Bring out the anti-romantic and anti-heroic elements in Larkin’s poetry.

Saddest Soul on the Modern World’s Supermarket

Post-war Modern Poet
Philip Larkin, post war modern poet, is essentially anti romantic and anti-heroic in his realistic
projection of human society and the pessimistic state of modern man's affairs. According to Eric
Homberger Larkin may perhaps be called "the saddest heart in the post-war" era. Larkin's poetry
carries "plainness and scepticism". Though Larkin is associated with The Movement which
rejected experimental poetry and contented with anti-romantic and structured verses meant for
the supremacy of English verse and Engalnd, yet his poetical work is beautifully blended with
the influences of the 20th century symbolists i.e. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and Hardy, the pessimist. His
poetry is simple combining "ordinary, colloquial" verses with accurateness, "clarity" and
"reflective tone" about emotions, places and relationships. Irony is the undercurrent of his direct
engagement with the general matters displaying "diminished expectations". Salient features of
Philip Larkin's poetry are listed below: Symbolism Pessimism Scepticism Irony Simplicity and
colloquial. Philip Larkin is a modern poet writing in the language of common people about the
life and matters around him. He based his poetry on the actual experiences of man i.e. realism.
His poetry is the "poetry of disappointment". He views the "destruction of romantic illusions" in
this era of anti-romantic and anti-heroic age. Today, man is so incompetent that he stands
defeated at the hands of time.

Stark and Naked Realities in Larkin’s Poetry

The nineteen-fifties were a time when the general attitude of the people and the writers was anti-
romantic and anti-heroic. World War II had ended in 1945 and the euphoria over the defeat of
the Nazi and Fascist nations, and also of imperialist Japan, soon ended, giving way to a feeling of
despondency over the damage which even the victorious Allies had suffered.
The German bombing raids over Britain had inflicted incalculable damage upon the country;
and thousands of lives had been lost. There was a general feeling of disillusionment and
disenchantment among the common people as well as among the writers and artists. A writer like
Larkin, committed to a realistic portrayal of life and the actual conditions of life in the country,
could not have imparted a romantic halo or a heroic quality to the life which he depicted in his
poems. He could not have portrayed heroes and heroism in the face of the misery and the
financial stringency which the country was experiencing. The Welfare State had surely been
established; but the results were none too cheering. Thus Larkin, wanting only to depict the stark
realities of life in his poems, emerged as an extreme kind of anti-hero. He mocked at himself;
and he mocked at the people and the conditions around him. Wherever he found any redeeming
feature in social or political life in the country, he did not shut his eyes to it; but he was even
more keenly and painfully aware of the sordidness of a commercialized consumer society. Many
of his poems are self-depreciatory; and most of them contain also sharp criticisms of the society
around him. Veracity of experience and fidelity to the actual state of affairs were the governing
principles of Larkin’s poetry. His poetry is truthful, above everything else. He does not try to
impart a glamour or a glitter to life as he saw it; and he does not romanticize human
relationships, not even the love between men and women. In short, he does not depict himself as
a hero of any kind, and he does not depict any heroic individuals, in his poems. There are no
warriors and no knights-at-arms in his poetry; and there are no Romeos and Juliets in his poetry
either. There are no war-like deeds in his poems, and there is no tendency at all to glorify human
beings or human relationships. We have stark, naked reality in his poetry.

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No Romance for Larkin in Love, in Marriage, or in Travel
An Arundel Tomb is a poem about an Earl and his Countess. The poet does recognize the feeling
of mutual attachment between them in the way the sculptor has shown them as holding hands.
But Larkin does not romanticize this attachment. On the contrary, he expresses the view that this
holding of hands was most probably the sculptor’s invention and not a representation of an actual
fact. In other words, Larkin looks at the relationship between the Earl and his Countess with the
cold eye of reason. In Dockery and Son, Larkin finds that, while a contemporary of his had got
married early in life and had begotten a son who is now at college, he himself had never married
and had begotten no son. But he does not regard Dockery as being superior to himself because of
this difference between their situations. In other words, he does not romanticize marriage and the
begetting of children. In Poetry of Departures, Larkin expresses a desire to leave home and
travel, but then gives up the idea. He does not romanticize travel in the name of adventure, or the
gathering of knowledge and experience for their own sake. Thus in all these poems we find
Larkin adopting a matter-of-fact attitude towards some of the most important aspects of life.
Love, marriage, and travel are not, in his eyes, something marvellous and wonderful. A heroic
life is a romantic life; but Larkin finds no heroism and no romance in love or in marriage or in
travel.

Individuals in Larkin’s Poems, Not Cast in a Heroic Mould

The individuals portrayed by Larkin in his poems are certainly not cast in the heroic mould. Very
often the persona or the protagonist in his dramatic monologues is Larkin himself. In these
poems he does not exalt himself in any way. And in poems where he portrays some other man,
that other man too is not presented as a heroic figure. In the poem Mr. Bleaney, the speaker is
Larkin himself, but the person about whom Larkin is speaking is another man to whom he has
given the name of Bleaney. Neither Larkin nor Bleaney has been depicted as a heroic figure in
this poem. Mr. Bleaney is a very ordinary kind of manual worker, a humble and unassuming
worker leading a poor life. Larkin speaks about Mr. Bleaney in an ironical vein, exposing his
shallowness and his uninspiring, squalid life. But Larkin does not speak about himself in any
self-laudatory manner either. He certainly establishes his superiority over Mr. Bleaney because
of his higher, intellectual interests; but he mocks at himself also while mocking at Mr. Bleaney.
In fact, Larkin’s irony is often directed against himself. The poem entitled I Remember, I
Remember is a striking example. Here he attacks romantic notions of his childhood which in
another poem he has described as “a forgotten boredom”.

The Evangelist in Faith Healing, Pulled Down From His Pedestal

In the poem Faith Healing, the evangelist is not idealized, or even eulogized. On the contrary,
Larkin has given us a satirical portrayal of the evangelist. The evangelist is certainly a hero and a
God-like figure in the eyes of his women clients; but Larkin drags this false divinity down to the
ground from the high pedestal which he occupies in the eyes of his women-worshippers.

No Heroic Attitude Towards Work

In Toads and Toads Revisited, Larkin does not adopt a heroic attitude towards work. He does not
say: “Work is worship.” On the contrary, he says that work is a toad squatting on his life. Very
much the same thing is said by Larkin in the other poem. Work is the route which takes a man to
his grave. Thus Larkin barely adjusts himself to a life of work instead of claiming that work

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uplifts, or edifies, or exalts a man. Indeed, nowhere in his poetry does Larkin present to our eyes
a spectacle of a heroic struggle against, or a heroic resistance to, the misfortunes of life. W.B.
Yeats had certainly upheld and applauded the idea of a heroic struggle and a heroic resistance to
adverse circumstances; but Larkin does not do any such thing.

Larkin’s Unheroic Attitude Towards Death

Larkin is surely an anti-hero. He does not even adopt a heroic attitude towards death which is
one of the most prominent themes in his poetry. Larkin was obsessed with the thought of death;
and in many poems he reminds us of the inevitability of death. The poems Coming, Going, and
Days are about death; and the climax of his treatment of death comes in the poem Aubade. But
nowhere does he defy death. He does not follow John Donne’s lead. Donne had said: “Death, be
not proud….” But Larkin dares not say any such thing. He fears death; he quails at the thought of
death. He certainly does not show any fearlessness of death. Only in one poem, namely The
Explosion, does he exalt death as a means of bringing honour to the persons who were killed in
an explosion. In general, he harbours a dread of death.

Church Going as Religious Poem ( Sacramentalism)

“Church Going” records the spiritual longings of a man who has lost religious faith. It may be
seen as representing the spiritual longings of a generation of British citizens for whom the church
has ceased to be important.

That religion has lost its central position is assumed. After all, the narrator would have observed
the serious decline in church attendance in England since the nineteenth century. He would also,
perhaps, think of Stonehenge, a religious site whose purpose has been forgotten. The narrator
does not wonder if churches will fall out of use. Instead, he wonders what will happen when they
do. Understanding the rest of the poem requires the recognition of that assumption.

The discussion about what will become of the unused church buildings is, in fact, an exploration
of what has caused religion to be so important to so many for so long. Uncovering those reasons
also reveals the needs that must still be met in the secular world.

The church, the narrator discovers, “held unspilt/ So long and equably what since is found/ Only
in separation—marriage, and birth,/ And death, and thoughts of these.” People have always
turned to the church for these major life events. Weddings, baptisms, and funerals are conducted
in churches (or at least by ministers), and even in an age that lacks religious faith, people need to
affirm the special significance of these events. They want God to take notice of them, even if,
paradoxically, they don’t believe in God. Love, birth, and death all transcend the ordinary and
must be “recognised/ And robed as destinies.”

Finally, the church is a place that is “proper to grow wise in.” The secular world, the world of
work, bicycling holidays, suburbs, and sheep, can do very well without the influence of the
church, but “someone will forever be surprising/ A hunger in himself to be more serious.” That
hunger, a spiritual longing, can be met only by going to a place where it is valued, where it has
been valued for centuries.

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