An Arundel tomb by Philip Larkin (love can survive, love fulfilled, love changes your life) Flashcards
Ekphrastic poem “effigy”
art can be memorialised by art
Tomb “stiffened” “stone” “rigidly persisting”
stone figure as permanent physical manifestations of eternal love
“supine stationary voyage”
fixed in space but still moving in time
stone figures have “persisted” through “lengths and breadths of time.”
Enjambment
extended vowel sounds
“sharp tender shock”
oxymoronic
“snow fell, undated”
natural seasonal markers emphasise contrast between stasis of tomb and movement of time + natural world around
“birdcalls” juxtaposed with “bone riddled ground”
contrasting birth and death
perpetual uninterrupted circularity of time
“what will survive of us is love”
last line
aphoristic (general truth)
“lie in stone”
lie has double meaning suggesting that this image of their love is one which is false and merely shown by observers
- to be supine
- to deceive
“just a detail friends would see”
never meant to be remembered
“prolong ¦ the latin names around the base”
yet come to become “blazon” (defined characteristics) even though the earl and countess didn’t intend this to be the case.
“almost instinct almost true”
repetition of “almost” clouds any sense of certainty
“time has transfigured them into¦ untruth”
time has defaced their true love
“faces blurred”
they lack identity
“an Arundel tomb”
- indefinite article removes specificity
- generalised tomb
- erodes identity
