Larkin Reconsidered

When I finished reading the Barbara Pym autobiography A Very Private Eye, cobbled together by Hazel Holt from Pym's diaries, journals, and letters, I wanted to learn more about her friendship with Philip Larkin, who was one of her favorite correspondents later in her life. As I mentioned in a previous post, I ordered both major Larkin biographies, Andrew Motion's Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (1993) and James Booth's Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2014). Because I purchased Motion's book used, and waited for it to be delivered by post, I read Booth's first on my Kindle. That meant I absorbed the more sympathetic version (according to some reviewers) before reading the somewhat darker (or brutally honest) portrait by Andrew Motion. But actually neither biographer was completely one or the other; both saw things to admire and to criticize in Larkin, and both seemed aware of his deeply ingrained (and often peculiar) habits and personal flaws. Of the two, I found myself, somewhat surprisingly, preferring Motion's book to Booth's, but I think that was because Motion gave more intimate details of Larkin's family and personal life. Booth's readings of Larkin's poetry and fiction, however, seemed to me much more nuanced and insightful, and I liked the way he told the story of Larkin's life through close readings of his writing journals. Finally, I'm glad I read both books, since they complemented each other and gave a much fuller and more detailed account of one of the more interesting people I've ever encountered.

When I suggest that Larkin was a flawed human being I don't mean that so much as a judgment but more as a description. One might say we are all flawed; that's what it means to be human. But in Larkin's case those personal flaws became the driving force of his creativity. He saw himself as a victim of his parents' dysfunctional marriage, and he blamed that for his own misery, pessimism, and ambivalence toward relationships, marriage, and family. But there seemed to be much more to that deep seated ambivalence than his fear of repeating his parents' mistakes. Larkin also worried that marriage and family would dissipate the prime sources of his creative energy, not only because of the distractions inevitably associated with domestic life, but also because of the potential for settling into a comfortable routine. He often blamed his commitments to work, as the successful librarian of a major university library at the University of Hull, for sapping some of that energy which would otherwise have been available to his art, but he could, when necessary, leave work behind and shut himself off, at least briefly, from those distractions. He feared marriage and family would not be so easily set aside. Moreover, he derived some of his poetic inspiration from the romance and misery that he generated by engaging in a series of complicated relationships with several women, sometimes as many as three at once.

Larkin's sexuality was complex. Like many English schoolboys, early on he experienced affection and strong attachments to some of his male friends. And also like many English schoolboys, he found he had considerable difficulty engaging in relationships with girls, and later with women. He probably was not well served by his long friendship with Kingsley Amis, whose attitudes toward sex and women were not likely to provide much insight or direction for anyone, much less someone as conflicted as Larkin. Although he achieved fame as a poet, Larkin's ambition was to be a novelist, and he wrote several novellas and novels in his younger days, two of which were eventually published, and one of which, Jill (1946), achieved some success in later years. It is notable, but not really surprising, that these novels tend to portray struggles with social class as well as sexual awakening, but it is also interesting that much of Larkin's earliest unpublished fiction was written in the persona of Brunette Coleman and focused on intrigue and awakening sexuality of young women at boarding schools and women's colleges. James Booth does a good job of explicating the significance of Larkin's fascination with these stories and subjects. And it is worth remarking that later Larkin occasionally took on the persona of a female in his poems as well.

What to make of all of this? Well, like many humans, Larkin was clearly fascinated by, not to say obsessed with, sexuality. His famous collection of pornography speaks to this, as well as his many complicated relationships with a series of women, including at least one affair with the wife of a colleague, several extended relationships with younger women, and his long intimate relationship with Monica Jones, who was probably the love of his life, although his treatment of her was sometimes callous and even cruel. But all of this contributed to Larkin's ambivalence about love and life. He was selfish to a degree that even he sometimes felt was shameful, yet he refused to alter his behavior, repeatedly choosing instead to confess his shortcomings and berate himself for the way he behaved. That ambivalence also is exhibited in his most famous poems: toward love in "The Whitsun Weddings" and "An Arundel Tomb;" toward religion in "Church Going;" toward work and success in "Toads" and "Dockery and Son."

Still, it is difficult to say exactly what was the primary source of Larkin's ambivalence toward love, family, and life in general. Some of it was likely the result of his selfishness and refusal to succumb to the norms of marriage and domesticity. He resisted not only what he perceived as the permanence of married life, but also of home ownership, choosing to live in rented flats until forced eventually to purchase a home of his own in 1974. As I said, he feared he would lose the creative inspiration that flowed from the complexities and anxieties he created in his personal life. He also had a profound fear of dying, of ceasing to exist. Of course, his art was a bid toward immortality, as it usually is, but he doubted the permanence of his achievement, and even when he became famous, he apparently was not entirely comfortable with his success. In some ways, fame and success were to him also signs of diminishing creative inspiration. Each honorary degree or award reinforced his feelings of obsolescence. This seemed especially true as he reached his fifties. His father had died at the age of 63, and Larkin was convinced that he would as well. By the time he reached the age of 60 and began receiving an outpouring of honors, his fears were only confirmed by his declining poetic output and his failing health. And just as he feared and predicted, he died at 63.

Some of what I've described was likely exaggerated by Larkin himself. One reason so many were shocked by some of his personal views and actions that came to light after his death was that Larkin was not really very forthcoming in his social interactions, and his letters tended to adopt a persona suitable to his correspondent. Nor was he entirely driven by selfish motives, otherwise it would be hard to account for his steadfast and enthusiastic championing of Barbara Pym. Larkin certainly knew how to play a role that would make himself appealing, to friends, to women, and to his public. But the darkness was also very real, and it was apparently the prime force that drove him to write the poems he will be known for. I'm not sure where Larkin will end up in the history of English poetry. I suspect his place is assured somewhere in the top ranks, particularly for the 20th century. He wrote some very good poems that are accessible to a wide audience, and that in itself is a major achievement. But I find that I am now as interested in the man as in the poet. For all his flaws he tried to be honest about himself. That may seem a strange claim in light of his willingness to deceive, but that is the impression I've come away with after spending the last month or so with his poetry and his biographers. He was an interesting man, and if he had never published a word, he left quite a legacy as a librarian of a major British university.