Larkinism Part 2: 'Un-Words'
This article is part two of a series entitled 'Larkinism'.
In this article, I have analysed Larkin's poetry by isolating traits of writing and thinking that recur throughout his verse. I have not attempted a definitive study of all aspects of "Larkinism". I hope to achieve no more than an overview of certain aspects which to me are especially striking.
The traits are divided up into very approximate "categories" but it should be noted that many examples could be placed under more than one "head".
Finally, bearing in mind the notorious low esteem in which Larkin held literary critics in his lifetime (they "prevent people using their eyes and ears") I hope that he would have indulged this writer and his genuine desire to explore the meanings and motivations of the poems.
Larkin's poetry is strewn with 'un-words'- neagtive adjectives, abstract nouns like "nothingness", "nowhere", "natureless".
What purpose do such words serve? And why are they so prevalent in and indicative of Larkin's style?
In some instances, they serve as a refreshing new coinage, a novel way of saying something commonplace. In 'Solar', Larkin refers to the sun not "opening" but "unclosing like a hand". In 'At Grass' race-goers cries hang "unhushed", not "loudly".
At other times, he will employ an odd variation on a familiar word. In 'If, My Darling' he refers to an "unpriceable pivot"- which is saying something subtly different from "priceless".
Elsewhere he appears merely to enjoy the impact of all the 'un-words' he marshals into service: unimaginable, unmolesting, unrecompensed, unresting. He was so keen on the coinage "birdless" that he used it at least twice in his verse ('65° N' and 'Next, Please'). In 'Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel' he referred to "shoeless corridors'"
He seems to have been particularly taken with the idea of unrest / restlessness. In 'Aubade', death is described as "unresting". 'Talking in Bed' takes the language a step further to: "the wind's incomplete unrest". It means "near stillness" yet goes beyond this bare meaning. This doubling of negatives makes the rhetoric more difficult to follow, a fact which mirrors perfectly the speaker's own inability to conjour up a straightforward comment to make to his lover. The culmination of this inability to decide is the poem's famous conclusion, that
It becomes difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
In 'The Trees', Larkin writes:
...still the unresting castles thresh
The trees are "unresting" because they are in motion. The sense of the sentence demands that "still" means "nonetheless" or "persistently". However, the secondary meaning of "still" (immobile) inevitably occurs to the reader, clashing with the adjective that follows.
(In so doing the line is reminiscent of Keats'
Thou still unravished bride of quiteness
This subtle undermining achieves the rhetorical trick of positing two antithetical ideas at once, a trick of which Larkin is extremely fond.
Larkinism Part 1: Apostrophe / The 'vocative case'
Larkin's poetry is often a mixture of world-weary realism and heady flights of romance. As examples, we could cite famous pieces such as 'High Windows' or 'Sad Steps'.
He also used the rherorical device of "apostrophe": sudden, unexpected interjections to jolt the reader, often as a point of transition within a poem. These interjections frequently take the form of the 'vocative case'- the use of "O ..." (eg. "O rose thou art sick" ['The Sick Rose' by William Blake]) to invoke or 'call up' an object or person.
Although the use of such grammar is endemic to poetry of earlier eras or of a more florid style, Larkin eschewed archaism and his language (even where meaning becomes obscure) is plain and modern. Thus, the device strikes the reader all the more dramatically when employed.
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements!
The above instance, from 'Sad Steps', is deliberately mocking in tone, since it is immediately dismissed with a "no". In 'The Building', Larkin's motivation in using such grammar is less clear:
...O world,
Your loves, your chances, are beyond the stretch
Of any hand from here!
The thorough-going tenor of misery and trepidation of 'The Building' make it less likely that Larkin (metaphorically) had his tongue in his cheek when uttering that "O".
Likewise, in 'Long lion days' (unpublished until 'Collected Poems') when the speaker utters:
O long lion days!
it is totally in keeping with the plaintive simplicity of the verse and its motif of timeless regeneration.
In "Nature" poems, Larkin employs a similar voice to dramatic effect. It is as if the frank power of the sea, sky and earth befitted such strong, direct grammar. A good example is 'Livings: II':
Running suds, rejoice!
...
Creatures, I cherish you!
When alluding to Nature, Larkin felt drawn to such bare, bold ejaculations. In 'The Card Players', he concludes:
Rain wind and fire! The secret, bestial place!
He also sometimes employs the voice as an alternative to rhetoric. Rather than tease out an experience or an idea of being with intellectual argument, he would turn to strange exhortations. 'Absences' features one of Larkin's most enigmatic lines:
Such attics cleared of me! Such absences!
Elswhere, exasperation is the prompt for lines such as:
What ashen hills! what salted, shrunken lakes!
('Dry-Point')
How slow they are!
('Next, Please')
However and wherever employed, these phrases emobdy an important part of Larkin's poetic lexicon, and are a significant strand running through his works.
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