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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-32145-2 ISBN 978-0-230-30215-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230302150 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 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