One can find from reading only a handful of Philip Larkin’s poetry that the man had a rather negative view of the world and distain for many aspects of life. It is a popular idea that artists sacrifice their joy and innocence to offer the world their thought-filled words and work. As they venture down into the darkest caverns of the human heart, concern their minds with heavy matters, and seek answers to unanswerable questions, they lose the luster of life. Their light becomes dark, joy is quieted, and contentment simply does not exist. Larkin appears to be a principle example of this. His work demonstrates hours of pensive silence, contemplating the deepest questions of humanity; and with those hours he provides a few lines of partial conclusions for his readers digest. Larkin’s poem, “Wants” is the expression of his findings. However, “Wants” by itself is rather ambiguous. It is a parable of the discoveries he made while in deep contemplation, and it can be interpreted by comparing it to his poem, “Aubade.” While “Wants” is the expression of his findings, “Aubade” is the manifestation of them.
“Wants” opens with an expression of desire, “Beyond all this, a wish to be alone.” It is evident that the speaker has stumbled upon something grievous and pressing, although he is not clear what it is. Through the first stanza, he lists human activities that should hold within them meaning and enjoyment—jewels of life that should have value. However, there is emptiness in his voice, and he dismisses the jewels as valueless. The stanza is wrapped in a desire for escape, and concluded with the same expression, “Beyond all this, a wish to be alone.”
The second stanza begins with the same phrase reworded, “Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.” In this stanza, he lists actions by which humanity tries to ease and counter the sting of death; “life insurance”, “fertility rites”, “aversion of the eyes”. Throughout, the speaker portrays the same empty and hopeless voice. It is a constant voice, unchanged from the first stanza to the end. He opens and closes both stanzas with a desire for oblivion and intentional loneliness. It is clear that his pensive hours led him to conclude that he needed to escape—to physically isolate himself, and grow mentally absent. The reason for this conclusion is evident in the lines of “Aubade.”
One can understand a lot about a person’s heart by observing their actions. Larkin’s work, “Aubade,” is a direct depiction of the speaker’s actions after the discoveries he made and implied in “Wants.” This poem has the same voice as the first—hopeless and void of life. It opens with “I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.” This is the physical and mental manifestation of escape. He physically escapes the world by sitting alone in the dark; waking at an hour when everyone else sleeps. He mentally escapes the world by consuming alcohol to a point where his mind is not fully present. Then he proceeds to explain the conclusion of his findings in lines 4 through 7: “Then I see what’s really always there: unresting death…making all thought impossible but how and when I shall myself die.” It is finally clear that the meaning behind the parable-poem “Wants” is that death is inevitable and there is nothing for him after it comes. He fears its coming, and the only way to be rid of his fear is through oblivion in isolation.
In “Wants,” the speaker listed what he believed were actions by which man tries to ease the pain of death. He expands upon this list in “Aubade,” focusing on religion and the “specious stuff” that people say. He explains that these attempts are unhelpful and only serve to increase his fear, and thus, his need to escape. The pleasurable activities he listed and dismissed in the first stanza of ‘Wants’ are those that he cannot appreciate because his “mind blanks at the glare…[of] the total emptiness for ever, the sure extinction.” Further, he explains that the realization of death’s certainty “rages out in furnace-fear when we are caught without people or drink.” Larkin’s conclusion from “Wants” is evident through “Aubade:” without escape of some sort, the fear of death overpowers all the beauty that life has to offer, to the point where life is no longer enjoyable. Life goes on, but for Larkin it is all vain. This is what he offers to humanity through the hours he spent in deep thought with his loathsome pen. No hope, no light, no life.
January 29, 2018
Works Cited:
Larkin, Philip. “A Study of Reading Habits.” Philip Larkin Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, p. 102.