Philip Larkin: A05 Critics Flashcards
Andrew Motion: ‘Larkin began to realise that what he valued in Hardy …’
‘Larkin began to realise that what he valued in Hardy was the importance attached to suffering’
Gillian Steinberg: ‘Philip Larkin’s life and work resemble Thomas Hardy in many ways: …’
‘Philip Larkin’s life and work resemble Thomas Hardy in many ways: their shared poetic styles including regular stanzaic patterns, themes of lost love and passing time, their frequent focus on ordinary men and women as well as their own relatively solitary lives’
Bryan Appleyard: ‘Larkin is a hopeless…’
‘Larkin is a hopeless and inflexible pessimist’
Bryan Appleyard: ‘Larkin is an advocate of…’
‘[Larkin] is an advocate of misanthropy and pessimism’
Misanthropy –> Meaning hatred of mankind.
Philip Larkin himself on his love of the quotidian and the rejection of the pretentiousness and elitism of the Modernists:
‘I don’t want to transcend the commonplace; I love the commonplace; I lead a very commonplace life; commonplace things are lovely to me’.
Andrew Motion: ‘Larkin’s main fear was that if he got married…’
‘Larkin’s main fear was that if he got married, he would end up imitating his parents’ misery’
David Timms: ‘Larkin’s poetry as a whole sees life as a…’
‘Larkin’s poetry as a whole sees life as a BLEAK, SOMETIMES HORRIFYING BUSINESS’
King: Larkin’s work is “a poetry of disappointment, of the destruction of…’
‘A poetry of disappointment, of the destruction of romantic illusions, of man’s defeat by time and his own inadequacies, as well as a study of how dreams, hopes, and ideals are relentlessly diminished by the realities of life’
Andrew Motion: Larkin’s father ‘had passed on to his son…’
Larkin’s father ‘had passed on to his son a set of opinions about women which mingled uncertainty with dislike’.
Andrew Motion on the significance of death for Larkin: ‘Death, in Larkin’s view, is an…’
‘Death, in Larkin’s view, is an utterly comfortless blank. The FREQUENCY and FORCEFULNESS with which he envisages its approach go a long way towards explaining why he is so often regarded as AN UNRESERVEDLY PESSIMISTIC POET’.
James Booth: [Larkin is a] celebrant of …’
‘Larkin is a celebrant of SOCIAL RITUALS, AN AFFECTIONATE OBSERVER of contemporary life’.
Andrew Motion: ‘Larkin was a person who had profound and …’
‘Larkin was a person who had profound and unforgettable things to say about common experience.’
