The Poetry of Philip Larkin and TS Eliot - Essay Example

Philip Larkin's Poetry has been described as inhabiting/describing a "welfare waste land". Are there any significant links which may be made between the poetry of TS Eliot and that of Larkin The poetry of Philip Larkin and TS Eliot might not seem initially to have a great deal in common with one another. Larkin was at best an agnostic who saw the world in a rather subdued, at times cynical manner while Eliot was the deeply religious icon of an essentially past age, viewing the "waste land" of post World War I Europe. Eliot was considering the wasteland of post WWI, Larkin the perhaps more comfortable and yet in its way just as foreboding landscape of post WWII Britain. The welfare state had provided a physical safety net, but a spiritual desolation still seemed to exist. Within the poetry of Philip Larkin there is a hesitancy, uncertainty and self-doubt that constant reappears. Consider the opening of one of his most well-known poems, Church Going: Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. (Larkin, 2004) At first glance this might seem to be an unremarkable opening, but in fact it tells a lot about the narrator of the poem. This narrator only wants to go into the church when he is sure "there's nothing going on". The "nothing" suggests that he does not want to be a part of a religious service, or any other kind of activity associated with the church. This is an isolated character that Larkin is describing. A man who does not want to be a part of the public ceremonies and yet, in a way, he also does. That is why he goes into the church in the first place. As he takes off his "cycle clips in awkward reverence" (8-9) this character may remind the reader of one of Eliot's most famous creations: Prufrock. One can imagine Prufrock removing his cycle clips too, just as "I have measured out my life with coffee-spoons" (Eliot, 1991). There is the hint of uncertainty, or a painfully lived with a painful understanding of isolation within the world. If the outside world is "like a patient etherized upon the table" (Eliot, 1991) the person perceiving it is acutely aware. Prufrock does "not think that they will sing for me" when he speaks of the mermaids, and many of Larkin's poems echo a similar alienation from the world. But Larkin's alienation is perhaps quieter that Eliot's, he inhabits a more sanguine world in which the suffering caused by war at least had some kind of point in contrast to the aimless, nihilistic destruction of World War I. Larkin stated that "deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth" and it is within deprivation, or the potential for it, that he often finds his most compelling muse. Deprivation is as far as possible from the minds of the young men whom Larkin describes in MCMXIV. In this poem he analyses the men lining up to join the army just before World War I and thus provides a kind of long-distance glance at the wasteland that Eliot actually lived through (Larkin was born in 1922). Larkin describes small details in this poem, including "the crowns of hats" and "the sun on moustached archaic faces" (Larkin, 2004) adopts what is a characteristically ironic tone at the beginning of the poem. He adopts an almost judgmental tone towards these men who are so casual that they appear to be lining up to enter a sports ground rather than to enter a war. Yet as often happens in Larkin, as the poem continues he reveals, beneath the superficial distance and near cynicism, an intense mixture of both sympathy and empathy with these men, many of whom are about to go to their deaths. This change occurs with the lines, Never such innocence, Never before or since, (Larkin, 2004) And continues with heart-wrenching details of, Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again. (Larkin, 2004) The repetition of "never such innocence" turns into something of a choric lament, and the almost casual observation of the marriages that will last a little while longer shows that Larkin is acutely aware of the tragedy of the situation that he seemed to be regarding with a wry humor at the beginning of the poem. Larkin is looking back at an environment that is just about to become a wasteland with the benefit of hindsight. He was born after WWI and so can only experience its reality through a grainy photograph. Eliot, by contrast, actually lived through the war and famously stated that "April is the cruelest month" in reference to the kind of inverted sensibility that WWI produced. The "gardens" within Larkin's poem are a traditionally situated image: symbolic of the quiet, ordinary, gentle husbandry of the traditional Englishman. For Eliot, the promise of Spring that is inherent within the rebirth of life at that time represents something completely different: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. (Eliot, 1991) The stirring of life is merely a kind of ironic, sick comment upon the resounding death that inhabits the wasteland of World War I and its aftermath. But Eliot himself is not ironic; he possesses a kind of deadly seriousness in virtually all of his poetry (outside of the deliberately whimsical verse) that Larkin is uncomfortable with. This is perhaps the reason that Larkin constantly vacillates between one opinion and another within his poems. Thus a move towards an Eliotian view of the world can be seen in the break between the first and second stanzas of Church Going: 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 much at a loss like this, . . . (Larkin, 2004) (my emphasis) From this point on Larkin is apparently inexorably drawn into a more serious consideration of the actual importance of this church, and all churches, through what they imply to people. While he wonders "who will be the last, the very last, to seek this place for what it was" he eventually realizes, in the last paragraph that "a serious house on serious earth it is" and ends with the remarkable admission that the church (and what it represents) "never can be obsolete" because there will always be people who find themselves with "a hunger to be more serious". This "hunger" is what the wasteland of the welfare state represents for Larkin. It is not the utter desolation and terror of a world in which million ns of men have been needlessly slaughtered - as in Eliot's world - but rather one in which the "waste" is felt within a kind of spiritual anomie. While the narrator of Church Going may be serious at the end of his account, the reader may correctly feel that the next day he might be just as distantly cynical and puzzling if he came across another church. Elliot is already present within that world and his concern is whether he fits his somewhat idealistic vision for the poet and Catholic. Here again is another manner in which Eliot and Larkin describe a similar kind of wasteland, but in very different manners. Thus while Eliot seems to almost take a delight in making his poetry as complex as possible, Larkin's poems can be understood, at least on a superficial level, by anyone with a secondary education. This is most certainly not the case with Eliot. Without a knowledge of Latin, Greek, much of Classical literature and without a reference book to hand, much of Eliot's poetry will be too obtuse for the average reader. Eliot is writing for a small audience, while Larkin is aiming at an everyman. While it is perhaps dangerous to associate a poet's personal life too closely with his poetry, it does seem clear that the greatly contrasting views of the world as seen in Eliot and Larkin reflect their own lives. Eliot was an American who lived in Britain, and was such an Anglophile that he even affected an English accent in middle to late life. Larkin was a born Englishman, and seemed to take pride in the fact that he had as an occupation a quintessentially English vocation: librarian. Larkin appears to have been comfortable within his skin, whereas Eliot was not. Larkin appears to have lived a died a virgin, whereas Eliot was married and yet was widely rumored to be actually gay. How do these facts reflect upon their poetry in general, and their associated views of their "wastelands" The answer for Larkin may be found within the controversy that sprang up around the posthumous publication of Larkin's letters in 1992. The letters revealed an apparent obsession with pornography, a growing and deepening racism, extreme right-wing views and general venom aimed at a variety of different individuals and trends within modern society. The author Martin Amis, whose father Kingsley was one of Larkin's best friends, argued that the apparent discrepancy between the Larkin revealed in his often sensitive and gentle poems and the vitriolic creature that characterizes his letters merely illustrates that Larkin tended to tailor his words to the recipient of a piece of writing. Amis paints Larkin as a kind of post WWII chameleon. Yet underneath this chameleon nature emerged a more deeply pessimistic Larkin as the years passed by. In one of his most notable later poems, Going, Going Larkin seemed to express a kind of romantic fatalism regarding the future of England, especially in its famous last line: I just think it will happen, soon. (Larkin, 2004) Is this an expression of a kind of fatalism that can be found within Eliot too Perhaps it is, with a consideration of equally famous lines from "The Hollow Men": This is the way the world will end This is the way the world will end This is the way the world will end Not with a bang, but with a whimper. (Eliot, 1991) It seems clear that Eliot and Larkin keenly felt the specter of complete destruction as represented by nuclear war. Eliot met the idea with a mixture of disbelief, pity ("The Hollow Men") and yet ultimately saw it within the context of the Apocalypse that was forecast within the Bible. Larkin saw it within a kind of darkening fatalism, in which the world echoed his own descent towards inevitable death. To conclude, TS Eliot lived through the First World War and came of age in its aftermath. He was, as was much of his generation, deeply effected by his experience of the war and the "wasteland" that he saw it had created within Europe. Larkin was born four years after WWI, and thus the "wasteland" of his poetry is a milder, more down-to-earth type as was experienced in the gloomy post-war period in Britain. Eliot lived life at a hectic pace, socializing and living with many of the leading figures of his day: from Groucho Marx to Man Ray. Larkin led the "librarian's life" and seems to have remained strangely distant from the concerns that normally influence people. Love, money, personal prestige (he turned down the post of Poet Laureate) seem to have been of little interest to him. The welfare wasteland that he perceived and so brilliantly explored can be considered as a reflection of his own inner wasteland, something with which he was, paradoxically, quite comfortable. He may well have been serious in his comments regarding the inspirational nature of desolation. Eliot's wasteland was a direct reaction to the carnage of WWI, and while he may have been more conflicted because of his deep religious beliefs and struggles that they created, he seems to have been more actively involved with the world around him, and the wasteland that he perceived it to be. ______________________________________ Works Cited Brennan, Maeve. The Philip Larkin I Knew. Manchester UP, Manchester: 2002. Eliot, TS. Collected Poems, 1909-1962. Harcourt, New York: 1991. ----------------. "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" ---------------. "The Wasteland" ---------------. "Four Quartets" Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. Farrar, New York: 2004. -----------------. "Church Going" -----------------. "Going, going" ----------------. "MCMXIV" Motion, Andrew. Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life. Noonday Press, New York: 1994. Thwaite, Anthony. Selected Letters of Philip Larkin. Manchester UP, Manchester: 1992. Whalen, Terry. Philip Larkin and English Poetry. University of British Columbia Press, New York: 1986. Read More