Philip Larkin: Art and Self: Five Studies

234 Pages·2011·1.859 MB·English

by  M. W. Rowe (auth.)

Philip Larkin: Art and Self
Also by M. W. Rowe
PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A Book of Essays
HEINRICH WILHELM ERNST: Virtuoso Violinist
Philip Larkin: Art and Self
Five Studies
M. W. Rowe
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of East Anglia
© M. W. Rowe 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-25171-7
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First published 2011 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-32145-2 ISBN 978-0-230-30215-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230302150
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
To Alan Heaven
But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing!
Larkin
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
Note on References xiii
Introduction 1
‘Here’ by Philip Larkin 6
I. ‘Here’: Avoiding the Subject 7
II. Larkin/Flaubert 48
‘Livings’ by Philip Larkin 88
III. ‘Livings’: Aesthetic Intimations 91
IV. Larkin and the Creepy 124
‘Aubade’ by Philip Larkin 165
V. ‘Aubade’: Death and the Thought of Death 167
References 205
Index 212
vii
Preface
The essays in this book have largely been written over the last four
years, but my interest in their topics extends much further back.
Like many others, I was introduced to Larkin’s poems at school: in my
case by Hubert Moore, Head of English at Cranbrook School, Kent. He
was a brilliant teacher – wry, engaging, knowledgeable, relaxed – and
his feel for poetry immediately suggested it was part of his life as well
as his teaching. I soon discovered this was true: I heard him read one
or two of his own poems (hints of the wonderfully accomplished work
that would follow); saw a copy of the newly published High Windows in
his hand; and learnt that his father, W. G. Moore, had been the Dean of
St John’s, Oxford, when Larkin was an undergraduate. The older Moore
had become something of a legend in the poet’s circle: Larkin imitates
his voice on the recording of ‘Dockery and Son’ (‘‘Dockery was junior
to you, / Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now’’ [CP:152]); and
Bruce Montgomery – writing as Edmund Crispin – turned Moore into
Gervase Fen, the hero of a famous sequence of detective novels. (The
surname, Larkin tells us, was transmuted by way of ‘Lead Kindly Light’’s
‘O’er moor and fen’ [FR:124].)
Perhaps this background helped Hubert become an especially expert
teacher of Larkin. His expertise certainly became clear in the second
or third form when we studied ‘Poetry of Departures’ and ‘Toads’; and
several years later I remember him showing what a splendid perform-
ance piece ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ was – so rich, apparently effortless,
amused and well observed. But the Larkin experience which stands out
most clearly in my mind, was studying ‘Afternoons’ in one of Hubert’s
sixth-form lessons just before lunch on a Saturday. In spite of the sun-
light, the chill and melancholy of the poem seemed to seep into me; it
lingered for several hours into the afternoon, and even the thought of a
free day-and-a-half and a visit home could not altogether shake it off. In
fact, in some sense, and at some level, I have never quite shaken it off.
While mentioning teachers, I must also thank Cecil Irwin, who was
Head of Music and house tutor in my junior boarding house. One or
two evenings after prep, he sat at the excellent upright Kemble in the
sewing room and played Chopin. Even though it’s forty years ago, I can
still remember some of the pieces he played very clearly: the E major and
‘Black Key’ études from op. 10, the Ab major study from op. 25, and to
viii
Preface ix
round off – and in particularly high style – the ‘Revolutionary’ study from
the earlier book. He was the first really brilliant pianist I’d ever heard at
close quarters, and I found both his playing and the music awe-inspiring;
indeed, I suspect he helped give me a taste for the glitter and thunder of
nineteenth-century virtuoso music which has shadowed me since.
More to the present purpose, he also introduced me to the ghost
stories of M. R. James – which I discuss in the fourth essay. From a
second-hand bookshop, he had picked up an ancient copy of Ghost-Stories
of an Antiquary – huge, apparently bound in hessian, and stamped with
Gothic lettering – and read us most of it by torchlight in the dormitory.
I found these stories utterly gripping – there was something so learned
and authoritative about the narrative voice – and even now there are
certain parts of the country and certain times of day that I can only
experience through the filter of James’s consciousness.
Flaubert and his work – the partial topic of the second essay – only
entered my life between school and university, when I was working as
a clerk in Victoria Street, London. It was a lonely and dismal period:
I felt a desperate need for intellectual life and stimulation, and utterly
stifled by savourless commercial dullness. The only bright patches were
lunchtimes: reading the New Statesman in the Shaw Theatre restaurant
on Fridays, and browsing on other days in an airy bookshop nearby.
This was run by an attractively arty couple – he was plumpish, neatly-
bearded, and smock-wearing; she was willowy and slightly exotic – and
it was on their shelves that I first came across Madame Bovary – quickly
followed by Sentimental Education, Salammbô and the Three Tales. It
was just the literature I needed. There was something about Flaubert’s
forensic chill, his icy aesthetic perfection and exoticism, that seemed to
disinfect and partly obliterate the world of fumes, luncheon-vouchers and
cold but stuffy trains I then inhabited. I remain profoundly grateful.
Partly influenced by the literature I read at this time, I studied
philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate, but Mrs Thatcher’s
higher-education cuts ensured that no career in this area was possible.
Accordingly, I became an English teacher myself, and in my first year
at Pocklington School near York, pupils would sometimes tell me about
standing next to Larkin in the delicatessen in Cottingham, or the
number of bottles that he left outside his house for the dustmen. On
his death, one of the national papers reprinted the hitherto uncollected
‘Aubade’. I was very struck with it, began to teach his work regularly,
and published a short piece on his imagery. A decade later, when I
learnt that his papers were fifteen miles away in Hull University Library,
I thought the opportunity too good to miss and went to look through