re-enactment of the perpetrator’s thought-process and still part of the speaker’s description of the incident, or the speaker’s personal explanation of the defacement. In the latter interpretation, the tone of voice is also crucial: is the speaker saying it straightforwardly (which would imply an indifference, or even condone the act), or is his tone ironic (which would constitute an indirect criticism of the act)? The last line is directly related to this ambivalence: how are we supposed to read “Now Fight Cancer is there,” when the speaker informs us of what replaced the finally torn poster of the disfigured picture of the girl? Does this replacement of a commercial message with a supposedly more meaningful one tacitly suggest that we should fight commercialized, idealized, and tasteless beauty? Or perhaps we could see “cancer” as a symbol of the described violent and destructive behaviour, and it is such dehumanizing impulses that we should be fighting? A crucial question here is what we are made to feel towards the postergirl, and towards the anonymous perpetrators. What complicates our response is the speaker’s disinterested-sounding, matter-of-fact tone of voice, which—with the possible exception of that one line in the third stanza— only records visible facts, and does not offer a clear ethical stance. One other possible exception is the ambiguous word “fairly” towards the end of the second stanza: “scrawls / That set her fairly astride / A tuberous cock and balls.” Although it is easily interpreted as “considerably,” “fairly” could also be understood as “justifiably,” which would suggest that the speaker believes she got what she deserved. Do we also feel traces of this reaction, particularly after the first stanza, where we recognize her as the symbol of provocation or teasing, and where she is associated with a luxurious-looking place not very many could afford, or not as glamorous as the advertisement makes it look? Do we, perhaps, even understand some part of that impulse of the anonymous perpetrator to disfigure and “punish” the unattainable, the untrue, thrown into his or her face—the commercially-packaged version of what life is (be it as a girl, or as a place) that almost none have? The anonymity of the act helps universalize the impulse behind it. On the other hand, the two-dimensional poster-girl is a little too easily associated with a real, flesh-and-blood girl, and in this context the symbolic graphic defacement assumes much more violent implications, with which most people would find it impossible to identify. Whatever we understand her to be in the first stanza, she is an undisputably helpless victim of someone’s anger or frustration, and her disfiguration goes from vaguely humorous (“snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed”), through obnoxious (“astride / A tuberous cock and balls”), to violent (stabbed by “a knife”). In the end, she is sadly reduced to “only a hand.” Read from this angle, “She was too good for this

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life,” carries a note of quiet compassion for the suffering she—even as just a visual representation—had to go through in “this life.” However, with the previously discussed dimension of the poem in mind, we can interpret the line as a shrugged-off responsibility, a resigned endorsement of violence necessary in “this life,” full of imposed lies and deceptions. Through this ambivalence of the speaker’s response to a delicate issue, the poem gains in complexity, and thus holds multiple and not mutually exclusive meanings. Larkin imperceptibly guides our empathy in different directions and, calling on our various human instincts and experiences, gives us a comprehensive vantage point. Most generally, the poem is a small study of “this life”: a world manipulated by a commercial master-language, of which the poster-girl is an example, and which is often felt by ordinary people to be artificial, intrusive, and even offensive. In such a world, impulses to renounce this imposed and oppressive advertising discourse are everyday phenomena and the anonymous persons who deface the poster in the poem are by no means eccentric or unusual. This discourse, more often than not, uses sex and the female body as prime manipulatory tools and, in the ever darker aspects of “this life,” the ordinary man’s rebellion against the discourse leads to violence, symbolic (as in this poem), or actual, towards women. By failing to enlist his sympathies clearly with the girl on the poster, and by associating her with advertising, the speaker manages to bring up indirectly these contemporary problems in commercialized society.9 By accurately recording the maiming of the poster, he indicates the violent and disturbing instincts that come as a by-product of this situation. We are invited to see both sides of this issue by being positioned in such a way that we understand, in different ways, the girl’s predicament, and the anonymous perpetrators’ act.10 Tone of voice, then, is an aspect of Larkin’s style which deepens or at times complicates the plain surfaces of certain poems, and any study of Larkin’s plainness inevitably has to deal with it. Tonality is in Larkin created through the deployment of two major devices: persona and empathy. Intended to suggest the presence of a well-defined speaker, who is “arguing” for a “case,” the literary term persona has loose similarities with the classical rhetorical concept of ethos. While the orator’s ethos, suggested in an oration through various means, points to his trustworthy and good qualities in order to help persuade the audience that he is right, the persona in Larkin often has a less straightforward function. It is primarily used to convince the reader that the speaker is a real and recognizable psychological type, someone we have seen, or know, or even can identify with. In other words, the existence

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of persona is meant to facilitate the reader’s imaginative participation in the enactment of an event or a thought-process represented in the poem—something that would probably be more difficult for the reader if such events or thought-processes were represented in a disembodied form. This, however, does not mean that he “convinces” us of anything. Depending on the speaker’s personality revealed in the poem, we form our opinion on the subject-matter raised and discussed by him.11 Such tonal devices as deflation, obscenities, or the use of informal and colloquial language direct our reaction to the speaker and guide our understanding of the poem. In a number of poems, the tone of voice or the distinction between plural voices is formally signalled, which makes the interpretative process easier. Typographic signals such as italics or quotation marks, and auditory signals such as short metres and noticeable rhymes indicate the relevant tone. Very often, the tone in question is some nuance of irony or self-irony, but slight modifications of formal regularities allow for a whole spectrum of other tones and accompanying meanings, such as fear, sadness, or disillusionment (as in the marked syntax and diction of “Mr. Bleaney,” or the halfrhymes of “Toads,” for example). A particular tone of voice is typically related to the existence or absence of empathy, which we could observe on two levels: on the speaker’s part, towards the subject-matter, or on the reader’s part, towards the speaker, which ultimately determines the reader’s reaction towards the poem. Empathy, which implies imaginative assuming of somebody else’s perspective and having an appropriate emotional response, is associated with the classical notion of pathos, which refers to rhetorical gestures meant to arouse emotions in the audience and thus help the orator’s case. For Larkin, poetry begins and ends with emotions, and thus invocation of these in the poem is the necessary link between the writer (who is inspired by an “emotional concept”) and the reader (who is supposed to experience emotion while reading and understanding). Larkin’s idea in this case is commonsensical: we have a larger capacity for understanding if we are emotionally involved and, thus, empathy is an important device in securing the reader’s responsiveness. Creation of empathy in Larkin, however, is not a simple matter and, in fact, the best examples are poems exhibiting intricate and shifting tones, and giving rise to ambivalent attitudes—in a word, poems in which “plainness” is brought into question. A poem like “The Old Fools,” with its tone shifts and a gradual evolution of the speaker’s empathy, or “The Building,” with its careful construction of a particular perspective, builds a comprehensive outlook and invokes different reactions in the reader. Through the “conduit” of the speaker, we

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are repulsed, afraid and compassionate in “The Old Fools,” or intrigued, understanding and disappointed in “The Building.” In a sense, we are taken through distinct and sometimes contradictory emotional stages, all of which make up the intricate nature of a human being. In this respect, such poems are complex, and in that complexity, “true to life.” This means that we might end up having mixed feelings while or after reading the poem but since there are no textual obstacles to an understanding of the situation and the statements made, we can easily trace the development of the poem, and in this sense, the poems are plain. How we then respond to the poem depends on our personal experience and personality, as with all literature. In short, what makes Larkin’s poems plain is the absence of difficulty in reaching the point to which the poem takes us: the one from which we consider the indicated complexities. Somewhat more difficult are the more controversial poems, such as “Deceptions,” or “Sunny Prestatyn.” Again, there are no textual complications on the linguistic level: what the speaker is saying is rather clear.12 The complications arise on the level of implication, and while these poems ultimately aim at complexity too, they are also marked by a higher degree of ambiguity. As we have seen, it is possible to come up with two completely different interpretations of what the speaker feels in “Sunny Prestatyn.” This, however, can be seen as a strategy of directing the reader’s attention not so much at the speaker as at the controversial nature of the examined issues: a poem like “Sunny Prestatyn” makes the reader understand the described actions in different lights, without obscuring any of the problems. The underlying ambiguity is in such cases productive: by recognizing the two (or more) positions which are possible to take in interpreting the poem, the readers consider the problematic subject-matter in a more comprehensive way. Importantly, this still does not make Larkin’s poetry “difficult” in the way that Modernist poetry is difficult. The difficulty, as it were, is coming from life, not from art. To borrow Paul Volsik’s terms: “the pleasure of the poem lies also in the indeterminations which make reading a process of discovery and not the mere resolving of riddles” (“‘The essential nexus’: Philip Larkin and the reader” 435). Avoiding linguistic or conceptual riddles and stimulating “a process of discovery” of the world or of the self, many Larkin poems provide just such a pleasure—the kind of pleasure resulting from plain art well executed.

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Chapter Five

Themes

As Larkin himself recognized, “plain language” is not in itself a sufficient guarantee of good poetry—what is also necessary is “the matter: a fuller and more sensitive response to life as it appears from day to day . . .” (see 220 note 11 below). What the statement suggests is, first of all, that the formal aspects of style should not be judged in isolation from “the matter”—any style is little more than an abstract notion or a scholarly claim if it is considered without the content. This sets further parameters for our study: what is Larkin’s content, and what is its relationship to the plain style? Second, the plainness of language is in Larkin’s mind productive if it is coupled with the treatment of everyday, ordinary concerns. Looking over Larkin’s oeuvre, we can see the pervasiveness of such a thematic focus of interest: many of Larkin’s speakers, ideas, emotions, or occasions could be brought under the broad heading of “ordinary.” The term is, of course, relative or vague, at best; but we can clarify it by associating it with another term often used in the context of plainness: “accessible.” Just as the way Larkin writes is designed to be accessible to a general readership, so are his topics: even though they are based on specific details, the topics are meant to be recognized as common concerns of any of us on any given day, and as such, to encourage personal identification on the reader’s part. The rhetorical and thematic aspects of Larkin’s work, in other words, reinforce each other, equally participating in Larkin’s plain style. The accessible themes which most relate to Larkin’s plainness can be classified into a few groups and labeled as “the common man,” “the commercialized age,” “community and traditions,” “nature” and “the beautiful and the mystical.” COMMON MAN The concept of “the common man” is well established in literary studies and is frequently associated with the plain style. The paradigm of commonness 163

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includes other similar terms, such as “average” or “ordinary” man, or l’homme moyen sensuel. Hermann Peschmann, for example, speaks for many when he calls Larkin “the poet of l’homme moyen sensuel,” or “the Laureate of the Common Man” (57). He is quick to add, however, that Larkin is better understood as the poet “of the Common Contemporary Man,” since the particular sensibility he expresses in his poems does not belong “outside the contemporary orbit” (57). Even though Peschmann’s claim seems to be somewhat exaggerated—feelings of “scepticism,” “disillusion,” “wry acceptance,” or “deep despair” (57) could be found with different nuances in the poetry of other centuries, too—it is true that Larkin’s work has some definite stamps of his own time and place. In other words, the cultural particularity we discussed earlier is often accompanied by spatio-temporal specificity, or “contemporaneity.” The ridiculed lecturer from “Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses” is most certainly a 20th-century man, since he flies from London to Bombay; the annus mirabilis from the poem of the same title is most explicitly 1963; the advertisements we are shown in “Essential Beauty,” or “Sunny Prestatyn” are so familiar that we would not be surprised to see one just like those right around the corner from where we live. But the “commonness” does not rest in these specific trimmings—contemporaneous details provide for Larkin’s readers fully imaginable speakers, characters, and their lives in the poems. The core of commonness, on the other hand, is more general than these particulars and is more related to a certain outlook than to the time-defined products or events which have a notable place in Larkin’s poems. The outlook which informs the concept of the common man in Larkin is the one which was very popular with the Movement in the post-war England. Their treatment of characters as “non-heroes” and their emphasis on the poet as “the man next door” (see 69) came out of their disagreement with the preceding literary and intellectual traditions. The commonness promoted by the Movement has affinities with ordinariness promoted by plainstylists in earlier times, and is characterized by an anti-theoretical, anti-institutionalized, and anti-romantic stance; in the case of the Movement, it derives in part from George Orwell’s influential work and reputation (see 67–68). As we have mentioned earlier, Orwell’s case is complex: his work and his life seem to have intertwined so much in the last five decades that whole studies on how his image influences the reception of his books have been written (for example, John Rodden’s The Politics of Literary Reputation). According to Rodden, the idea of “the Common Man” is only one in a string of images associated with Orwell (the other ones include “the Rebel,” “the Prophet,” and “the Saint”), and is twofold in the sense that it can be

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seen as one of the concerns of Orwell’s best novels, as well as an image of Orwell himself. In this context, “the Common Man is a realist’s and mature man’s hero, an experienced, skeptical, even worldly figure bluntly dismissing revolutionary change and other idealistic notions with his sardonic humour” (Rodden 174). Additionally, “common man” in Orwell is not restricted to the working class but is employed as “a catch-all term for non-intellectuals when deriding the Left intelligentsia” (175). If we replace this possible political motivation in Orwell (of criticizing the Left, or the Right, or any totalitarian system) with a more general literary and sociological incentive (critique of the Modernist and Romantic approaches to literature and life), we will find striking similarities between the Orwellian and the Larkinesque concepts of commonness. In both cases, a dose of realism and maturity is included, as well as skepticism and humour. George Bowling from Orwell’s Coming Up For Air (1939) would be a prototype of such a common man and is echoed in given Larkin speakers such as those in the “Toad” poems. The key characteristic of this common man, and the most important common attribute of Orwell’s and Larkin’s versions, is an ability to see beyond the official discourses or myths. This man is not an erudite scholar, or a profound thinker, or any larger-than-life hero, but he displays a keen perceptiveness and a willingness to think things through and seek a truth. In this last feature, such an attitude can be associated with literary realism. Relatedly, in an article on Orwell’s plain style, Stewart Justman invokes Orwell’s “resolve to stick to the facts of experience” (200) and links it up with the tradition of the realist novel. Quoting George Levine, Justman suggests that “the realist novel speaks of ‘the moral urgency of seeing with disenchanted clarity and valuing the ordinary as the touchstone of human experience’” (Justman 201). The stress on “disenchantedness” and “the ordinary” is certainly embedded in Larkin’s idea of “the less deceived.” This necessity to see through illusions and “unpick the world like a knot,” as Larkin’s speaker would have it in “If, My Darling,” is thematically present even in Larkin’s earliest poetry-writing days. In “Schoolmaster,” from 1940, the idealistic understanding of a teacher’s career quickly “dissolves”— like the man himself—in the final couplet: For though he never realized it, he Dissolved. (Like sugar in a cup of tea.)

In “May Weather” (1941),

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waits in an ambush of the last stanza, while the first line of “Observation” (1941) bluntly claims “Only in books the flat and final happens.” These early, rather simplistic germs of one of Larkin’s most important themes develop over time into more complex and more successful poetic creations, which often involve a persona or a carefully developed setting. In “I Remember, I Remember,” for example, the “unpicking” of the speaker’s childhood is done through negation of the sentimental tropes of an ideal childhood, which he feels are untrue to his own life.1 In this, Larkin’s speaker greatly resembles Orwell’s Bowling, who claims that “that poetry of childhood stuff . . . is all baloney” (Coming Up For Air 472). Both Larkin’s speaker and Bowling betray a certain pose in taking this anti-sentimental attitude—a sign that what they are saying does not come from some indiscriminate destructive impulse but from a felt position of disappointment or disagreement. In Larkin’s poem, this pose is suggested through the stubborn rejection of a long list of meticulous details related to an “ideal” childhood; in Bowling’s monologue it is conveyed through an exaggerated “tough” tone and easy dismissal. After he remembers childhood fishing fondly, Bowling adds: Don’t mistake what I’m talking about. It’s not that I’m trying to put across any of that poetry of childhood stuff. I know that’s all baloney. Old Porteous (a friend of mine, a retired schoolmaster, I’ll tell you about him later) is great on the poetry of childhood. Sometimes he reads me stuff about it out of books. Wordsworth. Lucy Gray. There was a time when meadow, grove, and all that. Needless to say he’s got no kids of his own. The truth is that kids aren’t in any way poetic, they’re merely savage little animals, except that no animal is a quarter as selfish. . . . (472)

He throws in a few informed thoughts about “the poetry of childhood” but these are conveniently ascribed to his friend “a retired schoolmaster.” While showing that he is aware of the tropes, Bowling simultaneously disowns them, and retains the right to criticize them from the position of someone who knows the actual “truth” about children. In Larkin’s poem, the tropes are perhaps not only the literary ones but also the ones coming from popular beliefs—potentially a more dangerous scenario because those beliefs might

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end up being a faulty measure of how much someone has achieved in life. In neither case, however, does the tirade of negations end in an absolute and intransigent dismissal. Only a handful of lines after his outburst, Bowling explains his stance, a little less boisterously and a little more rationally: going back to fishing, he adds . . . in a manner of speaking I am sentimental about my childhood— not my own particular childhood, but the civilization which I grew up in and which is now, I suppose, just about at its last kick. (473)

He does have a wider field of vision, and an acceptable rationale for his opinions, and, most importantly, he notices things in the world around him. In the case of Larkin’s speaker, the last couple of lines indicate that the person has at least gone beyond the childish and pettish frame of mind. By allowing for the possibility that “it’s not the place’s fault,” the speaker is in a good position to start reconsidering who he is, come to terms with that, and take a clear stance towards “the perfect childhood” ideology. In other words, in both cases negation and “anti” attitudes are the most visible manifestations of the “undeceiving” done by the speaker, but it is indicated in both cases that this stance ultimately has a more productive and healthy aspect. Negation of the popularly accepted daily untruths is in other Larkin poems more explicitly accompanied by a constructive suggestion of what those untruths should be replaced by in a more commonsensical attitude to life. In “Born Yesterday,” the speaker first dismisses the conventional tropes of wishes for a newly-born baby (“ . . . running off a spring / Of innocence and love”) as “the usual stuff.” Along with the ideas, a particular language— felt to be untrue or fake—is being dismissed too; the speaker is searching not just for a revised concept of happiness but also for a more honest language of well-wishing. Indicating that, though existent, the chances of the baby reaching those wished-for ideals are small, the speaker puts forward what he sees as a more fitting wish. This wish is based on adjusted ideals, captured in attributes suggesting ordinariness: May you be ordinary; Have, like other women, An average of talents: Not ugly, not good-looking, Nothing uncustomary To pull you off your balance,

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If these were the closing lines, perhaps they could be seen as a description of a “dull” existence, and an impolite wish when compared to “the usual stuff,” however illusory. The last five lines, however, ensure that this is not the case. Shifting from a level-headed, pragmatic expression to a more vigorous and almost epiphanic tone, the speaker adds a certain vision to the truth embedded in his idea of a good life: In fact, may you be dull If that is what a skilled, Vigilant, flexible, Unemphasised, enthralled Catching of happiness is called.

After the negation of unrealistic expectations, he not only explains which values should replace them, but also gives a strong affirmation to those values, redefining them as “happiness.” His idea of happiness is dynamic, active, and easily spans the whole lifetime. More importantly, it precludes the traditional understanding of happiness as a “state” or something which is “given” to us at birth or later in life. Unlike the addressed baby who was “born yesterday,” the speaker wasn’t. He has a clear-sighted and realistic view of life: we have to make an active effort in order to be happy. Probably the best, because the most mature, version of this act of breaking down illusions and reassessing values is “Sad Steps,” from Larkin’s last published collection High Windows (1974). While in “Born Yesterday” the speaker simply first states what he doesn’t believe in and then what he believes in, in “Sad Steps” we are witnessing a process, a gradual (self-)discovery, which involves a qualification of the dismissal of tropes and illusions. Like “Born Yesterday,” “Sad Steps” reaches for a more immediate diction, stripped of layers of conventional literariness. The idea of an ordinary man on an ordinary occasion is conveyed in the first three or four lines: the speaker is presented as any given person who wakes up at night and does not shrink from using the word “piss,” at least in his thoughts. The key concern of the poem—the contrast between crude reality and unattainable ideals—is captured already in the conspicuous rhyme piss/cleanliness. This contrast is perhaps the reason why the speaker finds “something laughable about this”: in the middle of his earthly and bodily-constrained human existence, he is

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caught unawares by the gratuitous beauty of nature, the “cavernous” sky above and the “stone-coloured” light on the roofs below. As if embarrassed by his spontaneous attraction to the sight, the speaker’s mind slips into a catalogue of clichéd and overblown, Romanticsounding apostrophes to the moon. More suitable to the poetry and time of Philip Sidney, to whose sonnet from Astrophil and Stella Larkin is probably alluding in “Sad Steps,” these exclamatory phrases seem jarring, ironic, and inadequate: High and preposterous and separate Lozenge of love! Medallion of art! O wolves of memory! Immensements! No. . . .

That these rhetorical excesses are used derisively is clear: it is unlikely that the person/a using “piss” in the opening line would be amenable to such literary conventions, and, more importantly, any doubt about the tone in this stanza is solved in the last word in it—“No.” This word signals a shift in the speaker’s tone, and also the beginning of a realization: his ironic and somewhat cynical tone now becomes sober, respectful and serious. Aware of his earthly place and size, he “shivers slightly, looking up there.” This is where the more mature aspect of his personality takes over: even though he has rejected the literary exaggerations about the moon, he does acknowledge it as a powerful and beautiful phenomenon. This is not because the moon has been a time-honored minion of artistic treatment and, especially, a source of literary inspiration; it is because in little moments like this, the moon assumes personal and intimate significance in the life of the particular person looking up at it, being aware of it and of himself. This attitude is shown in a “purified” referential language, even when it includes metaphoric expression: The hardness and the brightness and the plain Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare Is a reminder of the strength and pain Of being young;

Even with the figurative reference to the moon as a “wide stare,” the invocation of the full moon’s powerful light and constancy keeps it close to the actual phenomenon and far from the theatrical “wolves of memory.” Larkin here seems to be aligning his speaker with the Aristotelian belief that some

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words are more proper than others in that they are “more like the object signified and more adapted to making the thing ‘appear before the eyes.’” The last line and a half crowns the speaker’s realization and internal development: in a more objective and generous consideration of life, the speaker admits that youth “can’t come again, / But is for others undiminished somewhere.” While youth, recognized in the bright full moon, may be gone for him and others like him, it is “undiminished,” and perhaps even rightly idealized, for others. Not finding anything “laughable” about this any more, the speaker has overcome his initial cynicism but, importantly, not at the expense of his perceptiveness and integrity: while bookish exclamations about the moon might be fine for some, he himself will have none.2 A particular version of the “unpicking-of-the-world” theme is a demythologizing of conventional gender (especially male) roles. As Terry Whalen suggests, tracing a connection between this aspect of Larkin’s work and D. H. Lawrence’s novels (particularly Lady Chatterley’s Lover), “like Lawrence, [Larkin] scrutinizes the male mythology that surrounds him, usually taking a satirical and an insubordinate approach to what he sees” (“Philip Larkin and Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Exploring an Influence” 82). Considering Larkin in the context of a frequent Movement stance of machismo, Whalen finds Larkin somewhat different, in the sense that he “ironically distances himself from the swaggering male figures he creates in his poems” (87).3 A case in point is “If, My Darling.” While critics like James Booth and Andrew Swarbrick find the poem an example of Movement sarcasm and misogyny, Whalen reads it as a “gender protest in the way it upends conservative male mythology” (87). This is achieved through the persona of a garrulous but insecure and self-questioning man, who metonymically constructs first a figurative representation of what an accepted idea of a male personality is, and then a representation of what he is really like. Imagining his “darling” jumping into his head, “like Alice,” he claims she would not find a sense of order and comfort indicated by such upperclass, luxurious items as “mahogany sideboards,” “tantalus” or “fender-seat.” Instead, She would find herself looped with the creep of varying light, Monkey-brown, fish-grey, a string of infected circles Loitering like bullies, about to coagulate; Delusions that shrink to the size of a woman’s glove, Then sicken inclusively outwards. She would also remark The unwholesome floor, as it might be the skin of a grave,

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From which ascends an adhesive sense of betrayal, A Grecian statue kicked in the privates, money, A swill-tub of finer feelings.

The unwholesomeness of the speaker’s actual “interior” is created through a pile of unpleasant images suggesting fickleness, dubious quality and baseness, all in lively contrast to the idealized notion of stability, luxury and principle in the previous two stanzas. The climax of this self-revelatory incantation, however, is the penultimate stanza, which highlights the central problem in the speaker’s personality: But most of all She’d be stopping her ears against the incessant recital Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms, Each one double-yolked with meaning and meaning’s rebuttal.

Caught in the contradiction of “meaning and meaning’s rebuttal,” the speaker is doomed to a position of awareness but also indecision and helplessness; on the one hand, there is the knowledge of what is generally wanted or expected—on the other, the consciousness of what reality is like. While most of the poem can be seen as the speaker’s reckoning with himself and his sarcastically-viewed deviance from the prescribed “maleness” of his time, parts of it do involve another, unaddressed person and are somewhat problematic. It seems that part of that overall sarcasm which the speaker shows both towards the male-gender stereotypes and towards himself, has been transferred onto “his darling,” the person who, he imagines, would be shocked the most by his true self. This is achieved through the third-person reference to her, which puts her at a distance from the speaker and us. The gap is widened by the fact that the speaker is sharing an intimate piece of information about himself with us, while she is completely ignorant of it. This puts her in an inferior and marginal position, hypothetically confirmed in the last stanza: For the skirl of that bulletin unpicks the world like a knot, And to hear how the past is past and the future neuter Might knock my darling off her unpriceable pivot.

Is this only his dread of her eventual discovery of what he is truly like? Or is there a trace of resentment of her in him because she lives happily, and

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simplistically, oblivious to hard realities? Together with the crudeness of the possible sexual innuendo of the last line, this ambivalence is the basis for misogynistic readings of this and a few other Larkin poems. In “Breadfruit,” for example, girls can be seen as partly and indirectly to blame for the conventional and complacent lives the majority of boys live: they “dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,” and who teach them “sixteen sexual positions on the sand.” After they have been enchanted by the promise of the “native girls” in youth, the boys lead their lives according to “uncorrected visions”: they join the tennis club, take girls out on Saturdays, get married, go through financial problems, and finally succumb to illness and age. The rather empty cycle is closed with the image of old men, dreaming of native girls again, who can thus be seen as the “culprits” of encouraging such uninspiring lives. It is crucial, however, to realize that the dream-framework and the exotic/primitive setting of the dream are part of the boys’ fantasies: it is they who conjure up the native girls and fantasize about sex. What the poem suggests is that the “boys,” from early days to old age, do not have much choice. Living in a society which regulates, encourages, or restrains many aspects of their personality, they pass their lives in a ready-made rut, and not particularly thoughtfully; to relieve the monotony of their days, they indulge in occasional fantasies about exciting and unknown things. An excellent symbol of this vague and wistful desire is, of course, the mysterious “breadfruit, whatever they are.” The “uncorrected visions,” in other words, have a far more chronic and systematic origin, and have nothing to do with the “native girls.” Going back to “If, My Darling,” we could suggest that the speaker feels distant from his “darling” not because she is a woman but because she is a part of that larger socio-cultural mechanism which projects “visions” of desirable or “normal” life. She is, in fact, as helpless about the situation as he is, and the only difference is that she is not aware (at least, in his mind) of the falsity of that projected image. Another important aspect of Larkin’s treatment of gender roles in this context is the attention he pays to women and their unenviable position in a few poems. As Whalen points out in the same article (85), a good example is “Afternoons,” which focuses on “young mothers”: Behind them, at intervals, Stand husbands in skilled trades, An estateful of washing, And the album, lettered Our Wedding, lying

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Near the television: Before them, the wind Is ruining their courting-places.

Just like the “boys” from “Breadfruit,” or the speaker from “If, My Darling,” they find themselves somewhat surprised by the unavoidable paths or states their lives have led them to. Or, as the poem says in its concluding lines: Their beauty has thickened. Something is pushing them To the side of their own lives.

An interesting point in “Afternoons” is that the married state and the life it entails could even be understood as something potentially enriching, despite being imposed or somewhat disappointing. The third-last line is constructively ambiguous: the “thickened” beauty could be seen in the more obvious context as “deteriorated,” but it could also be understood as “increased” or “enhanced” beauty. It is just possible, in other words, that marriage could bring out some deeper qualities in people. Nevertheless, the consideration of marriage, as one of the most important expressions of societal behaviour, can be very cynical in Larkin. In a gender-neutral “Marriages” (in the sense that neither sex is foregrounded), the speaker does not hide extreme distrust and dislike of marriage. Setting up an immediate distinction between “those of us” (who do not get married) and “the remainder,” the speaker is generally harsh, but much more so with “the remainder.” His kind is associated with “confidence,” “candescence,” and a series of notions which, even though normally negative, are here given a positive spin through carefully chosen adjectives or noun phrases: “a pregnant selfishness,” “intelligent rancour,” and “an integrity of self-hatred” (my italics). In opposition to that, the (married) remainder are characterized by passivity, lack of principles, and complacency: Frogmarched by old need They chaffer for a partner Some undesirable, With whom it is agreed That words such as liberty, Impulse, or beauty Shall be unmentionable.

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In other words, with their motives reduced to “old need,” married people, in the speaker’s opinion, lack integrity and individuality. So the fact that “they are not wasted, /. . . By intelligent rancour, / An integrity of self-hatred,” is, in fact, a disadvantage. The speaker’s last statement suggests that their lives are indeed wasted since “they tarnish at quiet anchor.” Even though the speaker is regarding his own characteristics with mixed feelings, he is clearly critical of marriage, even when he seems to be saying something positive (as in “So they are gathered in, / So they are not wasted”). “Marriages” sounds more bitter and less forgiving than, for example, “Self ’s the Man,” which is at least relieved by lighter humour and a final disclaimer or deflation. It is a serious and gloomy consideration of some of the basics of social and emotional life. This takes us to a related issue, pertinent to the concept and theme of the common man as we defined it. A constant and active demythologizing of ideas which are usually taken for granted sometimes leads to insecurity and a discomfort with oneself and one’s life. Thus, as a sort of accompaniment to Larkin’s “unpicking-of-the-world” theme comes the feeling of existential anxiety. Very often, an individual’s position is presented in such poems as unstable and helpless against the background of an indifferent universe. We have seen this already in “Aubade,” and its “uncaring / Intricate rented world,” or in “MCMXIV” where “the countryside [is] not caring.” In both poems the speaker is dealing with death, that most anxiety-inducing of subjects, whether considered in relation to an individual or to a collective. One of the best expressions of this cosmic lack of care and our tiny, uncertain and questioning position can be found in “Talking in Bed.” The first stanza creates a context generally understood as the most safe and honest, and puts forward a logical hypothesis: Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest.

Though Larkin did not subscribe to theoretical postulations of such Modernist concepts as the objective correlative, he is most certainly employing one in the following stanza. This stanza first introduces an opposing thought (signaled by the connective “yet”) and then builds an emotion through the description of a landscape: Yet more and more time passes silently. Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest

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Builds and disperses clouds about the sky, And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

The double negation, indicating disturbing infinitude, of “the wind’s incomplete unrest,” the random and pointless “building and dispersing” of clouds, and the “heap” of “dark towns” cramping on the horizon, all produce a sense of oppression and instability.4 The last five lines of the poem articulate this feeling more explicitly, showing once again the world’s indifference towards “us”: None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.

Left without a benevolent attention from higher forces, we are disoriented and eternally alone, even “at this unique distance from isolation.” Not only does this state of affairs make it “difficult to find” an ideal (“Words at once true and kind”), but it also makes it hard to find the second-best, the next on the scale of lowered standards: words “not untrue and not unkind.” Acting almost as a punch-line, this last statement is a kind of logical conundrum when considered together with the previous one. It requires the reader to realize that “true” does not equal “not untrue” or “kind” “not unkind.” The doubly-negated terms allow for ampler margins of the qualities in question, stretching the strict boundaries of “truth” and “kindness” to make them more humanly viable. The poem, however, emphasizes the isolation of each individual (even in couples) by questioning the attainability of even the reduced ideals. The strongly felt loneliness and helplessness of the individual are often associated, directly or indirectly, with a particular philosophical response in a number of Larkin’s poems: a tendency to believe in determinism or fatalism. This particular outlook is present in Larkin from his early days, and is at first a vague speculation, a testing of a possible explanation of life and our place in it. “Nothing significant was really said” (1940), for example, shows a “brilliant freshman,” who merits predictions of a great future, wondering unhappily about the strange “path” his life has taken: ‘O what unlucky streak Twisting inside me, made me break the line?

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” What was the rock my gliding childhood struck, And what bright unreal path has led me here?’

Another poem from 1940, “After-Dinner Remarks,” presents the speaker pondering “complex reflections,” and thinking about what I could have won today By stretching out my hand.

His conclusion, however, dismisses such thoughts: Against these facts this can be set We do not make ourselves: There is no point in such deceit, To introspectively regret Can never our defect defeat, Or mend our broken halves.

Such fatalism is in this poem associated with the war-time atmosphere in which young Larkin was writing, as “exploding shrapnel,” “the familiar horrors . . . coming fast along our way,” “morning papers” and “the shrieking of the mothers” indicate.5 In his mature poetry, however, determinism is not directly linked to any cataclysmic event, but appears in the context of his average speaker’s thoughts about existence and meaning, usually prompted by some daily occurrence. Blake Morrison sees this as an interesting Movement characteristic, which shows that these writers were not completely discarding earlier, notably Romantic, traits. “It is clear,” maintains Morrison, that the fatalism pervading the work of Larkin and Amis, however lightly worn, betrays an element of superstition which is not consonant with the Movement’s declared reaction against Romantic irrationalism, and which indicates an inability wholly to submit to a ‘rational’ and ‘realistic’ philosophy. (189)

We have seen earlier this tendency to view life as set in advance and proceeding without the individual’s agency. In “Dockery and Son,” the speaker ponders “a style / Our lives bring with them,” in “Ignorance” we are told that “our flesh / Surrounds us with its own decisions,” while in “Reference Back,” the speaker indirectly claims that we only have an illusion of choice—the “long perspectives” into the past

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show us what we have as it once was, Blindingly undiminished, just as though By acting differently we could have kept it so.

In these poems, life is seen as a “machine / That brings what you’ll get,” to use a line from “The Life with a Hole in it.” In a few other poems, “what we’ll get” is more specifically designated as death, so in this case the poems are not so much informed with an idea of determinism as with a sense of inevitability implied within the human condition. The allegorical “Next, Please,” for example, reveals the illusory nature of a “sparkling armada of promises” and asserts that the only certainty is death: Only one ship is seeking us, a blackSailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break.

Twenty years later, Larkin’s speaker makes this assertion more explicitly and clearly in “The Building,” where, considering the patients in a hospital, the speaker says “All know they are going to die. / Not yet, perhaps not here, but in the end, / And somewhere like this.” Illness and its accompaniments seem to be a particularly productive context for speculations about the inevitability of death in Larkin’s poems. “Ambulances” is another example. Seen as the harbingers of the unavoidable end, ambulances bring “closer what is left to come,” not letting anyone get away, since “all streets in time are visited.” The images associated with the ambulances—the “red stretcher-blankets,” or “a wild white face”—bring out for a second the sense of “the solving emptiness / That lies just under all we do.” The poem’s equally striking point of interest, however, is a feeling of connection inspired by such a universal phenomenon. Although they are “closed like confessionals,” thus separating the one inside from the rest of the world, ambulances “thread / Loud noons of cities,” connecting briefly all the on-lookers. “Children strewn on steps or road,” “women coming from the shops,” and all others who will witness the passage of ambulances on some other occasion are all equally vulnerable, and could be affected by the same misfortune that struck the person inside the ambulance this time. This mentally shared position is the source of compassion and empathy: as “the fastened doors recede,” the on-lookers whisper “Poor soul . . . at their own distress.” In other words, personal involvement in another’s situation encourages identification with that person. In this case, the on-lookers feel involved

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without even knowing the person in the ambulance: the situation is universal enough to invoke in them a total identification with the unfortunate one; as a result, it is “their own distress” which incites emotion. In “Ambulances” connection and empathy can be seen as the possibly positive human “byproducts” of such inevitable things beyond our control as illness or death. The unavoidable, uncontrollable development of events is in a few poems considered on a larger scale. The speaker of “Going, Going,” for example, is being (in a more general sense) fatalistic about the future of England. His prediction that it will become the “first slum of Europe” does not necessarily come from subscribing to determinism, but is not far from it. The last line in particular—”I just think that it will happen, soon”— expresses the speaker’s strong conviction that what he fears will soon be the case. Another socially-aware poem, which deals with societal and cultural trends across the globe, is “Nothing To Be Said.” The “death” of certain nations and peoples (“nomads among stones,” for example), or certain epochs (“holding a garden-party”) in today’s world, is seen as slow but inevitable. Not only is it impossible to do anything about this sad but unstoppable occurrence in the speaker’s disenchanted opinion, but it is also barely possible to discuss the problem adequately: And saying so to some Means nothing; others it leaves Nothing to be said.

In Orwell’s words, this speaker believes that “the world-process” is “beyond his control.”6 This belief is accompanied by a distrust of words—language does not always relate to reality meaningfully and in this poem, as in “High Windows,” the speaker seems willing to leave words behind. Interestingly, the idea of determinism is questioned in a couple of Larkin’s poems. “Whatever Happened?” is the best example. It is a lively dramatization of something we could call “retrospective” determinism: looking back to events that happened to us in the past and believing that they simply had to happen. At first, while the event is still fresh in our minds, we are scared, or relieved, or happy—since we feel that, indeed, something else, and worse, could have happened. But very soon the immediacy of that past reality disappears and the perspective which begins to be formed twists the facts, and more importantly, our sense of what our feeling was at the time, so next day we find “All’s kodak-distant.” With an even further passage of time, everything is objectified and regarded as a natural and “unavoidable” sequence of events. In other words, such retrospective determinism turns out

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to be a constructed feeling; it is the result of the ways in which our minds deal with and order past events—later “everything points out how unavoidable it was.” As the poem suggests, there is something strangely pacifying in the belief that certain things are beyond our control and are meant to be, whether in the past, or in the future: this is a psychological attraction of determinism, on a par with certain aspects of religion, and it explains why many Larkin speakers seek refuge in it. “Whatever Happened?” is interesting since it reveals this outlook as the product of our mind, a willful interpretation of events, and perhaps even a wiser approach to life, enabling us to accept things which happen, move on, and save our sanity. While deterministic everyday philosophy is just one possible response to existential questions, and the one Larkin’s speakers most frequently seize on, the questions themselves are a concern shared by most people. A version of this thematic focus which is particularly important for the notion of the 20th-century common/ordinary man in Larkin’s poetry is rather Orwellian in nature. Most generally speaking, it involves the representation of the individual pitched against a higher force or system, such as the state, the authority, or the collective. One’s vulnerability in this subordinated position is the common fate of humanity and is acting as a link between the text and the general reader. “Träumerei” from 1946 is probably the earliest example and has apocalyptic tones. The first and the last lines clearly set up the dream frame—this preserves a connecting thread with the “actual” reality, so while the content of the dream is highly suggestive and surreal, it is explicitly designated as unreal. In a setting which almost anticipates Orwell’s 1984, the speaker is “part / Of a silent crowd . . . All moving the same way.” Pushed by some strange and invisible force, they are “pressed” tight and “shut in / Like pigs.” In a further symbolic moment, “giant whitewashed” letters start appearing as they pass underneath them, physically and figuratively superior to the crowd beneath. Although part of the crowd and sharing the same manipulated position, the speaker—resembling Orwell’s Bowling or Winston—seems to be the only one who notices things: Now a giant whitewhashed D Comes on the second wall, but much too high For them to recognize: I await the E, Watch it approach and pass.

The next one is “the striding A,” after which the speaker’s exposed, vulnerable position is signaled by his bodily position:

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“Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” I crook My arm to shield my face, for we must pass Beneath the huge, decapitated cross, White on the wall, the T, and I cannot halt The tread, the beat of it.

He wakes up “before the word is spelt,” but by now, of course, it is clear that what was being announced so threateningly is death. Whether death is the force which pushes and directs the crowd, or just an “advertisement” of what this bullying force has in store for them is not completely clear. Even so, the apocalyptic tone is unmistakable in the whole scene, and is enhanced by the symbolically rich “decapitated cross.” Other than this basic set-up (the individual, who is just one of many, is faced with and oppressed by a more powerful force), “Träumerei” introduces something else which will later become typical in Larkin. As we will see shortly, the use of visual symbols, particularly in the form of advertisements, is one of the most important strategies in some Larkin poems. A later and more realistic version of a similar topic is “Autobiography at an Air-Station.” Here the group of people in the same dependent (though not apocalyptic in the negative sense of the word) position are “travellers,” whose flight was delayed at an airport. Their passive and helpless state created by the situation is emphasized by their utter lack of information about what is going on; they depend on a larger structure, like an air-company or the airport infrastructure, but have no contact with it: Delay, well, travellers must expect Delay. For how long? No one seems to know.

At first, the speaker feels like part of the crowd, and points out their similar predicament, pluralizing their limited actions: . . . We amble to and fro, Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets And tea, unfold the papers.

Then, however, he shows that even in this common situation there is enough room for egocentrism and isolationism: Ought we to smile, Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats

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You’re best alone. Friendship is not worth while.

The closing sestet underlines the state of dependency on something beyond one’s control, and the accompanying feeling of not only disempowerment but also fear: I feel staled, Stupefied, by inaction—and, as light Begins to ebb outside, by fear; I set So much on this Assumption. Now it’s failed.

A pragmatic thinker, the speaker does not look for supernatural or conspiratorial causes of his flight’s delay. He does, however, feel helpless and disconcerted about the fact that some of his “assumptions” fail because they depend on something bigger and more powerful than he.7 His feeling that this particular episode contains some typical quality of (his) life is captured in the word “autobiography” from the title. COMMERCIALIZED AGE The idea of the individual’s dependence on societal structures is closely related to another theme in Larkin, that of the commercialized age. Larkin was increasingly interested in the consequences on the world and ordinary people of contemporary economic and business trends. Dehumanized values, everyday life as a marketplace, and commercial norms as the default setting of modern existence appear again and again, especially in his later poetry. Advertisements are one of the key symbols of this commercialized age and a useful visual aid in conveying related ideas. As an official “line” on what life—guided by economic authorities and needs—should be, advertisements are a perfect symbol of the conflict between the ideal and the real. Throwing back at us a flattering image of ourselves in an idealized world, they are imposing and manipulative. Advertisements which Larkin makes use of are contemporary phenomena—they set off in us a particular advertising “language” which we have internalized in our day and age and which we, as modern readers, can understand. As already mentioned in the discussion of “Sunny Prestatyn,” this familiarity of the reader with the advertisementformat, used as the central poetic device, is the main reason why we understand intimately what is going on in the poem. The perfect example from this thematic group is “Essential Beauty.” It contains all the key elements of this theme: the oppressive role of the

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marketplace ideology, the discrepancy between the imposed ideal and the lived real, and the sad gullibility and addiction of the “victims,” people like us, whose lives are affected by the commercial machinery on a daily basis. The first stanza creates the feeling of the domination of advertisements by emphasizing their physical properties such as size and altitude, which occasionally turn them into obstacles. Their frames are “large” and the advertisements themselves virtually omnipresent as they “face all ways”; they “block the ends of streets with giant loaves” and “cover slums”; they are “high above the gutter,” and, “rising serenely” (in the second stanza), they “dominate outdoors.” Their physical formidability is accompanied by an idealized picture of “how life should be,” in sharp contrast to how life is. “Custard” covers “graves” and “praise” covers “slums,” “silver knife” and “golden butter” are right above “the gutter,” and the “fine / Midsummer weather” does not match the actual rain. Even though the pictures of the advertised life are extremely concrete, with numerous particulars (armchairs are “deep,” bars “gas or electric,” cats in “quarter-profile” and mats “warm”), they are so remote from real life that they “reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares” underneath them. That there is something intrinsically wrong with this representation of life is indicated through the zeugmatic leveling of the emotional and the material when we are told that the advertised well-balanced families “owe their smiles, their cars, / Even their youth, to that small cube” everyone is reaching for. The confusion of basic conceptual categories continues in the second stanza where, what is first labelled as “essential beauty,” is now seen as proclaiming “pure crust, pure foam.” Advertisements, in other words, encourage the exchange of values: the external, the “crust,” is presented as “the essence.” The second stanza is focused more clearly on “this world, where nothing’s made / As new or washed quite clean.” The previously depicted “essential beauty” is now countered with the sordid or sad instances of real life: “the boy puking his heart out in the Gents,” the pensioner paying “a halfpenny more” for the tea, or “dying smokers” having a hallucinatory vision of the non-existent woman from the cigarette pack. A symbol of the allure of the advertised goods, this “unfocused she / No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near” is obviously unreal, but the product she is associated with has a real and serious grip on the customers. Under the influence of their addiction, they occasionally see her as “newly clear, / Smiling, and recognising.” The fact that she is “going dark” in the very end draws attention to the short-lived nature of the satisfaction promised by the advertisement.

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Without any explicit comments, the poem conveys a critique of the commercialized world and the ideology behind advertising, working towards plainer language and truth. Contrasting the false images of idealized life and real life, the poem brings out the absurdity of the advertising business;8 presenting the oppressive domination of this “essential beauty,” it reveals the cruelty of such business to ordinary individuals. Even though such individuals are implicitly presented as gullible, they are, above all, the victims of a calculating and controlling power. The reader recognizes that these individuals are thrown against a much stronger opponent, and can more easily sympathize with them. This is why poems like “Essential Beauty” come closest to being socially-active in Larkin’s oeuvre: not exactly revolutionary in their pitch, they still perform an awareness-raising function. What we experience as disconnected, and often unprocessed, fragments of our daily lives, is put together meaningfully and accessibly in the poem, and offered for examination. “The Large Cool Store” is another representation of a modern commercialized world, perceived and depicted in terms of materials, colours and clothing items: (Knitwear, Summer Casuals, Hose, In browns and greys, maroon and navy) .................... But past the heap of shirts and trousers Spread the stands of Modes For Night: Machine-embroidered, thin as blouses, Lemon, sapphire, moss-green, rose Bri-Nylon Baby-Dolls and Shorties Flounce in clusters.

These lists, catalogues and nuances of commercial articles making up a significant portion of the poem, could be understood as a typical Movement characteristic. Blake Morrison, for example, sees Larkin’s tendency to “incorporate brand names in his poems” as an expression of the Movement’s antiRomanticism; the Movement writers pay “a ‘realistic’ attention to the disfigured townscapes of the present” (164–165). These contemporary details, however, are not recorded completely neutrally. Even though his eye records faithfully all the different “modes” of dress displayed in the store, the speaker is simultaneously critical of what he sees. The clothes on sale are “cheap” and probably of poor quality since they are mass-produced (they are

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sold in a “large cool store,” and thrown in “heaps” and “clusters”). The blandness and uniformity of their industrial/mechanical origin is suggested in the fact that they are “set out in simple sizes plainly.” The foregrounding of objects, industrially-produced and low in quality, takes us back to Whalen’s suggestion that Larkin was deeply influenced by D. H. Lawrence and his “critical nostalgia for a pre-industrial England of rootedness and a more organic life” (“Philip Larkin and Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Exploring an Influence” 80).9 Lack of organicism in the world sold in “the large cool store” is, indeed, strongly emphasized in the last stanza, through the use of such attributes as “unearthly,” “unreal,” “synthetic” and “natureless.” The poem, however, has another aspect which deepens the critique. The dehumanizing commercial dimension of modern life is clearly associated with class and gender. The “weekday” and “night” clothes described in the poem are associated with people who leave their “low terraced houses” at dawn and go to “factory, yard and site.” The customers, in other words, are members of the working-class, and, by analogy, their lives themselves are as uniform and as “mass-produced” as are the items they buy and wear. More specifically, the garments in the store are more and more clearly associated with women as the poem goes on, especially when we get to the “rose / Bri-Nylon Baby Dolls and Shorties.” Are women objectified and devalued along with the clothes? What are we to think of this implicit connection between the cheap industrial products on the one hand and the lower classes and female gender on the other? Consequently, what do we think of the speaker? The rest of the poem offers an explanation: To suppose They share that world, to think their sort is Matched by something in it, shows How separate and unearthly love is, Or women are, or what they do, Or in our young unreal wishes Seem to be: synthetic, new, And natureless in ecstasies.

The speaker, whose personality comes in more strongly at the end of the poem, is a representative of the average modern man. Uncertain and confused, he is influenced by the material world of commerce and money, which exploits all “exploitable” categories of people, to the extent that he is not sure

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what he thinks. There is a mix-up of concepts in his mind: in his questioning, he associates the material world of things with “love,” and women with “synthetic” materials. The fact, however, that he ends up his speculation by suggesting that the source of this understanding of the world is “in our young unreal wishes” is significant and reminiscent of “Breadfruit.” It indirectly points to the network of external factors that young men (and women) are exposed to in an industrially developed society. In other words, the way he perceives and understands the world is, of course, symptomatic of the condition his environment is in. To borrow Whalen’s words again, like Lawrence, Larkin shows England in decline in such poems: Lawrence’s rendition of a diminished post-World War I society colours Larkin’s view of his own post-World War II welfare state. In both cases the authors feel they are witness to physical as well as spiritual decay. . . . (81)

Confronted with this perceived contemporary social reality, the individual in Larkin’s poems often feels torn between different values, as in “The Large Cool Store,” or he feels wordless. Particularly interesting in this group are the “blue-theme” poems. “Here” and “Sunny Prestatyn” from The Whitsun Weddings, and “High Windows” from High Windows, all take a look at contemporary society (with the first two more specifically addressing its commercial aspects), and all contain blue-coloured images. In “Here” and “High Windows” blue is associated with the vastness of space and silence or wordlessness. The swiftly changing and claustrophobically crowded townscapes from the first three stanzas of “Here” are contrasted to the motionless “silence” and the view of a “bluish neutral distance” which “ends the land suddenly.” This is designated as the location of “unfenced existence.” In this case, a shade of blue is associated with the opposite of the physical and social confinement of human settlements featured in the rest of the poem. Not only are such places cramped with topographical objects such as “domes and statues, spires and cranes,” “streets,” “the slave museum,” or “tatoo-shops” and “consulates,”10 but also with commercial articles, resembling those in “The Large Cool Store”: Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies, Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers -

The indiscriminate catalogue of desired goods reinforces their low value, and more importantly, the materially-driven lives of “a cut-price crowd, urban yet

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simple.” Against such a human element, “push[ing] through plate-glass swing doors to their desires” and complying with societal and economic norms, we get the “bluish” “neutrality” of “unfenced existence” in the end. Silent, free, and uninvolved in anything human, this bare existence is deeply contrasted to the preceding clutter of things and motivations. What are we to make of this? The portrayal of human life in the first three stanzas is not flattering: it suggests massiveness, indiscriminateness and thoughtlessness and does not do full justice to the individual members of the “cut-price crowd,” defined primarily on the basis of what they want to buy or where they live. However, what looks like a dismissive gesture is significantly modified through certain hints about the “unfenced existence,” contrasted to humanity in the end. “Facing the sun,” “untalkative” and characterized by “loneliness” and “silence,” this existential sphere is obviously not a human habitat. The only “population” there is made up of light, weeds, waters, and leaves. True, this place is “unfenced” and empty of all the demeaning objects and strivings of human beings, but it is, after all, empty. Whether it is divine or more generally hypothesized, this “existence” looks hostile, and it is “out of reach.” In other words, there are no easy answers to the problems generated in contemporary life: industrial societies mass-produce things and people, but the occasionally tempting alternative is unlivable and therefore not an alternative.11 The tendency of the modern mind to seek illusory refuge away from society and its content is illustrated in “High Windows” as well. The unattainable nature of such ideals is, once again, symbolized by blue. Rather than dwelling more carefully on the differences and the similarities between different epochs and trends in society and the meaning of it all, the speaker’s mind leaves all words behind and dissolves in “the deep blue air, that shows/ Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.” Again, this “blue” area, here qualified more specifically through the association with “deep” and “air,” seems at first a safe haven, a place free of human and social conundrums which complicate life. The last line, however, is so emphatically negative that—as in “Here”—we can almost physically feel the alienation and distance from the place “that shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.” It may be good for a temporary imaginative escape in the moments of weakness, but it is not our home. This last idea seems to be recognized, and the fake “haven” duly punished, in “Sunny Prestatyn.” As mentioned earlier, a great deal of the impulse behind the destructive act described in the poem, comes from the perpetrators’ recognition of the falsity of the advertised “reality”; it, perhaps, also comes from their (conscious or unconscious) feeling that they are being

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tempted and manipulated by the commercial and advertising power-structures. Thus, “some blue,” presumably from the sky on the poster, maimed and partly torn at the end of the poem, symbolizes the violent end to illusory “ideal” places. The violent reaction to such places is particularly fierce when they are felt to be imposed by external systems, exploiting the inherent escapism of the human mind. Elements of the commercialized age are present even in Larkin’s more optimistic poems. As Terry Whalen points out in “Conflicts with Capitalism: Philip Larkin’s Politics,” even such affirmative poems like “Show Saturday,” “The Whitsun Weddings,” or “To the Sea,” contain traces of the bleak reality. While they do celebrate human value, “this takes place within a capitalist irony that frames and controls the society at large” (150). Whalen finds “Time’s rolling smithy-smoke” which “shadows much greater gestures” in the prayer-like ending of “Show Saturday,” for example, a reminder of “an implacable industrial-commercial power” (150); similarly, “Canals with floatings of industrial froth” and “acres of dismantled cars” from the introductory description in “The Whitsun Weddings,” represent landmarks of “a depleted, commercialized, present world” (150). In other words, in spite of whatever good we find around us, the world seems to have its own impetus for development, which comes primarily from the industrial-commercial realities. The thinking individual is most often in the mind-set of Larkin’s speaker in “Money,” one who contemplates the connection between money and his life and “listen[s] to money singing,” which he finds “intensely sad.” This intense sadness, however, does not prevent the individual from experiencing small moments of epiphany in which the world is momentarily and briefly restructured so that the strengths and values of human life shine through. Such moments have a healing power in the world as it is, and are in Larkin (after Lawrence once more) frequently associated with the themes we termed “community and traditions” and “nature.” COMMUNITY AND TRADITIONS The best known examples in Larkin’s poetry of the deeper strengths of the traditional rites and family or community customs are poems “To the Sea,” “The Whitsun Weddings,” and “Show Saturday.” In the first two poems, the main idea is subtly but effectively conveyed through the device of the persona. In both cases (and especially in “The Whitsun Weddings”), a somewhat distanced and ironic speaker overcomes this attitude and accedes gingerly to the importance or beauty of the observed social phenomena. The fact that he is by nature an empirical, or a skeptical personality, who does not

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fall for the mindless mythologizing of human life, makes his gradual concession and final affirmation all the more meaningful and effective. Staying grounded within the concrete and largely realistic context even in those transcendental moments, the speaker remains highly credible to the reader, and can inspire him or her to explore levels of human spirituality beyond mere rationality. In “To the Sea,” the moment he makes an effort and “step[s] over the low wall that divides / Road from concrete walk above the shore,” the speaker is exposed and receptive to the power of the seaside scenes. Immediately under the influence of “something known long before,” and duly excited about it (“Still going on, all of it, still going on!”), he nevertheless manages to observe the scene faithfully and minutely. The colourful description of the landscape in the first stanza is followed by an equally precise look at the human “element” on the beach, ranging from “the uncertain children, frilled in white / And grasping at the enormous air” to “the rigid old” and those who “lead” the former or “wheel” the latter. Summarizing the seaside activities “as half an annual pleasure, half a rite,” the speaker personalizes the observation by a short flashback of his own time spent on the beach, or, further back in the past, a speculation of how his parents met there. What seems to be a sentimental state of mind, however, does not prevent him from keeping his critical faculties about him: all this is, at the same time, “the same seaside quack,” while in the midst of this almost idyllic scene his eye picks out traces of the less admirable aspects of human nature and society, the cheap cigars, The chocolate-papers, tea-leaves, and, between The rocks, the rusting soup-tins.

Used up and discarded products, they are a reminder of all sorts of necessities, impositions and restrictions we live with. They also introduce a sense of finality the speaker seizes on in the last stanza, when “the first / Few families start to trek back to the cars. / The white steamer has gone.” The beautiful image of the dying late-afternoon light—”Like breathed-on glass / The sunlight has turned milky”—is an excellent transition to the speaker’s “final word,” his cautiously but earnestly affirmative conclusion: If the worst Of flawless weather is our falling short, It may be that through habit these do best,

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Coming to water clumsily undressed Yearly; teaching their children by a sort Of clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.

Still not one of them, still “strange to it now,” the speaker nevertheless pays respect both to such seaside “rites” and to the people who engage in them. These yearly activities might be just a “habit,” and the people who do them are not exactly dignified, “clumsily undressed” and “clowning”; but they are “teaching their children” and “helping the old”—”as they ought.” While this ending clause could be read as a moralistic statement of a cranky and supercilious personality (“that’s what they should do, since they can’t do any better”), it is far more likely that we are encountering again Larkin’s speaker from “Spring,” who refers to himself as an “indigestible sterility.” Himself not an active part of this yearly ritual of love and care any more, all he can do is watch, reflect, and indirectly admit that what “they” do is perhaps what ought to be done, from generation to generation, however clumsy or clownish it might seem to an on-looker like him. The generational, cyclical, and permanent quality of the scene which the speaker is discovering and evaluating positively, is reinforced through the static nature of the painting-like depiction of the beach in the first stanza. There is in Larkin an interesting split in understanding and presenting the value of society, especially in its relationship to the individual. On the one hand, there is a detachment from and a resentment of restraining social structures or impositions, as we have seen in “Self ’s the Man,” or “Vers de Société.” The speaker’s basic attitude, whether he clings to his celebration of selfishness or gives in to social engagements because of fear, boils down to the argument expressed briefly and somewhat humorously in “Counting”: Thinking in terms of one Is easily done One room, one bed, one chair, One person there, Makes perfect sense; one set Of wishes can be met, One coffin filled. But counting up to two Is harder to do; For one must be denied Before it’s tried.

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“Oneness” makes perfect sense because it makes everything simpler, whereas sharing your life with even just one other person entails a priori sacrifice or self-denial. The speakers expressing such views are often exaggeratedly aware of the pressures that social aspects of human life cause, but also unwilling to accept uncritically the romanticized ideas about social units such as marriage, family, or peer-groups. On the other hand, in the poems from the “community and traditions” thematic group, an intrinsic value of communal aspects of human existence is recognized and celebrated. Perhaps the difference in attitude lies in the difference between the concepts “society” and “community.” In Larkin, the former often has connotations of repression, mass-psychology, and streamlining, while the latter (usually only implied) represents the most humane and life-affirming qualities which exist in the human species. Hence what is associated with community or “ancestral” traditions typically assumes symbolic undertones of a remedial or life-giving force. The show in “Show Saturday,” for instance, is in the end feelingly proclaimed a “hidden” “strength” which every year produces a “regenerate union.” Connecting people locally, enfolding them into a day of shared time-honored activities, the show unobtrusively replenishes their human stock and allows them to go through the rest of the year, until the next show. In “The Whitsun Weddings,” it is not only the freshly-married couples who inspire the speaker—it is, most of all, the community-based rituals which are performed again and again and which draw his attention at each train station. These give the idea of marriage an indestructible, reliable, and promising quality, leading up to the speaker’s final claim that “there swelled / A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower / Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.” Again, while he is not an active participant in the observed, he can nevertheless clearly sense the power and potential of humanity, symbolized in the swelling, the arrow-shower, and the rain. Larger than his individuality and any idiosyncratic views he has, this collective strength asserts itself resoundingly at the end of the poem. A particular aspect of Larkin’s interest in community and traditions is a certain nostalgia for earlier times, and for a different world. We have seen this already in “MCMXIV,” and an even better example is “At Grass.” Racing horses, never directly referred to in the poem, stand for an older, and mostly upper-class, England, sketched through vivid details such as “faint afternoons / Of Cups and Stakes,” “parasols,” “squadrons of empty cars,” “heat” or “littered grass.” The vitality and dynamic of these now out-dated customs is contrasted to the “anonymous” and unhurried life of the present

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horses. It is true that there is a quiet wistfulness about this “almanacked” but forgotten life at the end of the poem, since not a fieldglass sees them home, Or curious stop-watch prophesies; Only the groom, and the groom’s boy, With bridles in the evening come.

It is difficult, however, to accept A. Alvarez’s interpretation of the poem as utterly conservative and insensitive to the current circumstances (see his Introduction to The New Poetry). The speaker of the poem gives small but clear indications that the horses in question are, in fact, satisfied with their changed situation. “Do memories plague their ears like flies?” he wonders, and as if in answer, “They shake their heads.” And why shouldn’t they? Instead of “the starting-gates, the crowds and cries” they now have the “unmolesting meadows.” They are, in a way, liberated and allowed to be themselves and not just potential winners, as “they / Have slipped their names, and stand at ease, / Or gallop for what must be joy.” In other words, the passing of some well-established and cohering traditions is mourned, but not without a simultaneous look at what good this change has brought. NATURE Even more stable and generous than the world of communities and traditions, and another common resource of strength for mankind in Larkin, is nature. The beginnings of this thematic thread are present even in some of the earliest poems. “To a Very Slow Air” (1946) and “Thaw” (1946/47) are characterized by young Larkin’s rhetorical flourishes: their diction is somewhat pompous or too elevated. Both also contain traces of a mystical and close to religious feeling towards nature which the ecstatic speaker is trying to express. In “To a Very Slow Air,” The cloven hills are kneeling, The sun such an anointment Upon the forehead, on the hands and feet, That all air is appointed Our candid clothing, our elapsing state.

The “kneeling” and the “anointment” have unmistakable religious connotations: the moment is presented as sacred, and the sun as a kind of blessing.

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Remaining in this natural context for spiritual feelings, the speaker makes air into our “candid clothing,” reinforcing the idea of a simple, natural lifestyle, which does not need any artificial “trimmings.” “Thaw” relates spring awakenings in nature to the religious concept of resurrection, but, significantly, resurrection is explicitly identified not with heaven but with earth (“chalkbeds of heaven” run “to earth”). As in “To a Very Slow Air,” the sun in “Thaw” again has a crucial role in the engendering of this sacred phenomenon—in the second line, which anticipates the later poem “Solar,” The sun his hand uncloses like a statue, Irrevocably. . . .

The fact that it “uncloses” its hand “irrevocably” in a reliable giving gesture, puts the sun in the position of a benevolent god. It reignites life on earth, and causes the speaker to “disperse the scolding of snow” easily. The wind is the elemental force embodying sacred and empowering feelings in another early poem. As the title of “Wedding-Wind” suggests, the idea of natural powers is here associated with human marital rituals, which are thus put on a par with the more mystical natural occurrences. In a rare instance of a female speaker in Larkin’s poetry, the Lawrentian unity of nature, male and female bonding, and the resulting sacredness, are conveyed through a sharply outlined physical context and a series of interrogatory musings: Now in the day All’s ravelled under the sun by the wind’s blowing. He has gone to look at the floods, and I Carry a chipped pail to the chicken-run, Set it down, and stare. All is the wind Hunting through clouds and forests, thrashing My apron and the hanging cloths on the line. Can it be borne, this bodying-forth by the wind Of joy my actions turn on, like a thread Carrying beads? Shall I be let to sleep Now this perpetual morning shares my bed? Can even death dry up These new delighted lakes, conclude Our kneeling as cattle by all-generous waters?

The visible, physical presence and power of the wind is conveyed in the way it thrashes her apron and the cloths on the line. It is then transported into

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the metaphorical “bodying-forth by the wind / Of joy,” and the speaker expresses her newly found sensations of happiness and humility before such generous powers. Inspired by these mysterious but life-expanding feelings, she even questions the inevitability of death in the face of the sensed powers. Larkin’s early celebration of the “natural” state of human life continues into his more mature poetry. His style is different—more compact and significantly less wordy—but the initial connections between nature and religion are still there. “Water” from 1954 is an excellent example of a trend which will be increasingly noticeable in later Larkin: returning to a simple, basic, natural core of life. If I were called in To construct a religion I should make use of water. Going to church Would entail a fording To dry, different clothes; My liturgy would employ Images of sousing, A furious devout drench, And I should raise in the east A glass of water Where any-angled light Would congregate endlessly.

Discarding the institutionalized aspects of religion, Larkin’s speaker hypothetically “constructs” the simplest religion possible around the common source of life—water. The fact that water is common to all, and universally accessible wherever there are human settlements, makes this kind of religion—and its proposed rituals—the epitome of democracy. With a little bit of help from the sun in the east, the speaker’s glass of water, “where anyangled light / Would congregate endlessly,” would become an everyday shrine for all to worship at. The poem, however, does cut into its own idealism at the very beginning: nobody is really “called in to construct a religion,” so the idea itself points to a dose of irony and self-irony in the speaker. It is as if an inborn skepticism in the speaker wouldn’t let him express these thoughts in full earnestness.

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A more tonally consistent poem is “Solar” (1964), where, once again, we encounter the idea of the sun-god. According to Terry Whalen, Larkin is here “highly aware of Lawrence’s dream of an aristocracy of the sun,” so “the sun suggests for Larkin a Lawrentian kind of counter-currency” in the world of money and capitalism (“Conflicts with Capitalism: Philip Larkin’s Poetry” 153). In this apostrophe to the sun, the speaker figuratively presents its glory through associations with a lion face, a flower, gold, and a hand, and, in line with the earlier speakers, defines its relationship to humans through giving. “Unaided,” the sun “pour[s] unrecompensed,” and as the speaker says in the end, addressing the sun: Coined there among Lonely horizontals You exist openly. Our needs hourly Climb and return like angels. Unclosing like a hand, You give for ever.

From the beginning to the end, the sun’s constancy and reliability are stressed: it is “suspended,” it “stands still” and “exists openly,” despite the fact that it is simultaneously “spilling,” “pouring,” “exploding,” and “unclosing.” Being one of “us” whose “needs hourly / Climb and return like angels,” and who simply would not survive without that giving hand, the speaker not only thanks but also worships the sun. His solemn tone of gratefulness and admiration is formally conveyed through short, stately meters, absence of any rhyme, and, especially in the last stanza, the use of pauses (created by periods). Interestingly, this sustained elated tone seems to surprise some critics, who interpret the poem as a parody of sorts. Merle Brown, for example, claims that in ‘Solar,’ instead of beholding the sun with adoration, Larkin offers the hilarious shenanigans of a verbal artist whipping the silly sun about with metaphorical abandon, shaking it like a baby toy. (121)

Brown’s main assertion is that Larkin insists, not only in this poem but in some others too, “that all objects are ultimately unconvincing,” so he “uses even the supreme object, the sun in such a way as to reduce it to mere words in the service of his special kind of human freedom” (121; 120).

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Brown overlooks, however, Larkin’s speaker’s mid-poem reminder, to himself and to the reader, about the inevitable way in which the human eye perceives such things as the sun: The eye sees you Simplified by distance Into an origin. . . .

Naturally, our physical and mental capacities are almost as limited when we attempt to grasp natural phenomena like the sun as they are when we grapple with supernatural or divine concepts. The only way to express these ideas and our feelings about them is to translate them into verbal approximations, and explain them through a familiar context. This is precisely why the speaker’s central metaphor about the sun—in a one-syllable line at the end of the second stanza—is “gold.” Both a natural element and a socially established currency, gold has the colour, the natural properties, and the worth comparable to that of the sun on the human scale. In fact, what the poem is suggesting, is that the true “gold,” the real “coin” of our existence is, indeed, the sun, and the expression of the accompanying admiration is appropriately devised as an address to the sun itself. The speaker is in an elevated state of mind, and his “metaphorical abandon,” to quote Brown again, is more likely to be in the service of this elevation, than a tool for creating hilariousness. It is, of course, possible to read the poem as ironic or dismissive. But, what would be the point of “dismissing” the sun, or any object, or the world itself (as Brown asserts about Larkin, p. 123)? Rather, it seems that such a critical approach is more interested in constructing the writer’s hateful or peevish personality than in trying to find out the ways in which the text relates to the world. A side observation rising from this example is that it seems difficult for certain literary critics to avoid reducing a writer to a monolithic style, or tone (for example, Larkin’s “cynicism,” or “irony”). A certain amount of “essentializing” or generalizing about an author is inevitable and sometimes useful. It is harmful, however, if it precludes an open-minded approach to any individual piece of text. So while it is possible to see more than a straightforward celebration of the sun in “Solar” (for example, one could argue that in an indirect way the poem treats the inevitable fictions implied in our relationship with phenomena such as the sun), it seems unfair to assess the poem as a reduction of the sun to “mere words.” The elements and nature are celebrated in a few other Larkin poems. Nature can here be viewed as a source of strength and comfort because it is itself strong and self-sufficient, or can inspire such feelings. “Absences,”

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which many commentators have likened to French symbolist poetry, is an imagined scene at sea, completely devoid of human presence. The first two stanzas create the space, with the rain and the sea as the main “actors.” The scene is full of action and movement, some of which suggests—through personification—that these elements live a life of their own. Water, from the sky or from the sea, patters, tilts, sighs, runs, collapses, towers, drops, wilts, and scrambles, “tirelessly at play.” The elements’ freedom is suggested through their apparent intent to play. Equally playful is the space “above the sea,” with “litup galleries” which “shift” and “sift away.” The non-existence of human elements and the immensity of the described scene are signalled by the fact that there are “no ships” around, and that the day is “yet more shoreless.” All there is, is water and sky, leading a seemingly content, independent life. The poem, of course, grows out of the paradox that a subjectivity is necessary for this “desubjectivized” scene to be recorded, and this is encoded in the title itself. The poem is a celebration of “humanless” nature, but this nature is defined through the negation of the presence of any people, that is, through their “absences.” The subjectivity creating and interpreting the scene does finally reveal itself more clearly in the very last line, when the speaker deictically links all of the preceding to himself, embedding the scene (and the excitement) within his mind: Such attics cleared of me! Such absences!

In a certain sense, there are similarities between this poem and “Here.” Both poems explore the metaphysical concept of existence by attempting to dissociate it from a human anchor, at least temporarily. Both poems create, in different ways and with different connotations, an imaginary “free” space, uncontrolled and unrestricted by human, or social, constructs, and thus occasionally tempting as a (mental) refuge. “Absences,” however, shows a greater rejoicing in the imagined space.12 Another “sea-poem” recording a similar rejoicing in a free and playful space is “Livings II.” A group of three poems with three very different speakers, “Livings” is a modern experiment in relativity and points of view. We get into the minds of a businessman oblivious of the imminent economic crash in 1929, a lighthouse keeper, and a pre-20th-century student or fellow at an old university. Thematically and stylistically different, the poems embody three unconnected people, times, and places—or “livings.” However, placed side by side under one title, they invite the reader to see them, and the three lives, as separate but connected by some intangible bonds of humanity, leveling off all the superficial differences, and capturing some elusive but present core of

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life. Symbolically, “Chaldean constellations / Sparkl[ing] over crowded roofs” at the end of the third poem extend over the other two, and look protectively over all three lives. Positioned in between the economic world of “Livings I” and the intellectual-traditional context of “Livings III,” “Livings II” offers a breath of natural, free space, which aligns it with “Absences.” With a more noticeably expressed perceiving and feeling subjectivity, “Livings II” focuses more on the speaker’s ecstatic joy of living in the otherwise uninhabited space. His only links to the outside world a radio, “telling [him] of elsewhere,” and occasional “lit shelved liners,” the lighthouse keeper relishes the forceful sea movements and cherishes the sea creatures which are part of that movement. His day is dominated by the sky building shapes “over the salt,” his night by the swerving snow, caught in the beam of light from the lighthouse. In such a lively, restless environment everything seems to be alive, including the radio, which “rubs its legs.” Perfectly content and excited to be in the midst of the living outdoors, within his elevated shelter where he “set[s] plate and spoon, / And after, divining-cards,” the speaker has no desire to abandon his isolated spot. Thinking of “elsewhere” with “fires in humped inns / Kippering sea-pictures,” he exclaims with determination, “Keep it all off!” While the liners, representing people, “grope like mad worlds westward,” the lighthouse keeper seems to live and breathe fully and happily in synchronization with his sea-paradise. While the previous two poems celebrate nature by creating an independent open space, a few Larkin poems foreground natural rhythms and cycles, which almost assume a quality of mysterious wisdom. The trees from the poem with the same title are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Half-personified (“almost” and “a kind of ” qualify the attributes), trees are then explicitly compared to humans, on the basis of the only similarity: we all live, grow old, and die. Trees, however, play a “yearly trick of looking new,” “thresh[ing] / In fullgrown thickness every May.” Being born again is something that the speaker, perhaps himself growing old, finds impressive. For this reason, he is receptive to the inherent “wisdom” of the trees’ doings: Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

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He senses, or wishes to sense, a message in the rustling of the new leaves (auditively suggested through the repetition of the /f/ and /S/ sounds in the last line): the fact that we are growing old does not prevent us from being born again every year. Observing natural phenomena, the speaker gets an insight into the key primordial laws, so easy to forget in our human short-sightedness. Towards the end of Larkin’s career, the elemental forces in his naturepoems increasingly show their primal and even primitive side, as the simplest core of life, the “pulse” of existence. The most striking dimension of “The Card-Players,” for example, is the invoked atmosphere, which is the principal carrier of ideas and themes in this poem.13 The Flemish-sounding names, the crudity (the men piss, and fart, and snore, and “croak” songs) and the primaeval aspect of their “lamplit cave” with their firelit “skull face[s]” give this scene a mythical quality. That what is narrated is supposed to embody something rudimentary in human existence, a (base) core of life, is further suggested by the juxtaposition through rhyme of “farts” and “hearts,” or the proximity of “ham-hung rafters” and “love,” for example.14 The last line, which more explicitly suggests the primal quality of the depicted, is the (otherwise disembodied) speaker’s intrusion, in which he assesses the scene as emotionally powerful through the use of fragmented phrases and exclamation marks: Rain, wind and fire! The secret, bestial peace!

The central point is that however coarse the ambience or the people in it are, there is an indisputable harmony between nature and the card-players. While Jan van Hogspeuw “pisses at the dark,” and inside, Dirk Dogstoerd “pours himself some more,” “Outside, the rain / Courses in cart-ruts down the deep mud lane.” Similarly, the third man, Old Prijck, follows the rhythms of his natural surroundings as he “snores with the gale.” The peace, snugness and contentment suggested in the poem are associated with the men expressing freely their human nature and, as was the case with the lighthouse keeper in “Livings II,” with being well synchronized with nature itself. This close connection between the three depicted men and their environment is precisely what is reminiscent of mythical stories. As we have seen earlier, Larkin does not hold myths in high esteem because of their “untrue” nature, but in his later years he makes use of their irrational, instinctive quality which reinforces natural rhythms and processes.15 THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE MYSTICAL The last thematic unit we will explore shares a certain note of mysteriousness with the nature-poems. Reasserting the existence and power of “a central

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pavilion of mystery” that he wrote about in the 1940s, Larkin reveals an eye for the beautiful and the mystical in the world around him. This is emphatically not the “essential beauty” of the commercial and artificial kind, or an abstract idea of Beauty, but the lasting and simple yet impressive beauty of the human spirit, asserting itself in usual and less usual situations, in intended and less intended actions. The central poems in this thematic group are “Dublinesque,” “An Arundel Tomb,” and “The Explosion,” which foreground beauty or mystery or both in different contexts as their primary interest. Many other Larkin poems, however, could be said to participate partially in this theme, usually manifested in the epiphanic or visionary tone at the end of such poems as “Church Going” and “The Whitsun Weddings” (see discussions in Chapter Three). The difference between the latter two and the model poems in this group is that, while poems like “Church Going” or “The Whitsun Weddings” have an intricate persona representing a particular type of the modern man, the beauty poems proper have a mainly unintrusive speaker. In other words, instead of drawing our attention to an understanding of the world from a particular and relatable perspective of the given persona, these poems draw our attention to the world itself as it is revealed in the described phenomena. For this reason, the poems in question can be seen as Larkin’s most positive and affirmative statements about human life. Their unintrusive speakers suggest the objective and universal existence of the beautiful (though not completely explicable) occurrences which are described. As a result, the poems inspire a mysterious but deep faith in the quality of “being human.” The plainness of the expression helps the reader focus on the depicted events or objects, and yet the language is suggestive enough to elicit particular emotions and thoughts. “Dublinesque” tackles the enormous topic of death and the human response to it, but does so in a very unpretentious and simple way. The poem seizes a moment in the passing of a funeral procession, described in a few plain, brief images. Written in relatively short meters, with no rhyme (except one half-rhyme at the end), and with a general principle of having one syntagmatic unit per line, the poem succeeds in invoking the stately, honorable rhythm or pace of the “streetwalkers.” The recreation of the scene is helped by the use of the Present Simple Tense, which places the event in a timeless, universal present.16 Although, of course, the entire observation—sensory and imaginative—necessarily comes from a source, the “objective” and independent status of the scene is suggested by existential phrases such as “There is,” or the passive voice as in “A voice is heard. . . .” The speaker, in other words, is leaving himself out of the description as much as possible, drawn by some ethereal beauty present in the scene.

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The first stanza quickly builds up the setting through a series of exact, specific details. The sidestreets where the funeral passes are “stucco,” light is “pewter,” and the shops display “race-guides” and “rosaries,” which, together with the title, give us a fairly clear idea of where and how this is happening. The only direct references to a death which occasioned the procession are the mention of the “funeral” at the end of the first stanza, and the reference to “the hearse” at the head of the procession in the line immediately following. After the topographical and cultural set-up and the stating of the bare facts, in line 8 the poem focuses on the members of the procession and their behavior: it is precisely in this that the intangible but present quality of humanness is contained. Their striking entrance is emphasized through the introductory “But” which opposes them in some way to the “facts” of the hearse and the funeral; the opposition is maintained through their vaguely carnivalesque appearance: But after there follows A troop of streetwalkers In wide flowered hats, Leg-of-mutton sleeves, And ankle-length dresses.

The homophony of “troop” with “troupe,” and the wide, flowing, and colorful (and probably also traditional) clothes these people are wearing introduce a lively, even if silent, tone of vitality. The next two stanzas record in a dozen lines the intertwined joy and sadness of being a human, the fragile beauty revealed in such brief moments where death and life meet. The friendliness, remembrance, and respect for the one who passed are expressed tastefully, in a suppressed manner adequate to the occasion: There is an air of great friendliness, As if they were honouring One they were fond of; Some caper a few steps, Skirts held skilfully (Someone claps time),

The tempered atmosphere is created through the toned-down expressions like “an air” (instead of a full-blown manifestation), “fond” (instead of passionately emotional), and “a few steps” (instead of a complete dance-rou-

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tine). The fact, however, that people “caper,” that “someone claps time,” and that skirts are held “skilfully” brings in the rhythm, custom, and competence, and with it, a comforting tone. This respectful yet feeling note enables the last stanza to put forward a wistfully beautiful tone, showing sadness without tragic or hopeless undertones: And of great sadness also. As they wend away A voice is heard singing Of Kitty, or Katy, As if the name meant once All love, all beauty.

This final song about “Kitty, or Katy” captures the basic idea of the poem and takes it to a more universal level. The uncertainty of whether it was Kitty, or Katy, or, indeed, someone else to whom the song is dedicated suggests two things. First, it really is not important who exactly it was who died: what matters is the beauty of this moment, where respect to both life and death is shown in a dignified, courageous, and emotional fashion which inspires faith in the human spirit. Second, the way the song is sung implies that, of course, the name did once mean “all love, all beauty.” To someone, somewhere, the person who died meant these things, and it is appropriate that she should be remembered and mourned. The timelessness and even prevalence of fundamental human qualities, such as love, is demonstrated concretely in “An Arundel Tomb.” While the mourners in “Dublinesque” show their emotions intentionally, within the context of a funeral, the expression of love between the earl and the countess sculpted on their tomb is, as it were, a mistake. The “proper” indicators of their identity, armour, pleat, and the little dogs are the details which they wanted emphasized, believing, in accordance with their times, that those are the properties that capture their “essence.” However: Such plainness of the pre-baroque Hardly involves the eye, until It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still Clasped empty in the other; and One sees, with a sharp tender shock, His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

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A member of “an unarmorial age,” the speaker wonders, and is amazed, at the concept of identity. The superficial, material things which are our tightest links to our place and time are the first ones to go; the earl and countess’ “scrap of history” is quickly forgotten as “endless altered people” come, “washing at their identity.” What defines us the best as individuals is what preserves us in the face of passing time, and, paradoxically, this turns out to be something common to all, something we all recognize and can identify with: affection and love, symbolized by the clasping hands. And thus, just as they intended, the earl and the countess “Rigidly . . . / Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths / Of time.” The irony, of course, is that this happens only because of the peripheral detail indicating their love, not because of their intended display of official identity: Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

Though ironic, this outcome is simultaneously amazing in the speaker’s mind: it seems to prove something that neither the people who lived in the earl and countess’ time nor those in the speaker’s age fully believe—that “What will survive of us is love.” However, since this is precisely what happens in the poem (and the accompanying reading process), love assumes the dimensions of a mysterious and independent power which exists, perpetuating our identity, despite our individual neglect or doubt. The one line which shatters to a certain extent the speaker’s epistemology of conviction is the penultimate one: the qualifier “almost” in “almostinstinct almost true” records a degree of skepticism. While the speaker in this poem is certainly not developed into a persona whose psychology is crucial for the meaning of the poem, he is more noticeable than the ones in “Dublinesque” or “The Explosion.” Written in the late 50s, along with other poems in The Whitsun Weddings collection, “An Arundel Tomb” has some characteristics in common with poems like “Church Going,” or “The Whitsun Weddings.” The most significant is the 20th-century skepticism which seeps through the observations and statements of the speakers. The difference is that in “An Arundel Tomb” this skepticism is not the foregrounded issue

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which is resolved through various stages by the end of the poem (as in the other two mentioned poems); it only tempers the otherwise uncomplicated belief on the speaker’s part in the absolute validity of his musings. The next-to-final positioning of such questioning does, however, have the punch-line effect and moderates the assurance of the proverb-like statement in the last line. In the context of the poem, the almost-quality of the instinct and truth about love, first of all, reflects the speaker’s belief that the linked hands were not meant to be the earl and countess’ “final blazon.” The detail was in the end included in the sculpture but was “thrown off ” as something of secondary importance. This qualifies the represented love, which is their only remaining identifying feature, as not “exactly” but “almost” true. The other reference is to the speaker himself: he (as the generalized “one”) receives a “sharp tender shock” at the sight of the hands, and thus proves that he was not expecting it. In other words, while he notices it as something priceless which redeems the commemorative representation of the dead couple and inspires the contemplation in the poem, his attitude to love is not exactly an “instinct.” Instincts are with us on some level at all times—the speaker, and a generalized member of the contemporary world, seems to be (re)discovering this feeling on this occasion, which makes the feeling not exactly an “instinct,” but an “almost-instinct.” Ultimately, however, both qualifications in this line come from the speaker, as it is only his assumption that the detail of the hands was a peripheral, “thrown off ” ornament. Importantly, then, these qualifications are attached to the individual human perspective. Love, the entirety of the poem suggests, is larger than the individual and his or her beliefs and intentions. The existence of humankind inevitably implies the existence of love, which will reveal itself even when not intended, or sought for, or unconditionally believed in. This interesting duality of the speaker’s subjective perspective and the suggested objective status of the observed phenomenon in “An Arundel Tomb” places this poem in the position of a bridge within Larkin’s oeuvre. The poem spans some Whitsun Weddings poems with the larger emphasis on the skeptical but latently believing individual, and some later High Windows poems with an omniscient speaker and a more objective-seeming presentation of an event. The omniscience of the speaker in “The Explosion” is similar to that in “Dublinesque” but since it deals with a supernatural occurrence, the narrative omniscience gives it a more mystical tone. The last poem in Larkin’s last published collection, “The Explosion” has a prominent position in his work, and the inherent mysticism makes it even more striking. The supernatural is announced at the beginning: while the title and the first line make it clear

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that a (not unusual) tragedy took place, there are a few images in the first four stanzas which mystify the occurrence and build suspense: On the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead: In the sun the slagheap slept.

And later: At noon, there came a tremor; cows Stopped chewing for a second; sun, Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The natural world is alert to any irregularities, and even though the strangeness is at this point still within the limits of the “natural”—it was a tremor that startled the cows—the suspense is strong enough to create an eerie atmosphere. The description of the miners in stanzas two, three, and four is suggestive and dynamic. Stylized word order and metaphoric turns of phrase help envelop the men in an aura of a legend or a tale: Down the lane came men in pitboots Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke, Shouldering off the freshened silence.

Despite the uneasiness hanging in the air, and marked by the “freshened silence,” the men are lively and imaginative. This comes through in the third stanza, in a list of short clauses separated by semi-colons and depicting a series of actions: One chased after rabbits; lost them; Came back with a nest of lark’s eggs; Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

When they pass through “the tall gates standing open” in the fourth stanza, the uneasiness is reinforced, as there is an impression of an imprisonment within a confined space from which there is no return. Although the narrative skips a substantial bit between the fifth and sixth stanzas—the tragedy itself and the immediate aftermath—we have no problems understanding that the italicized sixth stanza is part of the church

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service for the dead miners. The title, our background knowledge of miningaccidents, and the atmosphere in the poem up to that point facilitate interpretation. The religious context brought up here is in direct relationship to the last two stanzas and the final line. Faith coming from belief and, equally important, love, for a moment interact with reality and enable the miners’ wives to have a vision: . . . and for a second Wives saw men of the explosion Larger than in life they managed Gold as on a coin, or walking Somehow from the sun toward them, One showing the eggs unbroken.

There is something pure about the “plainness” of the sermon, which is transferred onto the women’s feelings, as well as onto the resurrected men, associated with such natural elements as gold and the sun.17 The uneasy and eerie atmosphere from the beginning of the poem has here assumed warm, touching, and comforting notes. In other words, the violent death of the miners remains the key event and subject-matter in the poem, but it serves mainly as a pretext for an exploration of the surrounding manifestations of spirituality. The wholesomeness and power of such relationships as love, faith, and life in touch with nature, is indicated in the final touch of the mystical—the image of the unbroken eggs at the very end. A reference back to the preexplosion third stanza, this line reads almost as the end of a magic trick—an impression helped by graphic means of isolating it in a separate, one-line “stanza.” What looks like a gratuitous act of one of the miners in stanza three, who “shows” the found eggs and lodges them in the grass, is now seen in terms of a magician’s preparation for a miraculous performance: the explosion leaves the eggs untouched. The symbolic image thus ends the poem on a mystical note which makes us wonder and dares us to believe. It suggests that life is a complex and ultimately untransparent phenomenon in which it is often our deeper and more mysterious feelings and instincts that guide us and preserve us as humans. Like “Dublinesque” and “An Arundel Tomb,” “The Explosion” claims the enduring existence of humanity in our common loving and compassionate attributes. It is through the link with others that we survive (even after death), and this capacity of our species is as amazing and beautiful as the yearly trick that trees do, starting “afresh, afresh, afresh.”

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What we have examined in this chapter confirms that Larkin’s plain style is the result not only of a specific rhetoric but also of a particular set of major themes. The crucial feature of Larkin’s (and any) plain style, then, is accessibility on two levels: rhetorically achieved linguistic accessibility, and thematically-guided conceptual accessibility. The scope of Larkin’s content covers a variety of themes which elicit a conceptual recognition on the reader’s part: his major poems are concerned with ordinary life as it appears from day to day, but also with the possibly overlooked depths and values of such ordinariness. The most pertinent to such overall interest is the theme involving the common man. Larkin’s l’homme moyen sensuel, who is the easiest type to identify with, shares with Orwell’s a disenchanted, anti-idealistic, and satirical nature, which helps him “unpick the world like a knot” and expose the “myths” surrounding different aspects of life. In many poems, this search for a plainer and more honest view of the world is accompanied by a struggle for a plainer language. Particularly suggestive to popular imagination and conducive to general identification is the frequent position of Larkin’s speakers or characters as individuals thrown against a more powerful social or commercial system. Marketplace mentality, symbolized in the ubiquitous advertisements, characterizes the oppressive commercialized age Larkin and his readers live in. Recognizing in the speaker’s position our own predicament, we become more aware of our environment. Larkin not only diagnoses the ailments of contemporary society and the general man’s plight, but he also offers in quite a number of poems an insight into the still existing remedial, “nutritious” resources in the increasingly alienating world. Our human identity and strength are to be sought in communities and their traditions, which preserve something of the healthy foundation of societies. The sacred and empowering core of life is also contained in nature and its forces: whether it be the sun, the water, the wind, or the primal rhythms, nature is the “common denominator” of all living things, and thus the “plainest” universal language. Finally, the plainness and effectiveness of Larkin’s expression finds its best manifestation in the poems celebrating the beauty and mysticism of the human condition and the endurance of human spirituality. Featuring unintrusive speakers and styles, these poems refer clearly and gracefully to the highlighted events as part of the real world, the one we live, work, and read in every day. While in most of Larkin’s mature poetry form and content work together towards his recognizable style, poems like “Dublinesque,” “An Arundel Tomb” and “The Explosion” are particularly good examples of the plain-style poetry resulting from the skillful combination of the appropriate rhetoric and theme.

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Larkin’s Own Blend

What, then, does “plain” mean in poetry, and where is Larkin’s place in that tradition? The first Collected Poems by Larkin, published in 1988—three years after Larkin’s death—carries a blurb on the back cover, which, in Seamus Heaney’s words, proclaims: Philip Larkin was uniquely cherished, and not just in England, largely because of his gift for winning the respect of two kinds of readers: those scrupulously concerned about literary standards and those other nonspecialist listeners-in to what is generally available. This means that his Collected Poems is already a classic, with a guaranteed life on the market and in the memory.

Heaney’s claim presents Larkin’s poetry as appealing to audiences regardless of their country or of their profession, and, interestingly, suggests the “classic” status for the book based on both the financial, market-related profit and the personal value for each individual reader’s memory. Since then, Larkin’s poems have found their way into all the English poetry anthologies, a new edition of the Collected Poems has recently appeared (restoring the original order of poems from the separate collections), a play putting together Larkin’s life, poetry and other writings (“Pretending To Be Me”) was mounted in London in February 2003, and at one point in the 90s T-shirts with the first two lines from “This Be The Verse” were available.1 Larkin’s poetry, in other words, seems to exist on two levels. Although he does not have the status and reputation of a T. S. Eliot, Larkin is a known name in the canon of English literature; but—while such things as somebody’s actual readership can never be accurately determined—some of his poetry is also part of the popular, public knowledge.

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In a certain sense, Larkin’s situation is in this respect similar to that of Orwell, whose best novels are read in highschool and available in film-format but also studied in graduate seminars in university. The explanation for this double status of the two authors might well be in the most important feature they share: the plain style. Accessible, yet complex and suggestive, texts written in this style appeal to the imagination, without perplexing the understanding. Placing the considerations, observations and questions worthy of literary art within a predominantly non-specialized, ordinary linguistic reality, good plain-style texts rejuvenate literature by making it part of anyone’s life. In a sense, the critical debates over whether the plain style is really plain or not seem to be of secondary importance—to quote Stewart Justman, “the common sense of readers is that Orwell’s way of putting things is plain, and there’s no point in trying to make Orwell’s plainness out to be an illusion or fallacy just because it is something that we judge in common to be so” (202). Similarly, Larkin’s poems are, by and large, perceived to be plain regardless of any critical and theoretical dissections and speculations. What an “anatomy” of his style can do, however, is show how plainness is achieved in poetry, what it implies, and why it is a valuable and successful artistic form. Larkin’s poetry is distinguished by its affinities with the pre-20th-century traditions of the plain style, and the features it shares with more contemporary poetic techniques. Larkin has the instincts of a good rhetorician, and his 20th-century literary and intellectual influences result in a blend in his style of traditional plainness and authentic modernity or something we could call “modern plain style.” Although no records suggest the direct influence of classical and neo-classical plain styles on Larkin’s work, there are striking similarities in this connection, suggesting the existence of an essential “core” of the plain style in general which can be traced across centuries and literary backgrounds. As we have seen in the previous chapters, Larkin’s mature poetry shows a systematic use of certain general rhetorical procedures best explained by Aristotle and later echoed by many others such as Orwell. It reveals an approach to literature which in some aspects resembles that of a classical master like Martial, or a Renaissance plain stylist like Ben Jonson. Most generally speaking, Larkin’s writing resembles the theories and writing of these earlier rhetoricians and authors in the sense that it is readeroriented, communicative, and even persuasive. Avoiding “professional” jargon, it facilitates the reader’s engagement with the text on as many levels as possible, thus bringing art and life closer. This is achieved by employing key rhetorical strategies intended to provide a common perceptual and cognitive ground, and by focusing on a few major themes and situations which supply a common conceptual framework. More specifically, Larkin’s poems often

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rely on narrative composition, creating a variety of everyday “scenarios” and building a larger context within which the reader can invoke personal experience and interpret the finer points the poem raises. This stable basis is reinforced by at least the minimum of referential language necessary to provide an “anchor” to shared and recognizable aspects of reality: hence Larkin’s noticeable invocation of empirical details and attitudes in his poems. Frequently incorporating an observing process into the poem, Larkin’s speakers build their thoughts, arguments, and reactions on the concrete and often visual particulars from their environment, conjured up through an adequate use of denotative lexical values. This empirical background is vital to active readerly engagement since it allows readers to verify the poem against their own experience, and invites them to extend their imaginative participation to other, less empirical components. These elements of Larkin’s poems contributing towards the establishment of a common ground with the reader could also be seen as a “plain matrix” of discourse. In discourse analysis terms, such a matrix would refer to the aspects of a text which allow it to be perceived as coherent, as a result of facilitating the interpretative process by triggering access to background knowledge. Coherence, by definition opposed to unintelligibility and idiosyncracy, also relies heavily on the use of relational language (by many seen as a classicist feature), common logic, and articulate expression. In Larkin, such coherence is reinforced by an analytical and abstract dimension in his writing, which links up meaningfully all the specific particulars and prevents them from being fragmented and isolated objects of a difficult textual and unfamiliar contextual world. Finally, commonness and recognizability secure comprehension and engagement in his work and are directly linked to many thematic loci communes which he frequently brings up in his poems: everyday, ordinary concerns and events occurring universally are presented as a fertile ground for deeper speculations on life and all that comes with it. Very often, the poems offer a critical view of both more general and more specifically contemporary properties of human existence. While the plainness in Larkin’s poetic style can be considered and explained within a pre-Modernist classicist framework, there are aspects of his writing which do not fit into it, and which are more obviously affiliated with more modern literary traditions, namely Modernism and Postmodernism. Poetic qualities such as ambiguity, irony, self-irony, and symbolism—which can be found in Larkin—are typically associated with Modernism, and can be branded as instances of “unplainness,” “complications,” or “difficulty.” The occasional stark awareness of language, or more particularly, of a master discourse and its effects on ordinary people, is

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evidence that Larkin had a Postmodernist disposition.2 Created mainly through the tone of voice in Larkin’s poems, such places pluralize interpretations and suggest a relativism not ordinarily associated with a “classical” straightforward or plain style. While these local instances of difficulty do represent a divergence from a linguistic plainness when considered on their own, we have seen that Larkin’s consistent reliance on the “plain matrix” in most poems contextualizes such local unplain moments and facilitates understanding. In other words, Larkin’s poetry is best considered as a peculiar blend of the old and the new, and of the plain and the difficult, resulting in a modified version of the plain style. By employing the writing procedures we designated as the components of the plain matrix, Larkin continues the tradition of literary plainness which existed up until the eighteenth century; but he also refines it by highlighting complexities—mainly manifested in scepticism, self-awareness, and irony—which found their “systematic” literary expression in post18th-century literature, and particularly in 20th-century writing. In Larkin’s style, the plain matrix (or the common ground) often serves as a base or a standard which controls and frames the occasional linguistic and implicative divergences responsible for complexities. The unplain (the private, the connotative) is in this case made more accessible through a plain matrix and a public presentation. In “Mr. Bleaney,” for example, the substandard linguistic expression and the indeterminacy of the speaker’s attitude to his subject-matter in the end come as a natural outcome of the preceding build-up of atmosphere and the evolution of tone. The atmosphere is created through a description of selected empirical, “factual,” details, while the value and shifts of tonality are signalled by easily noticeable textual means. The suggestive ending, then, seems perfectly appropriate in that it is understood as an indication of a conflict rising in the speaker’s mind, outlined even before the final lines. The concluding complexity, in other words, has a frame of reference inside the rest of the poem, which secures comprehension even though the suggested conflict is far from being explicitly stated or resolved. At its best, as in “Mr. Bleaney,” the plain style is helpful without being condescending or patronizing to the reader as some critics of the plain style suggest: the strategies used facilitate the reader’s access to the text which, once understood, opens up areas of thought to be explored and assessed on each individual reading. We can observe similar inner workings in poems like “Aubade” or “MCMXIV.” In the former, the figurative conclusion is well-contextualized by the preceding articulate and logical discussion and is thus more easily interpretable, while the culturally specific details used throughout “MCMXIV” are

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made more accessible by being embedded in more universal public references or images. In all of these, and in many other cases, there is a productive symbiosis of the private and the public which enriches the text without moving it into the zone of Modernist difficulty where the high level of textual obstacles slows down or prevents understanding. Considered from this point of view, Larkin’s kind of writing is a model example of a rhetorically successful discourse, and of the plain style at its best. Going back to Steiner, we can identify such writing as the expression of “vital acts of speech” (see page 15), as it expresses a unique self, yet conveys it to others intelligibly. Along similar lines, Lanham reminds us that classical rhetorical treatises advise “a strategy of alternating emotional and evidential appeals” since both the “facts” and the recreation of “the emotional atmosphere” are “part of a full human truth” (172; 173). Larkin follows, intentionally or unintentionally, this key rhetorical credo, and it is precisely because of this essentially plain-style balance of the private and the public that his poems often seem to capture “a full human truth.” What are, then, the criteria for evaluating the plain style in poetry, and, more specifically, in Larkin? As many of Larkin’s poems showed us in the previous chapters, the plain style exploits inherent linguistic inventiveness and competence in people, as well as their desire to communicate their thoughts and findings to others. In other words, while readers need to possess certain acquired interpretative tools in order to comprehend most Modernist texts, plain-style texts achieve literary effects by using primarily our customary interpretative strategies: narrative approach to comprehending and ordering experience, tendency to understand and explain things via analogy, and heavy reliance on the sensory (frequently visual) data in mental processing. The communicative aspect of linguistic impulse is preserved in the plain style’s attention to relation and logic (standard or recoverable syntax), a widely recognizable diction (denotation), and common concerns (loci communes). These principal qualities testify to the accessibility of plain-style texts, and explain—especially when compared to the elitist presuppositions built into the idea and practice of much of High Modernism—why the plain style is often associated with democracy. Considered not as a privilege of specially trained individuals—as T. S. Eliot’s ideas on culture often suggest—within the framework of the plain style, literature and art in general are approached as a universal, non-professional right. In a reading world already profoundly affected by developments in the cultural and academic “industry” in the last century, and a world of persisting stratification of population along various lines, the question remains: what kind of audience does the plain style imply?

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As Paul Volsik rightly reminds us, “all language activity in some sense implies a co-locutor whose priorities and possible reactions are catered for” (430). In other words, “the important poet—and Larkin is an important poet—does not merely reflect the taste of his time, does not take readers as he finds them, but models them” (430). The prototypical reader modelled by Larkin, put simply, is not usually someone formed to read Modernist texts. Some might (and do) say that such a reader is “middlebrow” and that the whole writing enterprise addressing this reader is a dubious and inferior “populist reductivity.” But to say that is to neglect not only the artistic capacity of the plain style we have shown, but also more humanist impulses behind plain writing in general which consist of, above all, a faith in the value of the imagination, the intelligence and the interests of ordinary (and often averagely educated) human beings. While Larkin is well-known for occasional anti-social sneering in some of his letters, his art remains the art of a writer who shares a kind of democratic faith. Despite the fact that he sporadically shows disappointment with the “non-specialized” readers who are formed by contemporary circumstances, his is a non-specialized view of the world, and a non-specialized approach to literature. He writes to preserve his experiences, convey them to others who are willing to stop and reflect, make them think about their own experiences, and, ultimately, help them “enjoy or endure” by means of an artistic form. Here we come to a related and important issue regarding the plain style. The fact that the plain style creates accessible texts does not deny or contradict its artistic origin and nature. On the contrary, well-executed plain-style works are highly crafted, and display a defined set of aesthetics. As a style which attempts to say something meaningful or striking about the world and communicate it to others as clearly as possible, the plain style is judged for its articulateness, concision and clarity, a refreshing dialectic between thoughts (to use Lolette Kuby’s expression), and the appropriateness of metaphoric expression to the overall context. Assessed according to these criteria, Larkin’s best poetry is brilliant. Centered on the idea of reality and truth, the plain style invites speculations about its relationship to the world perhaps more so than other styles. To use Raymond Oliver’s words again: in general, the plain style’s axiom is a “hopeful epistemology,” according to which it is possible to know the world, and also convey this knowledge to others (xiii). But far from being a remnant of a naïve or outdated epistemology, the plain-style approach to literature is based on a refined version of a theory of correspondence. The emphasis in this version is less on the correspondence itself than on the agreement that we, as a community of the speakers of a particular language, have tacitly

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made about the linguistic usage we shall consider better corresponding to reality. Such social “contracts” about the higher accuracy of certain instances of language have been recognized for centuries as communicative requirements, based on approximations to an elusive absolute truth (Locke, or even further back, Aristotle, comes to mind). Within this understanding of the plain style and its underlying theoretical framework, the defining concept of “the absolute truth”—which some critics object to—is discarded and replaced by a more pragmatically defined “linguistic consensus” on what kind of language invokes commonly accepted truths. This, in effect, modulates discussions about the ethical status of plain-style texts as “deceiving” or “genuine.” Such texts are in tune with the language commonly used to express a shared (recognizable) understanding of the world in the interest of successful communication. As we have seen before, this means that the plain style makes use of a kind of the centrality of language in terms of diction and syntax and in terms of conceptual apparatus. Most of Larkin’s writing does bear up his feeling that he writes “fairly simply in the language of ordinary people, using the accepted grammatical constructions” (see page 50 above). This shared language is used to convey shared concerns and ideas, some of which are more properly universal (an outline of the common man in all of us; the way we relate to nature, or to each other in smaller and bigger communities; how and where we can find beauty), and some of which are more tailored to Larkin’s specific time and place (commercial ideology in developed countries in the 20th century). Importantly, however, this overall centrality does not exclude less central linguistic or thematic occurrences: there are in Larkin, of course, instances of connotation, word puns, unexpected turns of phrase, non-standard syntax, or ambiguous attitudes and meanings. And yet, the systematic use of a central discourse or the plain matrix provides a standard from which occasional deviations occur and in relation to which they are understood. The plain style, that is, facilitates comprehension by narrowing down the interpretative possibilities which have a tendency to multiply with non-standard language usage, but it isn’t by its nature a closed, dogmatic system.3 As Larkin’s case suggests, it is a communicative medium which leaves the writer an ample margin for invention and does not completely determine the ground for discovery for the reader. The style we have examined in Larkin concerns poetry but more than once we have noticed a certain “prose-like” quality of his writing. What is, then, the relationship between plainness and literary genres? Plainness, while most readily achieved in prose, is not an exclusive “property” of any one genre. The existence of both highly unplain prose texts and strikingly plain

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poems suggests that plain and difficult writing styles have their basis in certain procedures and practices which are not genre-specific. As Larkin’s case shows, the plain writing style is, first of all, an expression of a particular understanding of literary art, according to which art and life are so tightly linked that they co-exist in an everyday sphere, not only for the writer but also for the reader. This general line of thinking determines the key textual strategies: creating a recognizable context through the use of empirical language and attitudes, and securing a cognitive coherence through the establishment of analytical connections. Together with a generally intelligible expression and accessible themes, these procedures constitute the essence of the plain style as a distinct way of writing, independent of the literary genre and period and defined by its quality of accessibility. This general outlook of conversational familiarity and clarity has traditionally been more often associated with prose, since poetry is characteristically more formally stylized. However, despite its frequently strict formal regularities, Larkin’s poetry is still perceived as plain, which supports our suggestion that the heart of plainness lies in the deeper structures of a text. So to say that a poem is plain because it resembles prose is not entirely correct: it is plain because, like traditional prose, it follows these fundamental rhetorical principles. One final concern which inevitably arises from the preceding discussion is the relationship between the plain style and its wider socio-historical context. How connected are they, is there such a thing as a “politics of the plain style,” and does it constitute an inevitable part of literary plainness? The plain style in general seems to include a certain Jonsonian ethical dimension, according to which one should write in a way which reflects the way one lives, and one should live one’s life attempting to be a “good” person. As we have seen, most instances of the strengthening of the plain-style tradition throughout history have been partly a reaction to a preceding writing and intellectual environment that is found inadequate or unsatisfactory by the plain-style advocates. Especially since the Enlightenment, obscurantism and excessive ornamentation have been associated with misrepresentation of the world as most people experience it, or as a deliberate attempt to keep literature and the art of writing an exclusive territory of a few. These popularizing impulses behind the plain style are, naturally, refueled at times when the conflicts between democratic and conservative ideologies are particularly intense and enter all areas of human thought and behaviour. Such a web of socio-historical and literary circumstances was one of the key factors in the revitalization of the British plain style in the fifties amongst the Movement writers. As part of the post-war Welfare State democratic ambience, the Movement found its natural expression in reservations

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about all prior literary traditions that were in any way obscure or elitist.4 While Larkin’s (and any other writer’s) beliefs are much more complex, nuanced and changeable than a link to a particular historical situation would suggest, something of this initial pro-democratic impulse remained throughout his writing career, even when he was labelled politically conservative by some towards the end of his life. For Larkin—and this is where he is most different from Orwell—the style in which he writes isn’t so much a reflection of any one political inclination as it is a practical result of his poetic address to a shared imaginative and thoughtful capacity in most human beings which is often not given the respect it deserves. Echoing in his writing Aristotle’s principle of finding a mean between poetic and ordinary language, Larkin creates art which is able to speak to many. Skillfully using the possibilities embedded in the plain-style medium, he expands the literary art of the 20th century by means of a careful blend of rhetorical rudiments and contemporary influences. This is Larkin’s signature poetic blend.

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NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Obviously, there are different opinions about whether Larkin uses abstractions or not, and what abstractions do to a poem’s clarity. We will examine this in the following chapters. 2. Interestingly, the metaphor shifts from a more general assertion of lack of honesty in plain texts—they are “deceitful”—to a more specific complaint of the lack of sexual normality in difficult ones. 3. George Orwell’s plain-style “case” will crop up time and again since it is a textbook example of what some explicit intentions of a 20th-century plain stylist might be, but also of the utterly contradictory opinions the plain style is capable of invoking. 4. As a side observation, a quick browse on the Internet offers symptomatic results for “plain style” or “plain language” entries. By far the most numerous ones are those that look like the following: “Plain Legal Language: Resources for lawyers on plain language,” “Plain Style: Techniques for Simple, Concise, Emphatic Business Writing,” “Plain Language Service for Canadian Public Health Association,” or “Plain Language Action Network: promoting clearer communication between the public and the government.” This trend confirms by now a generally recognized feeling that the language of “professions” has become so difficult that tutorials in how to speak more plainly are needed.

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. Significantly, Sartre here talks about (modern) prose, not poetry, which in this essay he dismisses as closely allied with painting, sculpture and music since the modern poet—unlike the prose-writer who “makes use” of words—considers words as objects; this withdraws the poet from the human condition. In his later preface to Black Orpheus, a collection of

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

poems by African and Caribbean poets, Sartre revises his attitude towards poetry, which is now seen as having a great liberating potential. The usual explanation for this distinction is that the schools of criticism behind any autotelic model of literature are derived in some form from the Prague school of linguistics, whose most prominent members were Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukarovský, and whose definition of literariness in language was biased towards the modernist lyric. Jakobson’s famous definition of the poetic message as “the set [of linguistic components] towards the message for its own sake” can’t, as David Lodge suggests, account for other kinds of literature, where the referential and communicative elements are prominent (6). While the evoked poststructuralist theories are not limited in their discussions to Modernist techniques or any particular literary style, on the basis of their theoretical tenets it stands to reason that they would be looking for instances of “difficulty” in literature; this is easier to find in texts written in a “difficult” style. There are, of course, various versions of the autotelic understanding of literature; in some, the matter of “reality” does come up—as in Virginia Woolf ’s famous essay “Modern Fiction”—but when it does, it stresses inner, or subjective reality of an individual as opposed to the external one. The notion of “correspondence” does not prove to be of much use here: it becomes more difficult to find something to “measure” correspondence to in this case. In Dadaism, for example, only the idea of inner artistic reality comes in. Of course, a potential side-effect of any such practical definition of reality is that it is potentially open to a prescriptive insistence on only one construct of the world and a dismissal of others. The consequences of this are explored by postcolonial theories. As Susan Sontag reminds the readers in her Introduction to the English translation of Writing Degree Zero, this early work by Barthes is “seminal but not representative” for various reasons (viii). Barthes—as well as Sartre, for that matter—went on to develop different arguments and ideas in later books. Although the two early works by Barthes and Sartre mentioned in this study might not represent the two authors’ final word on the matters of style and writing, they bring up certain points of view which help set up the basic frame of reference in our discussion. In Barthes’ terms, “classical writing” includes all poetry and prose up to Flaubert. It is important to note here that many 20th-century critics use the term “classicism” in a rather specific sense. The way Steiner and Barthes use it suggests that they are referring to a certain kind of literary plainness, or, perhaps, any literature which is not like Modernism. “Classicism,” however, is a broader term than “plainness” or “non-Modernism” as we will see in “The Plain Style Traditions” below.

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9. As Trimpi suggests, a line could be traced from the Senecan stylists, through Montaigne, to the early-twentieth-century stream of consciousness; the irony is in the fact that the style developed by Seneca, following Socrates, which nurtured a dialectical approach to truth, “should gradually exclude the rationally discursive coherence of dialectic in favour of . . . purely associative connotation” (34). 10. The critical examination of the “ethics of the form,” which raises some contentious issues particularly about the plain style texts, may have originated in this tight bond between the style and the ethics of the speaker/author behind it, firmly asserted by Jonson, after Aristotle. 11. According to this criterion, a poet like Wordsworth, whose main interest is specifically in non-urban themes and language, would not be an example of “urbanity,” or of the classical plain style. 12. Originally, genus humile was reserved for the treatment of comic matters, or matters of daily life, and was thought inappropriate for the treatment of divine, stately, or romantic issues. Genus grande was thought proper for divine and stately themes, while romantic topics were handled by a style which developed in-between the other two, genus medium, or the middle style. 13. The aesthetic of the particular, based on an empirical epistemology of observation, can be seen as the core of not only Jonson’s and Larkin’s poetry, but also of such a Modernist school as Imagism. There are, however, some fundamental differences in these traditions, as we will see in the following chapters. 14. Baxter’s definition of the “common reader” is based on the notion of shared meanings. Rejecting the identification of the common reader with the “lowest common denominator” in reading experience, he defines the common reader as “the reader who helps create the life of the nation by being responsive to and, in part, responsible for, the full range of ‘common’ meaning, that is, shared or potentially shared meaning” (16).

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 1. See more on the significance of nationalities in Larkin in Note 10 in Notes to Chapter Five. 2. We might ask ourselves here: how plain is this tradition of, generally speaking, “Englishness” to non-English readers of Larkin’s poetry? See 57, and the analysis of “MCMXIV” in Chapter Three, 103–105. 3. The importance of emotion and of an avoidance of scholarly notes in poetry is facetiously expressed in Larkin’s remark on his selection criteria for The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse to Betjeman: “ . . . I have tried in the main to keep to poems that make me laugh, cry or shiver, and keep off the ones that make me feel I am at school or need a drink” (Selected Letters 474–5).

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5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

Larkin and Amis were not only close friends, but also important influences on each other’s writing styles. Amis was in Larkin’s mind often associated with clarity and straightforwardness; in a letter to someone who asked for Larkin’s opinion on her poetry, he writes: “But on the whole you are not getting anything like a direct effect or a unified effect: it may be because you talk too much in metaphors. I sometimes read a poem over with a tiny Kingsley crying How d’you mean? in my mind at every unclear image, and it’s a wonderful aid to improvement, though perhaps you wouldn’t care to try the experiment” (Selected Letters 223). Jonson is quick to add a qualification, however: “yet there is a choice of [words] to be made . . . according to the persons we make speak, or the things we speak of ” (lines 2340–44). The stress on the appropriate usage of words can be seen as part of the plain-style interest in decorum. The passage also implies a tacit agreement on Larkin’s part that his poetry and other writings reflect his own life. See more on this poem in Chapter Five, 203–205. This also explains the occasional overlap of such terms as “round-about” and “poetic,” where the latter stands for specifically Modernist poetic qualities. All essays by Orwell mentioned in this study can be found in The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. In an article published about 10 years after Larkin’s death, Chernaik acknowledges Larkin’s help, and reports on the world-wide impact the underground poetry programme has had since its beginning in 1986, and concludes by saying that the interest generated by the programme strongly suggests “there is a great hunger for some element of public life to oppose the direction of our times: the market ideology, and the horrible phrase ‘value for money’” (“Poems on the Underground” 123–4). Having to do with “deep-seated human impulses” (124), poetry—just as Larkin himself felt—is such an “element of public life.” Chernaik goes on to list a number of poems, from “anonymous poems and nursery rhymes,” to “popular folk poetry and poetry of the greatest eloquence,” which made their programme so successful (121). In a letter to Conquest regarding the New Lines Anthology, Larkin agrees with most of the characterization of the Movement, but he corrects Conquest’s claim that this poetry has returned to “the principle that poetry is written by and for the whole man.” “For my part,” he writes, “I feel we have got the method right—plain language, absence of posturings, sense of proportion, humour, abandonment of the dithyrambic ideal—and are waiting for the matter: a fuller and more sensitive response to life as it appears from day to day . . .” (Selected Letters 242). Besides reminding us that quite a few of the Movement poets weren’t always happy with the critics’ accounts of them as a group, this statement by Larkin at the beginning of his poetic

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career also serves as a testimony to how he attempted to develop his poetry in the years to come: the plain language needed to be more decisively combined with everyday, common occurrences and a more comprehensive treatment of them. 12. Davie later modified his critical opinion of Ezra Pound and developed an admiration for certain aspects of Modernism, as discussed in his book Pound (1975). 13. Interestingly, unlike Sartre or Orwell, Alvarez doesn’t seem to advocate plain or clear language; in fact, by criticizing the Movement’s poetic expression, he is implying that a more vigorous, less “polished,” discourse is desirable. This suggests that his primary social commitment is not so much communication to the reader of an important social issue, but expression of personal reaction a poet might have with regard to such an issue.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1. I will be using the term “empathy” with a meaning similar to “identification”: the reader’s ability to vicariously experience the feelings and ideas of an other, that is, in our case, the speaker or character in a poem. Empathy is, of course, closely linked up with sympathy, which stresses feeling for someone other than ourselves. 2. Classical definitions of rhetoric generally refer to writing procedures which belong to the domains of style, arrangement, and invention. Discussed in a classical context, rhetoric is a theoretical or practical framework applicable to oration, and in most accounts includes not only the three mentioned parts, but also memory and delivery (Lanham 165). I will here adopt only some basic concepts from classical rhetoric, which serve as an additional and illuminating set of terms in analyzing and categorizing Larkin’s poems. Thus, style here covers word choice, figurative language and syntax, arrangement refers to composition or structural parts, while invention, most generally understood as the “proof ” or means of persuading the audience, in our case mainly refers to the ways of facilitating the reader’s relating to the poem. To make parallels with Aristotelian terms (see Lanham 166), we can suggest that our “facilitation” covers some aspects of logos (proving the case), pathos (creating certain emotions in the audience), and ethos (establishing the speaker’s credibility). The skillful handling of all these elements is the foundation of Larkin’s plainness. 3. See more about this in the sections on “empiricism” and “persona” below. 4. As such, these openings resemble the exordium, or the first part of a classical oration, meant to catch the audience’s attention. 5. For an extended analysis of “The Card-Players,” see the chapter on Themes. 6. Interestingly, this narrative compositional mode (helped, of course, by the recognizability of the narrated) could be seen as performing the function of

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7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

invention in classical rhetoric: the way the poem is “told” becomes itself the “proof.” In other words, narration (which often creates coherence) in a poem invites us to verify it against our own experience. Not being speeches, Larkin’s poems don’t attempt to “persuade” us, but their narrative framework is meant to have us “cooperate” with the author’s ideas. It is possible to take a diachronic look at Larkin’s oeuvre with respect to particularity; it has been done by, for example, John Reibetanz, who argues persuasively that, while particulars do occur occasionally in The Less Deceived collection, they become a substantial and developed technique only in The Whitsun Weddings. In the latter collection, Reibetanz suggests, “the eye of the novelist has become part of the poet’s anatomy, and many more particulars—details of places, characters, situations—inhabit these poems and give them the sense of the felt life often lacking in The Less Deceived” (“Philip Larkin: the particular vision of The Whitsun Weddings” 160). See also a related discussion about the relationship between literal and figurative language in “Visualisation.” Another meaning of the word “truss,” suggested by John Baxter, points to a different image: instead of a “girdle,” truss can be interpreted as “a supporting assemblage of beams.” In this case the “truss-advertisement” would be a marquee on the upper reaches of a building, advertising a “special” offer of no downpayment for a product. While the images in the two interpretations are quite different, they both lead to a similar point: truth is associated with a swindle. In both cases, what is advertised is deceitful: either because it doesn’t fit or help (in case of a hernia-girdle), or because it doesn’t tell the whole truth (even if there is no downpayment, you do have to pay later). For other nuances of meaning in “Here,” see Chapter Five. For an extended discussion of Larkin’s visualization techniques, see my article “Larkin in the Cinema: Dynamic Visualization in ‘Show Saturday’ and ‘Here,’” published by English Studies 86.4 (August 2005): 312–324.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

See more on this in Chapter Five. See more on italics and quotation marks on 142–146. See more on determinism in Chapter Five. Dick Davies, “Aubade.” See more on “Mr. Bleaney” on 146–148. See more on “The Explosion” on 203–205 in Chapter Five. Written in 1950, this poem has certain characteristics which anticipate later British Postmodernism in literature. The quotation which serves as an inscription to the poem and which is a clipping from an actual report or a newspaper about a girl who was drugged and raped, anticipates John Fowles’ prose style in one of the main examples of Postmodernism in Eng-

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land, The French Lieutenant’s Woman from 1969. The juxtaposition and combination of documentary or historical material on the one hand, and creative or imaginative material on the other, helps the reader build a specific and multi-dimensional context within which to understand and empathize. It brings “life” and “art” closer. There are conflicting opinions among the critics on this. On the one hand, Marion Lomax believes that the poet proves himself throughout the poem to be “with that girl as far as he as able to imagine himself into her state” (44), and is therefore not sympathizing with the rapist; on the other hand, Janice Rossen finds “Deceptions” a problematic poem and “a limitation to Larkin’s art” because Larkin “almost exploits the scene [from the quotation in the inscription] by evoking the girl’s words and her misery and then turning to the criminal’s point of view” (89; 88). See more on “Sunny Prestatyn” in Chapter Five. Steve Clark’s discussion of this and other poems in “‘Get out as early as you can’: Larkin’s sexual politics” is particularly illuminating. While, for example, Janice Rossen does acknowledge the existence of “a complicated tangle of cause and effect” behind Larkin’s poems about women, she, nevertheless, ignores it and focuses on the “menacing lust” and “primitive sexual urge” in “Sunny Prestatyn,” finding Larkin to “speak powerfully both for a corporate group of men and from a deep subconscious level” (66; 74; 75). Clark, on the other hand, offers a fuller analysis by interpreting poems like “Sunny Prestatyn” as “a direct and unsparing address of the comparable inauthenticity of masculine desire” resulting from “the coercive force of contemporary sexual ideology” (267; 269). Clark draws attention to Larkin’s “awareness of the constructedness of both sides of the equation: the ideal and its violation” (266). In other words, both mass-produced ideals, such as “the girl on the poster,” and the violent behaviour of those who deface it, are impositions within which there is little room for manoeuvring. In Clark’s take on Larkin’s “sex” poems, the individual is considered within a larger context of concrete external and internal factors; this view seems better suited to the material of the poem than either Rossen’s ultimate “psychopathologizing” of Larkin and men, or James Booth’s dismissal of the poem’s social-satirical aspects in favour of a neo-platonic interpretation according to which Larkin’s main concern is a “lament” for the transience of a “universal symbol of happiness,” whose real enemies are not the vandals but cancer, or disease (122–23). In this respect, some of Larkin’s poems could be seen as distant “relations” of the dramatic monologue. Indeed, Geoffrey Harvey makes an explicit connection between Larkin’s poetry and this particular poetic form in his article “Creative Embarrassment: Philip Larkin’s Dramatic Monologues.” By dramatising experience through the use of a character or a persona, Harvey claims, Larkin “facilitates the reader’s search for values,” while by put-

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ting his own historical and social identity aside, he manages to explore “facets of a deeper self, which contains alternative, undeveloped lives” (65; 70). 12. Being one of Larkin’s earlier poems, “Deceptions” is perhaps less straightforward than “Sunny Prestatyn” in this respect; as most of Larkin’s early work, it is characterized by a more metaphoric language. For example, “bridal London,” a mind lying “open like a drawer of knives” or “fulfilment’s desolate attic” in “Deceptions” demand more metaphoric decoding than any of the expressions in the later poem “Sunny Prestatyn.”

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1. Blake Morrison views Larkin’s poem as a Movement answer to Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill,” a poem presenting childhood in the tradition of the Romantic poets (152). 2. How wide the emotional and mental scope of “Sad Steps” is becomes clear when we compare it to two early fragments, written in 1943–4: “Dawn” and “[The moon is full tonight].” In their invocation of the night sky or the full moon and the contemplating speaker, the two fragments look like drafts of the later “Sad Steps;” they, however, do not go beyond the narrow perspective of the self-absorbed speaker. 3. Kingsley Amis’ heroes or Thom Gunn’s speakers in particular are known for their “toughness” and cockiness. This macho and, at times, chauvinistic line was part of the Movement’s expression of their “no-nonsense,” anti-Romantic ideology. 4. A similar, though shorter, description involving the wind appears in another classic “existential-anxiety” poem, “Mr. Bleaney.” “The frigid wind / Tousling the clouds” helps create the feeling of dread and uncertainty in the conclusion of the poem. Likewise, “a wind-picked sky” and “clouds that blow / Loosely” appear in “Sad Steps” before the speaker fully comprehends and accepts his position in the scheme of things. 5. Significantly, 1940 was the year when Orwell’s influential essay “Inside the Whale” was published. In it, Orwell discusses Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, whose passive viewpoint Orwell finds more adequate to the contemporary situation than an active one. This viewpoint is “the viewpoint of a man who believes the world-process to be outside his control and who in any case hardly wishes to control it” (Collected Essays 125). 6. Poems like this one have earned Larkin the label of a “conservative,” especially in the latter part of his poetic career. Never particularly interested in geopolitical realities, Larkin records matters of state or history from a personal, poetic, and often subjective point of view. In most cases, these poems have a valuable human and imaginative dimension, which does not suffer from the occasional contextual superficialities, or lack of political enthusiasm. However, in a few instances when he forgets his own dictum, that

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7.

8.

9. 10.

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works of art should not originate in the social conscience but in imagination (see 82 above), the results are weak and uninspired poems, such as “Homage to a Government.” The word “Assumption” is an interesting case of word play in this poem. Obliquely referring to the act of Virgin Mary’s ascension into heaven, the speaker could be satirizing the man-made, literal version of the event: a take-off in a plane. While this possible interpretation does not change the overall meaning, it adds to the speaker’s feeling of helplessness and dependence: the divine forces might very well be reliable, but the human ones very often aren’t. Absurdity can also be conveyed through poetic form. The well worn-out textbook rhyme of cats-mats at the end of the first stanza, for example, suggests a mechanical and simplifying quality of advertisements, even though they aspire to capture the “essence” of life. See more on the theme of nostalgia under “community and traditions” below. The clutter of things, places, and people in this poem potentially includes immigrants, indicated by “consulates” and, perhaps, “grim head-scarfed wives.” While the connection between the “non-English” people and the commercialized, money-driven world is not exclusive in this poem (the “residents” and the “cut-price crowd” mentioned earlier potentially include all town-dwellers), it is worth noticing that Larkin does make such a connection in a couple of other poems. In “Posterity,” Jake Balokowsky, who represents a modern profit-seeking academic, is indirectly but clearly designated as Jewish and American. In “Faith Healing,” the “healer” in question is explicitly American, and while no direct reference to money is made, his American-style approach to masses (superficial and naïve or deceitful) is satirized by the narrator. To some critics these moments are evidence enough to claim that Larkin was xenophobic. More generally speaking, such instances show—at times perhaps in a clumsy way—Larkin’s fear of industrialization and commercialization (developing most swiftly in the States) taking over and ruining what he knows and loves, the place where he lives, England. Finally, it is a fact that in a far greater number of his poems the sad state of England and the world today is not ascribed to any particular nation or group. In this respect, another parallel with Orwell can be made. This possible interpretation of the last stanza of “Here,” that a seemingly “better” and more humane place in fact does not exist, is similar to George Bowling’s experience at the end of Coming up for Air. Disgusted by the “ersatz” quality of the hostile world of the late 30s, Bowling finds occasional relief in remembering the idealized place of his childhood, Lower Binfield, and particularly a pool where he used to go fishing. Going through a mid-life crisis, and suspicious of pre-World War II England, he decides to take refuge in

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

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Notes to Chapter Five this place, to regain his peace of mind. When he gets there, however, he realizes that his beloved pool has been turned into a rubbish dump. “Coming up for Air,” by running away from reality, thus turns out to be an illusion, as it does not translate into actuality. Realizing this, Bowling goes back to cope with his “normal” life. The end of Larkin’s poem is more openended than that, but contains enough clues to be interpreted along those lines. The open-endedness itself might suggest that, most of the time, we are caught in the contradiction created by the need to live in reality and the desire to escape its imperfections. A certain resemblance exists between Larkin’s “Absences” and T. S. Eliot’s “Preludes” in that they bring space to life, or present disembodied subjectivities. While in this poem the potentially darker undertones of the invoked primaevalness in nature are overcome thanks to a sense of healthy vitality, in a few other poems the general concept of nature assumes less positive tones. Instead of being a source of the comfort we have seen in the previously mentioned poems, the recursiveness of natural rhythms can be depressing and off-putting when considered within the context of a peculiar human misery expressed in more pessimistic poems (“Autumn” or the end of “This Be The Verse” and “First Sight” are good examples). Nevertheless, when it is considered in its own right, unaffected by occasional human weak moments, nature comes across as a friendly and healing force. Although the context is different, a similar attempt at bringing together refined feelings and basic instincts can be seen in another late poem, “Love Again,” whose first line reads: “Love again: wanking at ten past three. . . .” As a side-note to the section on nature: art is in Larkin occasionally presented in a way similar to nature—as a life-affirming and reliable place in an otherwise complicated and alienating world. A lover of music, especially jazz (whose rhythms, he claims, helped him to start writing poetry; see Required Writing 50), Larkin reveals this attitude in a couple of poems. A more straightforward expression of the importance and power of music to one’s life than the one in “Reasons for Attendance” is “For Sidney Bechet.” The admiration for music in the speaker’s voice at the end of the poem resembles the admiring tone of the address to the sun in “Solar”: “On me your voice falls as they say love should / Like an enormous yes.” For the speaker, Bechet’s music is as eloquent as the trees are for the speaker of “The Trees.” Even more importantly, music—an artistic form—is here described as the “natural noise of good” and thus equated with nature and its forceful but restoring power. We have seen a similar invocation of timelessness—through the use of participial forms—in “MCMXIV,” where the seeming continuousness of action encourages visualization and empathy (see 105). The image of “a coin” takes us back to the idea of natural currency (see 194), which represents true values through its association with the source of life (nature, and more specifically, the sun).

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NOTES TO THE CONCLUSION 1. The T-shirts were designed by a London pop artist, Jeremy Deller, and sold by a London boutique, “Sign of the Times.” 2. Poems like “Essential Beauty,” or “Sunny Prestatyn” expose advertising language and the whole ideology behind it, while “Sad Steps,” for example, displays an awareness and examination of established literary discourse. 3. No doubt, it could be used as such. But then, so could any other writing style, or artistic form. 4. This includes especially the “neo-Romantic” tradition of the 1940s (as revealed in one of the most famous Movement poetic “manifestoes,” Kingsley Amis’ poem “Against Romanticism”) and certain manifestations of High Modernism (as Larkin’s numerous prose writings indicate).

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Index

A Amis, Kingsley, 50 Analytical thought, 86; see also Larkin, Philip, poems, “Aubade” and epigrams, 121–124 and familiar logic, 124–128 and modernism, 119–121 Aristotle, 25–27 Ayer, A.J., see Ordinary language philosophy

Empiricism, 6–7, 16–17, 86, 95; see also Conquest, Robert; Locke, John; Particularity; Visualisation; Whalen, Terry

J Jonson, Ben, 29–33

K Kuby, Lolette, 2, 119–120

B Barthes, Roland, 19–20 Betjeman, John, 56–58

C Cicero, 27–28 Common man, see Movement, The; Orwell, George in Larkin against the system, 179–181 demythologizing, 167–174 determinism, 175–179 existential anxiety, 174–175 Common reader, 36, 219; see also Larkin, Philip and the general reader Conquest, Robert, 64–65

D Davie, Donald, 20–21; see also Movement, The

E Eliot, T.S., 39, 64, 102

L Larkin, Philip and academia, 42–45 and modernism, 40–42 and the general reader, 62–64 and the plain style, 51–55, 58–61, 206; see also Betjeman, John poems “Absences,” 195–196 “After-Dinner Remarks,” 176 “Afternoons,” 172–173 “Ambulances,” 177–178 “Arundel Tomb, An,” 201–203 “At Grass,” 190 “Aubade,” 128–132 “Autobiography at an Air-Station,” 180 “Born Yesterday,” 167–168 “Breadfruit,” 172 “Building, The,” 153–155 “Card-Players, The,” 93, 198 “Church Going,” 78–80, 82–87

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Index “Compline,” 144 “Counting,” 189 “Deceptions,” 155–156 “Dockery and Son,” 88–89, 125–127 “Dublinesque,” 199–201 “Essential Beauty,” 181–183 “Explosion, The,” 55–56, 203–205 “Fiction and the Reading Public,” 62–64, 144–145 “First Sight,” 109–110 “Going, Going,” 100–102, 141 “Here,” 116–117, 185–186 “High Windows,” 140–141, 143–144, 186 “Hospital Visits,” 92 “If, My Darling,” 170–172 “Ignorance,” 127–128 “Importance of Elsewhere, The,” 127 “I Remember, I Remember,” 87–89, 145–146, 166 “Large Cool Store, The,” 183–185 “Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album,” 52 “Livings II,” 196–197 “Long Lost,” 92–93 “Marriages,” 173–174 “MCMXIV,” 46, 103–105 “Mower, The,” 124–125 “Mr. Bleaney,” 51, 89–90, 100, 137–138, 145–148 “Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses,” 42–44 “Next, Please,” 177 “None of the books have time,” 95–96 “Nothing To Be Said,” 178 “Old Fools, The,” 59, 61, 149–153, 160–161 “Places, Loved Ones,” 128 “Poetry of Departures,” 69–70, 143 “Reasons for Attendance,” 136–137 “Reference Back,” 127 “Sad Steps,” 91, 168–170 “Self ’s the Man,” 138 “Send No Money,” 106–107 “Show Saturday,” 60–61, 111–116 “Solar,” 194–195

“Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb, A,” 77–78, 80–82 “Study of Reading Habits, A,” 141–142 “Sunny Prestatyn,” 157–159, 186–187 “Sympathy in White Major,” 143 “Talking in Bed,” 174–175 “This Be The Verse,” 139–140 “Toads,” 149–150 “Toads Revisited,” 70, 149–150 “Tops,” 109 “To a Very Slow Air,” 191 “To the Sea,” 111, 188–189 “Träumerei,” 179–180 “Trees, The,” 197–198 “Triple Time,” 107–108 “Vers de Société,” 122–124 “Water,” 193 “Wedding-Wind,” 192–193 “Whatever Happened?,” 178–179 “Whitsun Weddings, The,” 96–99, 187–188 “Wild Oats,” 99 “Wires,” 108–109 and poetics, 47–51; see also Movement, The themes the beautiful and the mystical, 198–205 commercialized age, 181–187 common man, see Common man community and traditions, 187–191 nature, 191–198 Locke, John, 17–19

M Martial, 28–29 Modernism, see Eliot, T.S.; Kuby, Lolette; Plain style, and difficult style Movement, The, 68–73; see also Conquest, Robert; Thomas, Dylan

N Narrative composition, 86, 93–94 and incidental openings, 87–91

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Index and sustained narratives, 92–93

O Observation, see Empiricism; see also Betjeman, John; Larkin, Philip, and the plain style Ordinary language philosophy, 65–67 Orwell, George, 67–68, 164–167

P Particularity and concretization, 95–99 and cultural specificity, 102–105 and setting, 100 Plain style and democracy, 5, 61–62, 211–212, 214–215; see also Movement, The and difficult style, 13–14, 39–40 features of, 22–24 in science, 33 traditions of, see Aristotle; Barthes, Roland; Cicero; Davie, Donald; Jonson, Ben; Locke, John; Martial; Ordinary language philosophy; Orwell, George; Sartre, Jean-Paul; Steiner, George; Winters, Yvor

235 S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 11–12 Steiner, George, 14–15

T Thomas, Dylan, 50 Tone of voice auditory clues, 148–150 definition of, 134, 159–161 empathy ambivalence, 150–153 perspective, 153–155 violence, 155–159 persona definition of, 135 obscenities, 138–141 qualifications, 136–138 slang, 141–142 typography echo, 146–147 italics, 143–144 quotation marks, 144–146

V Visualisation and analogy, 108–110 and cinematic techniques, 111–117 and concretization, 105–108 and painterly techniques, 110–111

R Rhetoric, see also Aristotle classical definition of, 221 in ancient Greece, 24–25 in Larkin, 86

W Whalen, Terry, 17, 59, 106, 110, 120, 170, 187 Winters, Yvor, 34–36

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