Off the Plinth

The most potent cocktail is one dram of anger, three drams of self-righteousness and a dash of ignorance, shaken violently, not stirred. The imbiber experiences a pleasing sense of moral superiority and limitless power accompanied by the guilt-free willingness to use it. The critics who swarmed over the reputation of Philip Larkin after the posthumous publication of his letters and Andrew Motion’s biography were unmistakably under its influence. It’s easy for me to think of Larkin as a difficult older brother I can’t help but love and admire, one I choose to judge not by his least admirable moments but by a lifetime of sustained poetic achievement. To say Larkin, in personal correspondence, made racist and sexist remarks, is a fair and accurate observation. He said things I can’t imagine saying. But to conclude that his poetry should, as a result, be dismissed, is stupid. Larkin was attacked, often viciously, for reasons of political correctness having nothing to do with artistry.

Thanks to Peter Nicholson, an Australian poet and columnist at 3 Quarks Daily, for supplying me with links to his work, in particular “Philip Larkin: Hull-Haven,” a column he published at that blog in April. Peter says more persuasively what I have been trying to say:

“Pulling people off their plinth is a lifetime task for minor minds that never get around to understanding that some writers say more, and more memorably, than they can ever do. Also, they don’t seem to understand that writers are just like everyone else, only with the inexplicable gift, which the said writer understands least of all, knowing that the gift, bestowed by the Muse, can depart in high dudgeon without notice. Larkin knew this, and lamented the silences of his later years.”

Peter, in an especially useful passage, contrasts the work of Larkin and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Fortunately, no one is compelled to embrace one of these poets while rejecting the other. I love both, and so, clearly, does Peter:

“Hopkins makes us feel the beauty of nature, he makes us confront God’s apparent absence in the dark, or terrible,’ sonnets. It is committed writing in the best sense. The language heaves into dense music, sometimes too dense. But you always feel engaged by his best poetry. Larkin is dubious about the whole life show. The world is seen from behind glass, whiskey to hand, or in empty churches, or from windswept plains. Sediment, frost or fog lapping at football.”

Well done, Peter. As a bonus, Peter includes “Larkin Letters,” the first part of a two-part poem he wrote in 1993, at the time of the Larkin brouhaha. Again, well done. And, in a recent e-mail, a poet in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rob Mackenzie, told me Larkin appears to be undergoing a revival of appreciation in Great Britain.