T.S.

Eliot
UNIT 23 PHILIP LARKIN
Structure

23.0 Objectives
23.1 Introduction
23.2 Philip Larkin
23.2.1 The Movement
23.3 Church Going (1954) (p.1955)
23.3.1 Introduction
23.3.2 The Text
23.3.3 Analysis of the Poem
23.4 The Whitsun Weddings (1964) (p.1967)
23.4.1 Introduction
23.4.2 The Text
23.4.3 A Discussion
23.5 Let Us Sum Up
23.6 Answers to Self-Check Exercises

23.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit you will be able to:
• Talk about Philip Larkin the poet, his life and work.
• Situate Larkin, the poet, within the poetic group called Movement.
• Appreciate Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’
• Analyze the thematic as well as technical aspects of ‘Whitsun Weddings’

23.1 INTRODUCTION
In this unit you will be introduced to Philip Larkin, one of the major British poets
of the post war era. Larkin was one of the most prominent poets of a group called
the Movement. In the previous units you were introduced to Modernism and the
Modernist poets like T.S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats and W. H. Auden. You have also
tasted the complex, obscure, ironic and highly allusive poetry that is
intellectually stimulating, which is the hallmark of modernism.
In this unit we will see that the poets who emerged during the 1950s deliberately
broke away from the experimental poetry of this tradition, and tried to resurrect a
poetry that had traditional cadences and formal features of native British poetry.
Instead of the cosmopolitan concerns and metaphysical philosophies which
governed the writers of the early 20th century, the poets of the fifties and sixties
brought in more parochial issues and themes and accessible meaning of everyday
experience of middle class England into their poetry.
We will introduce you to the group called the Movement which determined the
aesthetics as well as the bend of thematic content of British poetry in the 50s and
55
The High Modernist, 60s decades. We will situate Larkin in this larger context and also point out his
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
special characteristics and contributions. We have included two poems of Larkin,
‘Church Going’ and ‘Whitsun Weddings’ for detailed study and analysis. Both
poems reveal Larkin at his best: ironic and sardonic, yet basically humane.

The first poem ‘Church Going’ is a monologue written in 1954 which refers to
the erosion of the church as an institution. Written in an unsentimental, anti-
romantic tone, the poem reveals the agnostic bend of Larkin’s mind. ‘Whitsun
Weddings’, written in 1964, is the second poem chosen for intensive study. It
describes a train journey undertaken by the poet, during which he comes across
boisterous marriage parties whom he observes in a detached and somewhat
disdainful manner, but becoming rather meditative towards the end.

It would help you to read through the unit section by section. Do the exercises as
you finish reading. After finishing a major chunk, give yourself a break, before
you tackle the next part.

23.2 PHILIP LARKIN

[b. 9 August 1922 Coventry, Warwickshire - d. 2 December 1985 Hull,
Humberside, England]

Philip Larkin (1922-85) was the most eminent writer of post-war Britain, whose
capabilities ranged into the spheres of poetry, novel and criticism. His influence
was so strong that he was referred to as “England’s other Poet Laureate”, a
position which he had turned down when it was offered to him at the demise of
John Betjeman, who was then, the poet laureate. Critic Alan Brownjohn notes in
his book Philip Larkin that he produced “the most technically brilliant and
resonantly beautiful, profoundly disturbing yet appealing and approachable, body
of verse” and was considered an “artist of the first rank” by reviewer John Press.

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry into a middle class family, as the younger of
two children. His father, Sydney Larkin, was a lover of literature and a Nazi
sympathizer, while his mother Eva Emily Day, to whom he was
‘claustrophobically attached’, was a nervous woman dominated by her husband.
His sister Catherine, known as Kitty, was 10 years older than he was. His father,
who was the Coventry City Treasurer, instilled a love for books and poems in
him from an early age, by introducing poets like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, D. H.
Lawrence and W.B. Yeats to him. Poor eyesight and stuttering plagued Larkin as
a youth; he retreated into solitude, read widely, and began to write poetry as a
nightly routine. He was educated at home till the age of eight – these early days
56
are described as ‘unspent’ and ‘boring’ – and then joined King Henry VIII Junior Philip Larkin
School at Coventry, where he made long standing friendships. His love for jazz
music was fostered by his parents and this grooming helped him at a later age to
contribute extensively to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic, which were
complied in the book All That Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985).

After his School Certificate Examination from King Henry VIII Senior School,
he joined St. John’s College, Oxford to read English and at the completion of the
course was awarded a First Class Honours Degree. During the colourful period at
Oxford, a vital stage in his personal and literary development, Larkin
commenced his lifelong friendship with Kingsley Amis and John Wain, other
important members of the Movement, a relationship that proved intensely
symbiotic to them.

Larkin took up the position of librarian in the small Shropshire town of

Wellington after his graduation, where he wrote his two novels, Jill (1946) and A
Girl in Winter (1947) and published his first volume of poetry, The North Ship
(1945). As a qualified librarian, he worked in several libraries. This became his
wage-earning career for the rest of his life, taking him to university libraries in
Leicester, Belfast and finally Hull, where he stayed on for thirty years, creating
settings for his poetic meditations. In the post-war years, the University of Hull
underwent significant expansion and a new university library named Brynmor
Jones Library was established, of which Larkin was the chief librarian. He was a
significant figure in post-war British librarianship, making major structural
emendations, computerizing the library stock and automating the circulation
system.

Though Larkin had first written novels, he switched over to poetry as the muse of
novel failed him later. Larkin’s first poetic influences were modernists like T. S.
Eliot and W.H. Auden, but he shed these off as he evolved a more individual
tone. Larkin’s first collection of poetry The North Ship shows remarkable
influence of W.B. Yeats, but does not yet present the voice for which he later
became famous.

His next collection, The Less Deceived (1955), containing poems like ‘Church
Going’ and ‘Toads’, came a decade later, and bears the stamp of his mature
genius: that of the detached, sometimes mournful, sometimes tender observer of
“ordinary people doing ordinary things”. Coinciding with this development of a
mature poetic identity was his increasing fascination for the poetry of Thomas
Hardy. When Larkin was invited to edit the 1973 volume of The Oxford Book of
Twentieth Century English Verse, he used to opportunity to reevaluate and
reinstate Hardy as a major contributor to English Poetry. Hardy with his
provincial and pessimistic outlook and traditional style suited Larkin better than
his earlier contemporaries had. He disparaged poems that relied on shared
classical and literary allusions. In a statement he made to D. J. Enright, Larkin
stated that he had “no belief in ‘tradition’ or a common myth-kitty or casual
allusions in poems to other poems or poets”.

Larkin’s poetry has been characterized as combining “an ordinary, colloquial

style, clarity, a quiet, reflective tone, ironic understatement and a direct
engagement with commonplace experiences”. His publisher and long time friend
Jean Hartley summed his style up as a “piquant mixture of lyricism and
57
The High Modernist, discontent”. According to the critic Terence Hawkes, Larkin’s poetry revolves
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
around two losses: the Loss of Modernism and the Loss of England. The latter is
best observed in the famous poem “Going Going”.

“And that will be England gone,

The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There’ll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.”

The collection The Whitsun Weddings, published in 1964, contains his very
popular poems like ‘An Arundel Tomb’, ‘Here’ and the titular poem, which
cemented his reputation as one of Britain’s most eminent living poets. He was
awarded a Fellowship of Royal Society of Literature, soon after. In the years that
followed, he wrote some of his major poems like the ‘Aubade’, which were
collected and published in the volume High Windows (1974). The poems had
turned more stark, gloomy and fatalistic. The dwindling of the mighty empire of
Britain into a third rate power, his preoccupation with death, are all mirrored in
these.

Larkin remained a bachelor throughout his life, despite longstanding

relationships with several women, most of them inspiring enough for him to
write poetry. He also preferred to keep a low profile, turning down most of the
titles and honours including that of OBE (Order of the British Empire) and the
Poet Laureateship that came his way. Nevertheless he later accepted the titles of
CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and CE
(Companion of Honour) and FRSL (Fellow of Royal Society of Literature). The
public persona of Philip Larkin is that of a dour, non-nonsense Englishman,
reserved and private, turning down fame, and viewing the world with gloomy and
critical spectacles.

In 1985, at the age of 63, Larkin was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and
died after hospitalization. He was buried at the Cottingham Municipal Cemetery
near Hull.

Let us now take a look at the movement poetry of which Larkin was the leading
spirit.

The Movement was a term coined in 1954 by Jay D. Scott, literary editor of The
Spectator, to describe a group of writers essentially English in character. They
included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain,
Elizabeth Jennings, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, and Robert Conquest. They were a
group of like-minded English poets, loosely associated together in the mid–
1950s. Movement poetry was a journey back to the purity of English verse,
which manifested a preference for provincial values and importance to ordinary
objects and experiences. Two anthologies, Poets of the 1950s (1955) edited by D.
J. Enright and New Lines (1956) by Robert Conquest, are considered to be the
polemic volumes that established the reputation of the group. Of the poets, Philip
Larkin emerged as the most popular. His poetry did a good deal to re-engage
poetry with a more popular audience. The Movement poets were considered anti-
romantic, but we find many romantic elements in Larkin and Hughes. We may
58
call The Movement, the revival of the importance of form. To these poets, good Philip Larkin
poetry means simple, sensuous content, traditional, conventional and dignified
form. Once the Movement was accepted into the mainstream, the group became
less exclusive. Many of the group were academics, and their critical writings
helped shape the course of British literature for the next two decades.

Now that you have been introduced to the life and times of Philip Larkin, try
doing these exercises. After doing them, you may check the answers with the
Answer Key given at the back of the unit.

Self-check Exercise I
1) Which are the four anthologies of poems written by Philip Larkin?
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2) Where did Larkin spend the greater part of his life as librarian?
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3) Which poet exerted the biggest singular influence on Larkin?
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4) Which book contains the articles written by Larkin on jazz music?
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5) Which anthology by Robert Conquest helped launch the Movement?
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The High Modernist,
Postmodenist and Recent 23.3 CHURCH GOING (1954)
Poets
Outside of a Church Interior of the church with pews

23.3.1 Introduction
‘Church Going’ is a poem from the anthology, The Less Deceived. The title of the
anthology inversely mirrors the remark made by Ophelia in the play Hamlet by
Shakespeare: “I was the more deceived”. Larkin chose this title to impress upon
the reader that one should be less deceived by the reality of life. ‘Church Going’
is one of the most read and most anthologized poems by Larkin, in which he tries
to make us less deceived regarding the present state of the church and its
influence in the lives of the people.

In India, we may never envisage a religious institution going derelict. But in the
western world, after the two World Wars, and after the spread of existentialist
philosophies, there was a widespread prevalence of atheistic and agnostic
attitudes and a rapid decline of belief in any religion. As a result, the attendance
in churches dwindled sharply. Many of the churches remained empty shells of
their former glory. ‘Church Going’ is a monologue which discusses the futility as
well as utility of going to the church.

The great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson has remarked in his
essay, ‘Self Reliance’: “I like the silent church before the service begins, better
than any preaching.” The beginning of the poem makes us sharply recall these
words as the poet enters the old church which is silent and vacant. The poet
ponders about the future of churches and wonders about the reason for people
still gravitating to the church. The poem refers both to the erosion of the Church
as an institution and to the perpetuation of some kind of ritual observance.

Now let us read the poem. You will see that the nine-lined poem, containing
seven stanzas, is rhythmic, as Larkin is giving due importance to form. The poet
uses the traditional iambic pentameter lines, where unstressed and stressed
syllables alternate: e.g.: “For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff” (the
stressed syllables are highlighted). It also rhymes ababcadcd. Read the poem
once and then read it yet again with the help of the glossary given after the poem.
It will be also good to read the poem aloud and feel the cadence of the lines.

60
23.3.2 The Text Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
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The High Modernist, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Glossary
“Another church” : A statement emanating from boredom little books: books
of verses or scriptural readings kept in the pews brass:
may be church artifacts like the chalice, pyx, candelabra
and so on; can also be monumental brass found in English
churches, used for sepulchral memorial
Organ : Also called pipe organ is a musical instrument used in
churches (see picture)
musty : stale and dank smell
cycle-clips : These are worn around pants to keep them from catching
in a bicycle chain. (see picture)
font : stone basin containing holy water to baptize people. (see
picture)
lectern : decorated podium or stand used by the priest to place the
bible and deliver the sermon (see picture)
peruse : read carefully
hectoring : talk in a bullying way
large-scale : verses printed in large sizes
here endeth : the last lines which usually signify the ending of the
sermon or the mass. Here it may ironically refer to the
ending of the church.
snigger : laugh in a half-suppressed, scornful way
Irish six pence : a small coin of Ireland; here it is a useless donation
because it is foreign currency as well as small change (see
picture)
parchment : writing material made of animal skin (see picture)
62
ORGAN PLATE FONT PYX Philip Larkin

plate : metal plate made of precious metal, which is used to pass

to collect donation in the church. Also called Collection
Plate (see picture)
pyx : a small round container used in the Catholic and Anglican
Churches to carry the consecrated host. (see picture)
Let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep: Church falling to disuse and ruin that
it leaks when it rains and becomes a shelter to wandering
sheep. Irony lies in the fact that believers are considered
to be the sheep and the priest, the shepherd.
dubious women : an ambiguous expression. 1. May refer to women who are
doubtful of church and its benefits and yet are lured by a
possibility of cure. 2. May refer to women of questionable
character
simples : medicinal herbs collected to cure an ailment
walking a dead one: seeing a ghost haunting the place
brambles : weeds; prickly scrambling shrub of the rose family,
especially a blackberry (see picture)
IRISH SIX PENCE LECTERN BUTTRESS BRAMBLES

Buttress : a structure of stone or brick built against a wall to

strengthen or support it (see picture)
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky: Notice the manner in which
Larkin starts from the ground and moves skywards.
taps and jots : reference to the crew who opens the cask of wine and
writes down the mount of wine sold
rood-lofts : a gallery on top of the rood screen of a church. Rood is a
crucifix, especially over the entrance. (see picture)
ruin-bibber : one who loves or is addicted to ruins [a bibber is a one
who is addicted to drinks]
randy : excited, [often sexually]; here, excited to possess antiques
Christmas addict : one who loves Christmas celebrations
63
The High Modernist, counting on a whiff . . . : counting on a small amount of joy obtainable through
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
Christmas celebrations with gowns, bands, organ pipes
and myrrh
myrrh : aromatic resin used as incense in church (see picture)
silt : fine sand or clay deposited as sediment
scrub : a growth of stunted vegetation
accoutred : adorned, decorated
frowsty : warm, stuffy, close

blent : blended (archaic)

Rood loft Cycle Clips Parchment

Myrrh Scrub Barn

23.3.3 Analysis of the Poem

‘Church Going’ is a poem in which the speaker analyses the raison d’être (the
reason for the existence) of the church. He wants to examine the futility and the
utility of churches. The discussion is half-mocking and half-serious. The speaker
scoffs at the church and its equipment; and he scoffs at church-going, though at
the end of the poem he finds that the churches, or at least some of them, would
continue to render some service to the people even after they have ceased to be
places of worship. According to the speaker, a time is coming when people
would stop going to churches altogether, because they would have lost their faith
in God and in divine worship. Then a time is also coming when people’s disbelief
in God and their superstitions would come to an end too. Eventually, however,
some people might still visit the decayed and disused church buildings on
account of some inner compulsion or to derive some wisdom from the sight of
the many graves in the churchyard.

At the outset, the speaker, the persona of the poet, enters the vacant church after
first ensuring that it is unoccupied. He is a casual wayfarer, who is drawn to the
silent building on one of his various cycling trips. He closes the door with a thud,
which gesture speaks of his brashness and irreverence. The words which are
64
uttered next, “Another church, matting, seats and stone, / And little books; Philip Larkin
sprawlings of flowers, cut / For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff / Up
at the holy end . . .” sound like an inventory of church artifacts and are dipped in
impiety and callous disregard. The holy scriptures become ‘little books’ and the
glorious candelabra, chalice and other articles used in the tabernacle during the
holy mass become ‘brass and stuff’. The atmosphere is permeated with mustiness
which is a result of its dereliction. The flippant observation about silence
“brewed God knows how long” continues in the same vein of irreverence.
Unfamiliar with the ways of the church, he makes an allowance to the hallowed
ground by removing the bicycle clips in ‘awkward reverence’.

Then comes the gingery fiddling with things. He runs his hand around the font,
inspects the roof and pronounces that it looks new or restored; he mounts the
pulpit and peruses a few overawing verses printed in large-scale font, and then
mimicking a priest, pronounces ‘here endeth’ with greater vehemence than he
intended. The sounds echo his sniggering. On the way back he signs the register
and donates a useless Irish sixpence, and thinks that the place was not worth
stopping for.

Then comes the admission that inspite of this disregard for churches, he often
stops to look at one. He wonders what would be done, when churches fall into
disuse. Whether they would be turned into museums, with all their precious
articles like parchment, plate and pyx displayed in locked cases, or would they
fall into ruin, letting the place vacant for rain and sheep. He asks whether we
would avoid them as unlucky places.

He wonders whether women, not sure about the sanctity of the church, would
come with their children to pray at the grave of a dear departed soul or pick herbs
to cure cancer from the churchyard. Would they see the church being haunted by
ghosts on special nights? Power of this sort would go on in games and riddles,
creating stories about the church. But ultimately, like belief, superstition must
also die. And when both belief and superstition die, nothing will remain but a
tottering edifice, with grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress and sky.

In this stanza the narrator is isolated and meditative, and appears to be less
deceived by religion. The church becomes more and more unrecognizable each
week as the trees and plants overtake the structure. The building’s original
purpose and the purpose for visiting it has become more and more obscure as
well. Larkin wonders how many will come seeking the church for the purpose it
was erected. Some will come to tap and jot and find out the condition of the
rood-loft under which the sacred space in the church rests. Or they may be visited
by a person with a love for antiques and ruins; or a person addicted to Christmas
festivities, who loves the song, spectacle and smell. Or will he be a representative
of the poet, who despite being bored and uninformed, comes back again and yet
again through the suburban woods to this cross of ground – the church, because it
had held unspilt and sanctified, for so long and equably, those relationships –
marriage, birth and death – which are now found only in separation. Church
which is now an empty shell was originally built for the rites which sanctified
these life processes. He does not know what this barn is worth, but it nevertheless
pleases him to stand in silence there.

He considers the church a serious house on this serious earth. All human
compulsions meet in the blended air of the church, which are recognised and 65
The High Modernist, robed as destinies. And as long as this purpose would never become outdated,
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
persons wishing to be serious would keep on coming there to grow wise,
especially with so many dead people lying around, for only those who are dead
know the truth about whether there is a heaven or not.

The poem starts as an agnostic’s or even an atheist’s take on church. But the end
shows some sort of change which leaves him ambivalent regarding the spiritual
significance of the church. The title itself retains the ambiguity and can be
interpreted in several ways: the act of going to church, the customs that keep the
church alive, visiting the church as one would a theatre, and the disappearance of
the church. The pronouncing of “here endeth” in the poem underscores the irony.
It may be that in the narrator’s opinion, religion is on a decline; so when he says
“here endeth” he is not only talking about his sermon ending, he is also talking
about religion ending; he may be also hinting that he will be the last person to
recite those words in that church. Certain critics have seen Church Going
presenting the binaries of inside-outside. Church and what it represents within
with all the trappings of the church are manmade, which is slowly being claimed
by Nature. Larkin often makes a sharp distinction between Nature outside and
man’s enclosure inside a building, a scene which dramatizes man’s separation
from Nature. The poet begins his encounter with the church building by
describing the contents of the building; but the distinctions between what is
outside in Nature, and what is inside in man’s architectural dominion, begin to
blur. The building is seen by the poet as surrounded by the forces of Nature and
perhaps soon to be merged with them. He imagines the decaying edifice being
eventually let “rent-free to rain and sheep”; thus Nature itself will enter the
church and become part of it, or will simply take over the church completely. The
destructive forces of Nature are even now merging with the elements of the
building: “grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky”—all these coalesce.

The language of the poem is conversational, and the narrator poses many
interrogatives (questions). Larkin uses a lot of religious imagery and words, some
are used as they are intended, but others are used in a blasphemous way. The
subtle movement from the first person singular (I) to the first person plural (we
or our) is a characteristic device in Larkin’s poetry, and one which is predicated
upon the assent of its readers. Larkin uses this strategy in ‘Whitsun Weddings’
too.

The poem is not a veiled message in support of Christianity, but it shrewdly and
accurately defines the multiple sides of the dilemma of redundant churches and
what they represent, namely a religious tradition in decline. There is seriousness,
wisdom, and comfort to be derived or not from an empty church building. The
church’s main function as a place for worship is long gone, though it still has its
value as a historical relic.

Self-check Exercise II
1) What does the poet do on his entry into the church?
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66
 Philip Larkin
2) How would you describe the narrator’s attitude towards the church?
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3) What future does the poet envisage for the church?
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4) What is the ambiguity in the title ‘Church Going’?
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23.4 WHITSUN WEDDINGS (1964)

23.4.1 Introduction
‘The Whitsun Weddings’ appeared in the anthology of the same name, in 1964. It
is a poem inspired by a train journey from the Paragon station at Kinston-upon-
Hull in the North of England to Petersborough, London in the South, on a
Whitsun Saturday, in 1955. A quarter of a century later, Larkin recalled the
genesis of the poem:

“I caught a very slow train that stopped at every station and I hadn’t
realised that, of course, this was the train that all the wedding couples
would get on and go to London for their honeymoon: it was an eye-
opener to me. Every part was different but the same somehow. They all
looked different but they were all doing the same things and sort of
feeling the same things. I suppose the train stopped at about four, five,
six stations between Hull and London and there was a sense of
gathering emotional momentum. Every time you stopped fresh emotion
climbed aboard. And finally between Peterborough and London when
you hurtle on, you felt the whole thing was being aimed like a bullet - at
the heart of things, you know. All this fresh, open life. Incredible
experience. I’ve never forgotten it.”
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The High Modernist, Whitsun being the marriage season, the train and the railway stations were
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
thronged by gay, boisterous wedding parties. Larkin, the bachelor, leans back as
the placid observer, viewing the newlyweds board the train for their honeymoon,
making droll comments which are at times witty and humorous, at times acrid
and pungent. The poem is considered the finest example of Larkin’s temper, tone
and technique.

‘The Whitsun Weddings’ consists of eight verses, each ten lines long making it
one of his longest poems and rhyming a b a b c d e c d e a rhyme scheme used in
various of Keats’ odes. This rhyme pattern captures the rhythmic sound of a
steam-engine as it gathers momentum every time it leaves a station. The
truncated second line in each stanza adds to the special rhythm of poem. The use
of enjambement or run-on lines and run-on verses creates a sense of relentless,
onward movement as the train with several linked carriages makes its way
southward by a ‘slow and stopping curve’. ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ is Larkin’s
longest poem, narrated in a slow, unhurried, leisurely fashion which re-enacts a
sense of the long, leisurely train journey from Hull to London. In literature a
journey frequently functions as a metaphor for life itself. Larkin uses the unifying
frame of a train-journey to observe the young couples who, as a result of a ‘frail
Travelling coincidence’ briefly share one hour at a similar point in their lives
before they alight from the train at its destination and continue separately on the
longer journey which will take up the remainder of their lives.

23.4.2 The Text

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept

For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise

The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys

68
The interest of what’s happening in the shade, Philip Larkin
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event

Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.

Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;

The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
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The High Modernist, There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Glossary
Whitsun : (White Sunday). Also called Whitsunday or Whitsuntide
is the feast of the Pentecost, which falls on the 7th day
after Easter, commemorating the descent of the Holy
Spirit on the apostles of Christ. In England it was mixed
up with pagan festivities celebrating the summer’s day.
Considered to be very auspicious for weddings. During
the 50s it was a favoured time for marriage and
honeymoon due to the long weekend. Whit Saturday is
the Saturday before it. The following day is also a holiday,
called Whit Monday.
blinding : refers to the cars waiting at the level crossing in the
windscreens scorching heat
fish-dock : harbours or piers for fishing (see picture)
Lincolnshire : historic county in the east of England
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept: the consistent curve of the
railway as the train moves southwards and stops at
stations.
short shadowed : the cattle cast short shadows due to the time of the day,
cattle probably early afternoon.
industrial froth : layer of dirt or scum spread on top of the canal, due to the
industrial effluents cast from the factories nearby.
Canals of industrial: Larkin points out at the deleterious effect of technological
froth advancement on the urban areas. Demonstrative of his
powers of observation. In the poem The Waste Land, T.S.
Eliot had made a similar remark: “River sweats/Oil and
tar.”
Hothouse : a heated building used for growing plants. (see picture)
reek : (n) smell
nondescript : lacking distinctive characteristics
dismantle : take to pieces, pull down
skirl : a shrill cry or shriek (Scots dialect)
whoops and skirls : shouts and shrieks
larking : cavorting; enjoy oneself by behaving in a playful and
70 mischievous way.
pomaded : wearing scented hair-dressing Philip Larkin

irresolutely : hesitantly

Confetti Fish Dock Perm

Hothouse
seamy : sordid, disreputable, sleazy
smut : obscenity; here the uncle is cracking indecent jokes at the
expense of the newlyweds.
perms : a term in hair dressing; permanent wave (see picture)
lemons, mauves, : different colours or shades; mostly pastels. Lemon is
and olive-ochres yellow, mauve is light violet or purple and olives are
green and ochres are brick red.
Bunting dressed : dressed with cloth flags, drapery or streamers for festive
decoration (see picture)
confetti : small pieces of coloured paper traditionally thrown over a
bride and bridegroom by their wedding guests after the
marriage ceremony has taken place (see picture)
confetti and advice : a figure of speech named ‘zeugma’ or ‘syllepsis’ is used
were thrown here, in which one single phrase or word joins different
parts of a sentence, which may actually befit only one
part. Zeugma means ‘yoking’.
farcical : extremely ludicrous
happy funeral : is an oxymoron, where contraries are yoked together to
describe the indescribable. Ironic comment about
marriage which may begin in joy and happiness but may
end in tears and sorrow.
religious wounding: the tense girls cannot make out their mothers laughing at
a shared secret. The ritual of marriage seems to be 71
The High Modernist, sanctioning a ‘deflowering’ of the virgins, ratified by the
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
society.
hurried towards : notice the shift in the scenery as they near urban
London habitation.
shuffling gouts of : the steam pouring from the spout of the engine (see
steam picture)
Poplar : A tall tree found in the North Temperate Zone. It is called
Chinar in North India (see picture)
Odeon : a movie theatre chain, popular in Britain (see picture)
Cooling Tower : heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat
to the atmosphere (see picture)
Pullman : a railway carriage with special amenities, designed by
George M. Pullman of America. During Larkin’s times,
these had gone out of fashion. The image adds to the
poem’s sense of an idyllic, static Old England (see
picture)
This frail travelling: being co-travellers in a journey. ‘Coincidenza’ in Italian,
coincidence is a transfer station in railroad travel. Larkin’s
“coincidence” may be an interlingual pun. Like both
“frail” and “traveling,” it may just be a way of naming the
brief encounter that the poem stages, between the speaker
and those he observes.
There swelled / : Larkin passes on from the particular to the universal;
A sense of falling, loaded with meanings and significations. Falling is a
like an arrow sensation that accompanies when the brake is applied to a
moving train. Sense of falling may be ‘Felix Culpa’, a
happy fall – a reference to the married couples’ future life.
Larkin creates a complex symbolic image into which we
might read overtones of fertility, aggression, joy, sadness,
and delayed consequences—all things often associated
with marriage. Highly sexualized image.

Cooling Tower Gouts of Steam Odeon

Pullman Bunting Poplars

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23.4.3 A Discussion Philip Larkin

The poem begins in a conversational mode by the poem’s narrator, by

commenting about his late start. He describes the scenery and smells of the
countryside and towns through which the largely empty train passes. The first
stanza is rich in alliteration used in phrases like sunlit Saturday, behind the backs
of houses etc. Images of excessive heat and smell also can be seen throughout.
The heat of the sultry afternoon is personified

“All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept

For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.”

In the second verse the train keeps a slow rhythmical movement towards the
South and inland; and the rural landscape of Lincolnshire is vividly described:
“Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle.” The adjective ‘short-shadowed’
subtly reminds us that it is still early afternoon and the sun is high in the sky. By
contrast the man-made polluted waterways are described in terms of disgust:
“Canals with floatings of industrial froth”. There is a further contrast between the
euphony of the ‘smell of grass’ and the cacophony of the ‘reek of buttoned
carriage cloth’. The train now reaches the outskirts of the town where it will
make its first stop. It is one of the ‘new’ towns built in post-war England. Larkin
dismisses it contemptuously as ‘nondescript’. Man’s pollution of the rural
environment is again harshly described in the phrase: “acres of dismantled cars”.

The train’s windows are open because of the heat, and he gradually becomes
aware of bustle on the platforms at each station, eventually realising that this is
the noise and actions of wedding parties that are seeing off couples who are
boarding the train.

The narrator seems almost irritated the wedding parties have interrupted his quiet
train journey through provincial England. “Wide farms went by, short shadowed
cattle and canals with floatings of industrial froth; a hothouse flashed uniquely”.
The wedding participants are described crudely whereas the passing urban
landscape is admired much more. At different stations different newly-weds
board the train dressed in wedding attire. They are waved off by well wishers.

Larkin is the detached observer who is at times sneering and mocking, especially
at the lurid and garish display of the wedding parties. He is initially scornful of
the wedding guests in their loud costumes; “girls in parodies of fashion”; he
lampoons the typical family; “mothers loud and fat and uncles shouting smut”.
He seems to itemize these sights to make them seem ridiculous and pitiable. The
cynical attitude of the poet is visible in the almost unkind description of the
young women. As a bachelor, he does not show any enthusiasm in the costume
and the colour scheme; he finds it rather offensive.

Telling phrases hint at his attitude to marriage calling it; “success so huge and
wholly farcical”; where ‘wholly’ could be substituted phonetically for “holy” and
this is perhaps deliberate. Oxymoronic phrases like “happy funeral” and
“religious wounding” support this idea.

Larkin offsets this view of landscape with the couples, fresh from their dramatic
day. They too contemplate the lives and the places they are soon to inhabit. It is
73
The High Modernist, as if Larkin can’t decide whether he loves the landscape or fears its crushing
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
blandness, and this must be what the couples are thinking too. This leit motif
manipulates the reader’s view of the marriages.

At the end of the poem he sums up his thoughts on the newly married couples,
the “frail travelling coincidence and what it held stood ready to be loosed with all
the power being changed can give.” He gives a sense of impending destiny. He
seems to think that this day is the sum total of the glory of marriage, by imposing
his own world view on what has been missed out. This is backed by the regrets
he invokes against marriage: “the others they never meet”, or “how their lives
would all contain this hour.”

The poem climaxes with a powerful enigmatic image: “a sense of falling, like an
arrow shower; sent out of sight somewhere becoming rain”. There is a twin motif
about love at work here, with the image of Cupid’s arrows contrasted against the
battleground of arrows being fired against Love itself. The rain belongs to
London and the hints at the bland reality of day to day life; it may also be a
symbol of fertility too.

The poem is bound to the here and now while longing for transcendent release.
There is a real paradox between the reality presented by the landscape and the
ideals represented by the couples and the final image. Larkin longs for the
abstraction of romance and perfect love, but he sees around him the oncoming
city splurge which counters the romanticism of the train environment he is
experiencing. The climax at the end seems to work against the surface cynicism
of Larkin’s tone as he experiences a tug for something more due to the
mesmerising occasion he witnesses.

Self-check Exercise III

1) Do you think that Larkin is critical about the appearance of the wedding
parties? Substantiate your answer.
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2) Describe the English landscape as Larkin describes it.
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3) Technical brilliance of Philip Larkin in ‘Whitsun Weddings’.
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 Philip Larkin
23.5 LET US SUM UP
So in this unit we have discussed Philip Larkin and two of his poems, ‘Church
Going’ and ‘Whitsun Weddings’. We have situated Philip Larkin as a
representative of postwar British society and also as an exponent of Movement
Poetry. We have seen how his poetry eschews the vagueness and complexities of
earlier Modernist writings and espouses rhythmic cadence and clarity of
traditional provincial poetry. We have seen his attitudes towards Church and
marriage as institutions. Larkin’s poems teach us the necessity of looking at
things not through rosy glasses of romanticism, but with wide open eyes of
realism. It tells us to be ‘less deceived’. It will be good for you to look around
and identify dead conventions which need to be eradicated from the society. After
all, the ultimate purpose of reading literature it to observe and be aware of our
surroundings. It will be good to read other poems of Larkin, which are easily
available as they are anthologized extensively in several volumes of poetry; they
are also available on the web. Recordings of Larkin’s readings of his poems are
available on the You Tube, and are a pleasure to listen to.

23.6 ANSWERS TO SELF-CHECK EXERCISES

Self-check Exercise I
1) The North Ship; The Less Deceived; Whitsun Weddings; High Windows.
2) At the Brynmor Jones Library in the University of Hull.
3) Thomas Hardy
4) All That Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71
5) New Lines Anthology (1956)
Self-check Exercise II
1) He lets the door thud shut, looks around, takes off the cycle-clips in
awkward reverence, runs the hand around the font, mounts the lectern and
reads from the scriptures and pronounces ‘here endeth’ louder than he
intended; signs the book and donates an Irish sixpence and reflects that the
place is not worth stopping for.
2) Narrator’s attitude is one of irreverence and scepticism. He does not
understand the allure of the church. He is bored and disinterested at times.
He is questioning, blasphemous, and mocks at certain practices. He is
unimpressed and ignorant.
3) He sees a rather bleak future for church. “A shape less recognisable each
week. A purpose more obscure.” The people who seek church in future
might be those who come for maintenance, or people who love ruins and
antiques, or Christmas addicts who love a season of gaiety and mirth. Or
they will be like the poet himself, bored or uninformed, coming there
because of their curiosity and because the silence of the place renders them
solace.
4) The title is ambiguous and can be interpreted in several ways: the act of
going to church, the customs that keep the church alive, visiting the church
as one would a theatre, and the disappearance of the church. 75
The High Modernist, Self-check Exercise III
Postmodenist and Recent
Poets
1) Yes, Larkin is critical about the appearance of the wedding parties. The
references to the grinning pomaded girls in parodies of fashion, heels and
veils; fathers with seamy foreheads wearing broad belts under their suits;
mothers loud and fat, uncle shouting smut, perms, nylon gloves and
jewellery substitutes which indicate the tawdry cheapness of the affair, the
lemons, mauves and olive-ochres, presenting jarring colour schemes, all
substantiate this.

2) Larkin describes both urban and rural landscapes and contrasts the sordid
with the idyllic. The backs of houses, blinding windscreens, smelly fish-
docks, canals floating with industrial froth, new and nondescript next town,
acres of dismantled cars, fields with building plots and Odeons are
contrasted with the river’s level drifting, wide farms, short-shadowed cattle,
uniquely flashing hothouse, hedges dipped with rose, smell of grass, and
poplars.

3) ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ is an ode consisting of eight verses, each ten lines
long making it one of his longest poems and rhyming a b a b c d e c d e.
This rhyme pattern captures the rhythmic sound of a steam-engine as it
gathers momentum every time it leaves a station. The truncated second line
in each stanza adds to the special rhythm of poem. The use of enjambement
or run-on lines and run-on verses creates a sense of relentless, onward
movement as the train with several linked carriages makes its way
southward by a ‘slow and stopping curve’.

76