Philip Larkin , what an arsehole.

[Pickman's model]

Bit unnecessary

Not really

 

[Diamond]

In keeping with a Larkin thread, I suppose.

Maybe you're the poet Pickman's....?

 

[Pickman's model]

In keeping with a Larkin thread, I suppose.

Maybe you're the poet Pickman's....?

Oh not at all. I dabble a bit, like so many other urbs, but I wouldn't call myself a poet

 

[billy_bob]

A very, very basic point here - morality is a variable, not a constant.

It changes over time from era to era.

This vogue for doing a number on long dead artists because they don't conform to how you expect you and your friends to behave now will eventually lead to the more or less total rejection of huge swathes of past culture. And further, if you set that train in motion, it will simply do the same to your current idols in fairly short order. It's a barbaric attitude.

I think you're falling into the same absolutist trap that you're accusing others of here, just in the other direction. I agree with you that just casting out artists of the past and scrubbing their names from the history books is a bleak attitude, and not necessary. But I also think it's unnatural - a bit psychopathic, even - to be able to dissociate completely from someone's cuntery just because they created something beautiful or inspiring. I won't necessarily stop appreciating the art of people who turn out to be terrible people, but it will impact how I see that art to some extent.

 

[Diamond]

Another corker

Love Songs In Age​

She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till, in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood

Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,

The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.

 

[killer b]

I think it's great that Larkin was an odious fuck and that he produced some of the most luminous and human pieces of writing of the 20th century tbh. I think it's important to know that these two things can exist together, that humans are complex and conflicted beings, and there's few more stark contrasts to show this to us.

 

[hitmouse]

i think what you're driving at is that if the views expressed in (for example) the famous they fuck you up poem were put in the mouth of a character in a play or a novel you might be able to argue that it's a point of view and not necessarily one that the author holds, but when there is no fictional intermediary then it's hard to see any other possible reading other than 'the views expressed here are the author's views'

Maybe, but not exactly, like obviously poets can do sarcasm, ambiguity, persona, satire and all the rest of it as much as anyone else, probably. I think it's more that a good poem, like a good novel or play, when it works well, is an act of communication, one that has the potential to take you out of your normal way of seeing things and see the world through someone else's eyes for a bit. And sometimes what's being communicated is wonderful and inspiring and uplifting or whatever, and sometimes it's just "I hate women" (or whoever), and quite often it can be a mixture of those things. But it feels a bit weak to me to say "you don't need to concern yourself with the views of the person who's trying to make you see the world their way", if that makes sense.

 

[xenon]

that Coleridge, you know he left his wife and kids. like literally just left them to it.

 

[Diamond]

Shelley was a cad too. Also Byron.

Burn their filth

 

[killer b]

Burn their filth

is anyone saying this or anything like it?

 

[hitmouse]

I'm definitely not going to send a christmas card to Larkin, Coleridge or Byron this year now.

 

[BigMoaner]

He should have been cancelled.

 

[BigMoaner]

Prob the greatest poet of the 20th century.

 

[BigMoaner]

I think it's great that Larkin was an odious fuck and that he produced some of the most luminous and human pieces of writing of the 20th century tbh. I think it's important to know that these two things can exist together, that humans are complex and conflicted beings, and there's few more stark contrasts to show this to us.

If everyone were paradigms of moral purity, people would end up getting bored and end up getting pissed in their gardens and throwing plant pots at their neighbours.

 

[killer b]

If everyone were paradigms of moral purity, people would end up getting bored and end up getting pissed in their gardens and throwing plant pots at their neighbours.

right. but it's ok to talk about great artist's shit sides without people steaming into the thread wanking on about 'cancelling' too isn't it?

 

[Pickman's model]

Maybe, but not exactly, like obviously poets can do sarcasm, ambiguity, persona, satire and all the rest of it as much as anyone else, probably. I think it's more that a good poem, like a good novel or play, when it works well, is an act of communication, one that has the potential to take you out of your normal way of seeing things and see the world through someone else's eyes for a bit. And sometimes what's being communicated is wonderful and inspiring and uplifting or whatever, and sometimes it's just "I hate women" (or whoever), and quite often it can be a mixture of those things. But it feels a bit weak to me to say "you don't need to concern yourself with the views of the person who's trying to make you see the world their way", if that makes sense.

There's a world of difference between dismissing an author's views and saying these are likely the author's views

 

[hitmouse]

There's a world of difference between dismissing an author's views and saying these are likely the author's views

Oh, definitely. And then saying "these are likely not actually the author's views" is a different thing again.

 

[Diamond]

Christ - what a dismal approach Pickman's and hitmouse favour.

 

[hitmouse]

Christ - what a dismal approach Pickman's and hitmouse favour.

All I've said is that I'm not going to send Larkin or Coleridge an xmas card! You can send them one if you want but I don't think you're that likely to get one back.

 

[hitmouse]

Going back to that Barney Farmer quote I posted over on the other thread -
"To hear some clowns culture exists in a separate realm, a sealed domain,
enter as rational decision makers, coldly engage, then depart, the same."
Is that what a non-dismal approach looks like?

 

[Diamond]

Broadly speaking, my view is that the appreciation of art should not turn on an accounting of morals.

That is a narrow, rather Victorian approach that, unfortunately, seems to be very much at home in the creeping Puritanism of 2021.

 

[xenon]

Has Larkin been struck off any syllabus though? I am not one much for poetry but quite enjoyed, well not enjoyed exactly but appreciated a lot of the Whitsun weddings when studying it for A-level English in the 90s. Are the youth today denied such pleasure because of political correctness or something?

 

[andysays]

A very, very basic point here - morality is a variable, not a constant.

It changes over time from era to era.

This vogue for doing a number on long dead artists because they don't conform to how you expect you and your friends to behave now will eventually lead to the more or less total rejection of huge swathes of past culture. And further, if you set that train in motion, it will simply do the same to your current idols in fairly short order. It's a barbaric attitude.

I can't really comment on Larkin's poetry, other than to say that his Witsun Weddings didn't do anything for me when I had to read them as part of English Lit O level.

But this old guff about morality being variable really won't work as a defence of Larkin, whose attitude and privately expressed opinions were reprehensible even at the time he was holding and expressing them.

 

[killer b]

But this old guff about morality being variable really won't work as a defence of Larkin, whose attitude and privately expressed opinions were reprehensible even at the time he was holding and expressing them.

which even Larkin himself knew very well, hence none of it being published in his lifetime. maybe he was concerned he might be cancelled.

 

[Pickman's model]

Broadly speaking, my view is that the appreciation of art should not turn on an accounting of morals.

That is a narrow, rather Victorian approach that, unfortunately, seems to be very much at home in the creeping Puritanism of 2021.

For the terminally stupid all i've said is that where there's no fictional narrator, no one standing between the reader and the words, what's said in poetry is likely the author's own views. I've not taken a position on these views. You've offered no actual counterargument.

 

[killer b]

Hey Diamond, I see you liked my post for some reason: fwiw, I think it was a good thing for Larkin if fear of being cancelled is the reason he didn't publish the racist doggrell. I think it's fine for openly being a massive racist to have social & reputational consequences, and I'm glad for the sake of his art that Larkin was aware of these consequences.