The Whitsun Weddings - Philip Larkin

I think Larkin, believe it or not, would have accepted that title and maybe would have secretly tittered that a 25 year old woman wants to even bother writing an opinion on him.

I was introduced to Philip Larkin’s work whilst studying English Literature at A’Level. The Whitsun Weddings was the start of a beautiful friendship with his wit, cynicism and downright sexist attitude. Despite my ‘feminist’ leanings and the fact that if any man were to comment on any inferiority I had as a woman, they would no longer be able to father children, Larkin made me laugh. Larkin quite simply mocked his own failings and anything, which he does insinuate in his poetry, should just be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

Born in Hull, Larkin was a Librarian at Hull University. A confirmed (but not necessarily totally happy) bachelor who due to his reclusive nature was nicknamed the ‘Hermit of Hull’. After seeing a photograph of him in an article I read sometime ago (Large black-rimmed glasses, an ‘egg’ shaped bald head – think Penfold from Dangermouse) and reading his poetry, you have the impression of a sad old man who was never totally at ease with himself. Who wanted life to be exciting but never knew how to make it such.

And so to Larkin’s poetry…

The Whitsun Weddings is a very slim volume containing 32 poems and was published in 1965.

As with Larkin’s poetry generally there are recurring themes, which are present within the poems. Most are of a cynical nature relating to death, pessimism of relationships and love and of unobtainable expectations.

Here is a very small selection of the poems that best represents the style of the collection.

AS BAD AS A MILE

The common saying ‘A miss is as good as a mile’ comes to mind when reading this. A poem of only 6 lines, in it’s entirety it speaks of failure being inevitable:

Watching the shied core
Striking the basket, skidding across the floor,
Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

Of failure spreading back up the arm
Earlier and earlier, the unraised hand calm,
The apple unbitten in the palm.

Sounds a childish rhyming scheme, doesn’t it? Effective though. It’s so simple but so true. I couldn’t help but associate with this even at the tender age I was when I first read it. Do you have the conviction to accomplish your aims? Would you do it again with the apple still in you hand (metaphorically speaking)? A warning perhaps, that if you keep your expectations low then you won’t be disappointed by failure.

AMBULANCES

Oh dear. Another cynical one for you. Now we are talking about death. Nice eh? How do you react when you hear an ambulance siren and see it hurtling down the street? Do you wonder who’s inside? What has happened to them? Larkin did. In 5 stanzas Larkin describes the fear that we all have of death and of those things which symbolise it. “And sense the solving emptiness // That lies just under all we do, // And for a second get it whole, // So permanent and black and true.” I shiver at these lines. Death: another inevitability.

THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS

On a more happy note…

Yes, Larkin’s poetry isn’t always pessimistic. Err…well…Ok, there is still that Larkinesque cynicism in the title poem, but it’s a laughable sort of cynicism.

This is an epic poem by Larkin’s standards. A whole 8 stanzas containing 10 lines each. It doesn’t get a lot bigger than this!

As the title suggests, weddings play a part in this mini-tale of a voyeur’s observation. A Saturday train journey takes the narrator past stations full of wedding parties. “…mothers loud and fat; // Uncle shouting smut;”. Mmm, how very stereotypical, I know. But Larkin’s observations intrigue me.

A note is made of “…girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared // At a religious wounding”. Is Larkin concerned by a woman’s death of innocence? Na, not really he just seems to have a ‘mild’ obsession with sex in a lot of his poetry. It’s actually in some ways a sad poem. Here is Larkin, writing a poem of sitting on a train and watching the happy wedding parties outside with a critical eye. A spot of jealousy maybe?What I love is honesty. Everything isn’t as Wordsworth and Blake described it. We all need variety in our lives. We need comparisons, if we didn’t how would we appreciate the good when we experience it and have happiness. Things happen for a reason. Larkin, in his wisdom simply points that out.

Cynical?

Yes

Realistic?

A resounding yes!