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A man apart
Revealing words
Poetry in motion
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A miserable childhood, an all-consuming fear of death, a colourless post-war Britain, it's no wonder that Larkin’s deeply melancholic writing have made him posthumously one of the most psychoanalysed poets.
Uncannily, Sigmund Freud’s description of the personality of the artist seems particularly apt for Philip Larkin. Artists are seen as introvert and close to neurosis. They are motivated by an almost overwhelming desire to win power, honour, fame, wealth and a love of women. Critically, they lack the means to obtain their desires, sublimating primary instincts such as sexual satisfaction. It is certainly true that Larkin let his relationships drift to prevent them getting in the way of his writing, even though real life was his subject.
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm
I know this is paradiseEveryone old has dreamed of all their lives —
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side …
Others view Larkin’s work and life as an expression of his repressed, miserable childhood and an Oedipus complex. His father was strict, cold and domineering and his marriage drab and loveless, leading Larkin to conclude that man hands on misery to man.
Could this be behind 'This Be The Verse':
They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
they may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
and add some extra, just for you.
His mother's power was more subversive, her dociility and helplessness making it impossible for Larkin to turn away. He outlived her by just eight years, her death robbing him of his ability to write. Life became 'fear all the way' and his life spun out of control.
Structural analysis of Larkin’s work represents it as the conflict of his ego (the organised descendant of the conscious mind), id (the unorganised descendant of the unconscious mind) and super ego (the part of the self-observing, self critical part of the ego, which has internalised the parent’s views).
The debate is set to run and run.