Lines on a Ladys Photograph Album - Larkin Flashcards
when was this poem published
Published in 1964
What is happening?
Philip Larkin, an older man, is examining photos of a younger woman (He is essentially flicking through them as the poem continues)
Themes:
- The male gaze
- He is criticising the woman for making his gaze
- Plays into gender roles
- Memory —> Photograph shows former beauty but points at the inevitability of death —> Love, however, is universal
Themes in each paragraph?
Stanza 1 and 2: Excited about looking at the woman
Stanza 3: The photos are testing his control (a sense of jealousy is evoked here)
Stanza 4: Memory and Photography –> hates photography
Stanza 1 and 2: Excited about looking at the woman
- “Too much confectionary + I choke on such nutritious images” —> infantilises man but also demonstrates his ecstatic reaction.
- “My swivel eye hunger from pose to pose” (Zoomorphic language) —> Hunger promotes a primal sense + “swivel eye” imposes a sense of agency (it’s as if the man is out of control)
Stanza 3: The photos are testing his control (a sense of jealousy is evoked here
- “From every side, you strike at my control” —> Her posing is striking at him (causing him to act a certain way)
- He sees that there were a number of “disquieting” or disconcerting “chaps” or young men, who stood around her in her youth. He speaks of them as “loll[ing]” as if they are listless
Stanza 4:
- In the fourth line, he expresses his distress over the wonders and disappointments inherent to the art of photography. It is an “art” like no other. It can be given so much, but leave equal amounts, if not more, to the imagination.
- He criticises the photography —> ‘faithful and disappointing’ —> shows bleak existence
- Photography is easily able to record “dull days” in all their dullness. The art also equally captures “hold-it” poses and fake smiles. It does not hide “blemishes” on the face or messed up clothes. Everything in a photo is wonderfully and terribly as it was when it happened.
Stanza Five
On the less satisfying side of the equation, photography is also able to obscure the real. Sometimes it shows something to be one way when it definitely wasn’t and isn’t. The speaker gives the example of a “disinclined” cat and a “doubled” chin. In line three the speaker directs his words to the listener’s own chin. In reality, it is not doubled, it is a graceful part of her face.
The final line explains more clearly what it is about these photos that are so endearing to the speaker. They show him the “real girl in a real place.” He is able to get an account of her life he has never had.
Stanza Six
He begins the sixth stanza by exclaiming over how “empirically true” the photos make her life seem. There, in his hands, is the evidence of all the events she has told him about and the things he’s learned about her.
The speaker wonders why these images impact his heart so deeply in the following lines. At first, it seems like the whole image is important to him. But that’s not the case. He thinks instead that he feels “lacerate[d]” by the “parks and motors” because the listener is also looking out from the “date.” The past is usually nothing to him, and if anyone else were in these photos, it would remain as nothing.
Stanza Seven
The speaker continues to philosophize on the past and what it means to be a part, but also not a part of it. One is excluded from another’s past moments.
But, the past is also separate. Due to its inability to become the present, one is able to move on. It is not going to return with a new agency and “call on us to justify / Our grief.” Whatever happened, happened. One can only react to it in the present.
Stanza Eight
In the eighth stanza, the speaker concludes the thought he began in the seventh. He is experiencing pain over the photo album.
He feels himself drawing closer to the listener but at the same time, there are vast gaps from picture to picture and the space between his eye and the page. There is a lot of missing information.
Stanza Nine
In the final stanza of ‘Lines On A Young Lady’s Photograph Album’ the speaker expresses his deepest regret while looking over the photos. After initially pleasing him to no end, they bring him into a solemn state. He knows the past she lived, “no one now can share.” It is locked away from him, or from anyone else she might share her future with.
The photos contain her in the past, but the future holds her as well. She is there, in his future, in the world’s future, and he’s only planning on getting to know her better. She is going to get “clearer as the years go by.”
‘Smiles as frauds’
The juxtaposition of these adjs stresses the contradiction with photography - we want a photo to record a moment but are then disappointed when it also records the ‘dull(ness)’ and ‘blemishes’
No photo hides the fakery of a smile made just for the camera
Our grief, however hard we yowl across
The gap from eye to Page.(
Onomatopoeic, animalistic imagery, human instinct consumed by sense of grief and loss to time. Intense emotion, profound grief causes reason to leave us. Photos are powerful, cathartic objects - don’t judge us.
“that is is a real girl in a real place” (Lines)
Repetition
-emphasises that photography captures honesty of the moment
-“candour” of women is her grace
-shift in time, focus is on art form of photography and his tone softens and become less lustful and more appreciative
