AUBADEBY

PHILIP LARKIN(1922-1985)

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT PHILIP LARKIN

1922, Coventry, England. Received his education at home till he was 8. In 1940, started his education at Oxford Uni. Worked as librarian in Uni. Of Hull in 1955 till his death. He is a Post-war poet. He was described as "the saddest heart in the post-war

supermarket“ and He himself said that deprivation for him was what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

He was influenced by W.H. Auden, W. B. Yeats in his early works then was highly impacted by Thomas Hardy.

He was a one of the central poets of the Movement : a group of poets in 1950’s who believed that intelligence and skilled craftsmanship rather than the personal were the source of true poetry.

He was typical of the “angry young man” of the 1950s, alienated from past and present, dissatisfied with tradition.

He died in on Dec,2nd 1985 (my birthday)

BELIEFS OF THE MOVEMENT AND ITS DECLINE

in 1950s English poets moved away from Modernism and Neo-Romanticism.

Doubted the values of traditional myths and classical literary references.

Rooting their poems in the everyday life. Using the everyday language which is not removed

from ordinary people. Rejecting the traditions about everything. Using anti-romantic and sardonic tone. The poetry was featured as : bringing together the

whole man, intellect, emotions, sense and all.

LARKIN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD POETRY AND THE

CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS VERSE

Reaction against Neo-Romanticism and the naïve political enthusiasm of the 1930s poets.

Satiric commentary on twentieth century life full of melancholy and also urban and suburban life.

avoiding obscurity, elitism, and poetic impersonality of the Modernist tradition preferring the traditional metrical and clarity and transparency.

Rejecting the contemporary literary fashion and seeking to write a poetry that can be read by the average reader.

Utilizing the colloquial everyday language and focusing on everyday details of life ,the subject matter, as readers no more want poems about : philosophers, paintings, novelists, art galleries, mythology foreign cites or poems.

a poem is a verbal device can be used to preserve an experience indefinitely by reproducing it in whoever read(s) the poem.

He has no didactic or political purposes. He retains the things he has seen, experienced or felt using two

kinds of stimulus: How beautiful that is or How true that is.

LARKIN’S POETRY CONTENT AND THEMES

His poetry is strongly connected to urban life of 1950s and 60s. Uses the middle-class consciousness as the prism through which

to see the world. Focusing on false hope of commercialism. The uncertainty of future. The alienation of the individual. The disillusion of unfulfilled dreams. His themes are directly linked to the world he observes and his

personal response to it. Skepticism as questioning rather than accepting life. Personal relationships. A realistic observer of people and places and time. As he dislikes

the gloomy life of urban and depicting the rural as pure and beautiful.

commercialism and advertising. Contemporary way of life (Routine). The ambiguous treatment of religion.

NOW LET’S WATCH AND LISTEN TO LARKIN'S POEM

AUBADE

WHAT IS “AUBADE”

An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn.

1ST STANZA

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dreadOf dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

2ND STANZA The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

—The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climbClear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

3RD STANZA This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeingThat this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

4TH STANZAAnd so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages outIn furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.Death is no different whined at than withstood.

5TH STANZA

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaringIntricate rented world begins to rouse.The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

If only one germ of Cholera keep breeding continuously, it will cover the whole globe only in 30 hours and then you know what will happen *_*, no human beings nor animals will stay alive.

If only one bacteria of the “ Rapid Reproduction Type” keep reproducing new bacteria using “Binary Fission” process, in two days the number of bacteria will be septillion (1024) or we can say “number 1 with 24 zeros beside it”.

If only one couple of house flies keep breeding with no decease of the new generation , only in one year their number will be six trillion (6000,000,000,000).

If only one couple of Aphid “type of fleas feeding on plants” keep breeding without dying, only in one summer it will produce approximately 822 thousand trillion Aphids (822000,000,000,000,000) in which they will weight more than (822,000) tons that is more than the weight of all human beings together who live on earth.

SO, IF THIS IS THE CASE OF ONLY FOUR LEAVING CREATURES IF THEY STAY ALIVE!

IMAGINE WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF THE OTHER CREATURES AND AMONG THEM

“HUMAN BEINGS” STAY ALIVE, YOU DECIDE!!!

I SAY WE WILL NOT FIND A CLASSROOM FOR THE NEXT LECTURE