Philip Larkin

I much prefer the dark, moody wit of Larkin. In fact, I prefer the dark, moody wit of most anyone, granted they do it right. I believe this side of his personality saves him from being too religious and transcendent for me. Poets seem to think that they must all be looking up for a greater meaning to life and the things around them. Sometimes there is no greater meaning, sometimes things just are.

I love the way that Larkin is able to balance this duality in his work, because along with the aforementioned comments, I do think that some loftier ideas hold merit in a poetical setting, and at times are required, but they should not take over the piece. Great art is created through one's self, by connecting the self to the larger framework of the human condition (which includes matters of the mind, body, and soul) and interpreting that connection and experience in a beautiful way for others to experience as well.

Larkin succeeds in this endeavor. And by saying I prefer the dark, moody wit is not saying I hate the other, but rather, I feel as though this plight is more important and necessary. Without it, he would seem unreachable, airy, and unrelatable. With it, he seems human, but the other is still necessary. Otherwise, what would he have to contrast when he says "Death is no different whined at than withstood." from Aubade, if he didn't first introduce the terrifying fact of death. He first contemplates what death means, going through the religious and scientific aspects, the unknowing foreverness of it, and then dismisses all of this by essentially saying, "Well, it's going to happen anyways, to everyone, so might as well go one with my day." "Work has to be done." he says near the end of the poem.

This presentation of contemplating bigger than yourself concepts, only to push them away for matters of the here and now. The first was death vs. my life now, but Larkin also concerns himself with other issues such as love vs. how marriages really are, represented in his poem "Talking in Bed" (one of my favorites). The romantic side of him thinks that "talking in bed ought to be easiest", but the realistic side of him knows that this is not so. The transcendentalist side of him symbolically likens the turbulent state of their marriage to "the wind's incomplete unrest", but then he dismisses this notion with a simple "None of this cares for us." The last few lines represent his voice best, his "if it's this then it can't be the other" (even though he manages to simultaneously invoke feeling for both sides), by stating "It becomes still more difficult to find/ Words at once true and kind,/ Or not untrue and not unkind."

Brilliant.