TRIPLE
TIME:
‘PAST, PRESENT AND
FUTURE’
An overview of
Larkin’s view of time
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Synopsis:
All time-future,
present and past-governs life. Life is in function in the three elements of
time. Thus, life is a three-handed struggle for its existence. Life in
childhood or later looks at the future with all expectations and so on to be
fulfilled. In time’s flow, the future turns into the present, teaching man a
bitter lesson that all expectations in life never become reality. Man finds the
present dry and desolate when the luring future proves to be unpromising in
time’s flow. With the thought of the arrival of death in the future, time
teaches the lesson of mortality as well as futility inevitable in life. In the
present when all are contrary to all expectations, life seems be boring for
failures in life and fearful for the awareness of the approach of death. Life
is a journey to face the hard realities. The present slips into the past.
Larkin thinks that the past is past, gone and forgotten. The past has nothing
to do with life in the present. The past, the present and the past are the source
of pain and displeasure. Larkin turns pessimistic in life rooted in time with
its devastating forces and destroying powers. Life turns illusory in triple
time’s reign for multiple changes against wish from agnostic background.
Key Words:
Time,
future, present, past, life, illusion, struggle, dreams, expectations, hopes,
failures, disappointments, better, lesson, mortality, and futility, boring,
fear, pain, displeasure, pessimistic, agnostic
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Research Article:
All time-future, present and past-governs life
in its constant flux. Time is man’s element and an integral part of life. Life
is a voyage in the ocean of time. Life flows in time and it is therefore rooted
in time.
Larkin, both as man and poet, grows
conscious of time and observes the changes to occur in life. The concept of
time is evident and recurrent throughout his poetry. Time is the nucleus theme,
the theme of themes in rich variety. He makes a clear-cut distinction in
dealing with the concept of time. His poetic sensibility is shaped by his
constant preoccupation with time.
From the agnostic background, Larkin
believes in time’s “eroding agents”. He thinks that time in its flow does all
actions and functions, kaalah karothi kaaryaani. He concurs
with time, “Truly, our element is time” (CP, 106) as it conquers life by its
destroying powers and devastating forces.
Life is a journey on the evermoving wheels of time. Man
grows conscious of time with its endless movement and the changes it brings
about in life. Many poets look at time and have diverse perspectives about it.
Philip Larkin’s perspective is unique in his approach to time.
Larkin lives in the present, expecting the future to bring
the harbinger of good fortunes. He experiences all contrary to his expectations
in the present about the future. He loses all hopes about the future and thinks
that he is wrong in his expectancy,
“Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy,
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say”.
“Next, Please” (CP, 52)
Larkin looks at life
with all hopes, expectations, dreams and all that the future to fulfill as seen
from childhood. When he fails to fulfill his expectations and all those, he finds
the future uncertain and unpromising. The future turns into the present and he
finds in the present a series of clashes between what he expects and what
happens to him in all aspects of life. Then our life turns into a series of
missed opportunities. Hence life in the present is futile, empty, and desolate.
The phrase, “come and choose wrong” (TLD, 44) reflects man’s wrong choice that
leads us to the inevitable disappointment in life, “happiness to is going”
(TLD, 44).
The poet experiences all failures and disappointments in the
present and so he finds it dry and desolate. The unpromising future turns into
the present void of charm and meaning. In time’s flow the present turns into
the past as a store of bitter experiences.
In the present, the poet starts to look at the future with
no hopes or diminished hopes. He finds life prosaic and dull. He does not like
to recall the past with any sentimentality. His recalling of the experiences in
the past does not reflect an emotional union between the past and the present
in him. He has no emotional attachment to the past. In “Dockery and Son” he
speaks of his childhood. In a nostalgic
mood, he tries to see his classrooms at college but finds the doors locked. The
locked door is suggestive of his outside status. He recalls his experiences in
college with the dean and Dockery. Michael Schimidt is of the view that the
poet frequently “presents as an outsider, man without a past to be nostalgic
for and without much in the future… an isolated bachelor.”
Larkin recalls his experiences in the past without any
sentimentality. He treats it as a “forgotten boredom”. He expresses the same
view slightly differently as the “unspent” “I Remember, I Remember” (TLD,38).
In the poem, “Lines on Young Lady’s Photograph Album”, the
poet comments on his girlfriend’s family album. The photos in the past mark a
contrast with life in the present. Life in the reign of time as witnessed changes
in the album against one’s wish. The relation between the past and the present:
“the gap from eye to page”, clearly visible. It is “a past that no one can
share” that hurts the viewers in the present as there is a striking difference
between the photo in the past and the girl in the present,
That this
is a real girl in a real place,
…
…. … …
Or is it just the past? Those flowers that gate
Simply by being over you
Contract my heart by looking out
of date.
‘Lines on Young Lady’s Photograph
Album’ TLD, 13
The gap between the photo in the past and the girl in the
present leaves the viewers to “mourn” in the future too,
In short, a past that no one now
can share,
No matter whose your future;
calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and
you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years
go by.
‘Lines on Young Lady’s
Photograph Album, TLD,14
There is a comment on a transformation
in the name after her marriage. The maiden name before her marriage has nothing
to do with the changed name in the present. Her maiden name is for “what we
feel now about you then” (TNS, 23). The maiden name is connected to “her beauty
and youth” in the past, marking a contrast with name transformed.
Larkin from his agnostic background firmly believes in time and
its ceaseless flow to turn the future into the present and the present into the
past, “a past that no one now can share” (CP, 78). The past is past, gone, dead,
and forgotten in the eternal flux of time.
Time is not cyclic as in “Next, Please”, “its/No sooner
present than it turns to past / Right to the last” (CP, 52). In time’s flow he
realizes that the future is unpromising, the present is dry and desolate and
the past forgotten boredom. He treats the past, the present and the future,
triple time as the three-fold illusion.
Larkin juxtaposes
past, present, and future as mutually exclusive concepts. He treats the three
elements as distinct parts of time. Time is a destroyer as it has annihilating
powers to bring about changes in life against one’s wishes. Once time elapsed
and passed will never be repeated or regained. For Eliot and Bergson, time is
both the creator and the destroyer as the past enlivens the present and
modifies the future:
Time
present, time past
Are both
perhaps present in time future?
And time
future contained in time past.
“Burnt
Norton” (FQ, 13)
The present contains
both the past and the future as Lord Krishna counsels Arjuna,
Time past
and time future
What might
have been and what has been
Point to
one end, which is always present
“Burnt Norton” (FQ, 41)
For Eliot, the past
is not dead. The past is present as Time is cyclic and past is enlivened in the
eternal flow of time:
You shall
not think the past is finished
Or ‘the
future before us’
“The Dry
Salvages” (FQ, 41)
Eliot believes in the
sense of unity of the present, the past and the future in multiplicity. The
beginning that leads to end marks the beginning,
What we
call the beginning is often the end
And make
an end is to make a beginning.
“Little
Gidding” (FQ, 58)
Eliot asserts the
unity of all the three units: past, present and the future, and believes in the
concept: “The end is where we start from” like Bergson who says that the sense
of continuity and unity is evident between the past, the present and the future
as “unity within multiplicity”.1
Eliot treats time as an
eternal present. Only through time, time
is conquered but for Larkin, only through time or in time, life is conquered
and made mortal because time advances life to death to put an end to life. Man
exists temporarily in human time and dies not to exist again as per the
Christian idea of rebirth or renewal. In time’s flow life traverses to death
according to Larkin.
…
… it goes
And leaves
what something hidden from us chose
And age,
and then the only end of age.
“Dockery
and son” (CP, 152)
Larkin grows conscious of the approach of death in time’s
ceaseless movement. The future will bestow on him age and death, ‘the only end
of age.’ He looks at future with the sense sadness and uncertainty. Life can
never escape the chains of time in its movement. Life journeys through the
future to turn into the present. The present invariably turns into the past as life
is rooted in time.
Larkin sees the past, the present and
the future as distinct elements and discrete units as he finds them mutually
exclusive but not mutually oblivious though he feels that life is rooted in
time. Thus, he believes that life exists in a linear-time dimension,
Days
are where we live.
They
come; they wake us
Time
and time over.
“Days” (CP,
67)
Time flows endlessly
turning our lives transient. Time goes on and we live in its domain,
Whether
or not we use it, it goes
And
leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And
age, and then the only end of age.
In time’s flux, man’s life ultimately advances to culminate
in mortality. According to Larkin trees unlike man have restorative power.
Trees put on tender leaves and shed them every year to restore by means of
their restorative power:
The trees are coming
into leaf
Like something almost
being said;
The recent buds relax
and speed,
Their greenness is a
kind of grief.
“The
Trees” (CP, 166)
The
life of is a journey in the domain of time to mark a difference from that of
trees of restorative power. Life advances from birth to youth, middle age, old-age,
decrepitude and ultimately culminates in death because “life is slow dying”
(TWW, 11) as the sign of mortality in the reign of time,
Hours
giving evidence
Or
birth, advance
On
death equally slowly.
“Nothing to
be said” (CP, 138).
Time moves endlessly
like the train, the wind or the living river in its irreversible motion and
advances life from birth to growth, decline and ultimately makes it culminate
in death to mark mortality. Larkin grows conscious of the arrival or approach of
death in the future. In time’s flow, he finds the present impoverished and the
future blighted. Michael Schimidt says, “Larkin juxtaposes impoverished present
and blighted future – and death.”2
Death is the end of
life. Larkin has firm belief that the future in his life will bestow on him, the
end of life in the eternal flux of time. Life is mortal for him but not for
poets like Browning, Donne, Eliot, and Bergson life continues even after death.
For them, death is the beginning of spiritual life. In Eliot’s view:
We die
with the dying:
See they
depart, we go with them.
We are
born constant with the dead:
“Little
Gidding”, (FQ, 58)
What we
call the beginning is often the end
And to
make an end is to make a beginning
The end is
where we start from.
“Little
Gidding”, (FQ, 58)
For Larkin, life is
transitory and man lives with the consciousness of the inevitable approach of
death. In this respect, Larkin is akin to Wolfe who says, “The mystery of
strange million-visage time haunts us with the briefness of our days…
transience of our existence.”14 Larkin wakes up to the consciousness
of death more in his old age than in middle age as expressed in “Aubade” which
was written in his old age,
“Most
things may never happen: this one will”
“Aubade” (CP, 208)
Time has dramatic
function in bringing about changes in life that traverses in its reign from
birth to death to turn mortal on one hand and futile on the other when man
fails to fulfill his promises, leading to futility and nullity.
All time – the past, the present and the future – brings no
comfort. As P. R. King says, “… We are also time’s accomplices in the sense
that we ourselves employ time as an instrument with which to deceive
ourselves….”4 The poem, “Triple Time” presents the fact that all
time – the past, the present and the future – being a source of disappointment
and discomfort, serves as “a three-fold illusion”5. Here Larkin
seems to echo Hume’s theory: “time is evil and illusory”6.
“Triple
Time” presents the fact that all time – the past, the present and the future –
being a source of disappointment and discomfort, serves as “a three-fold
illusion”5. Here Larkin seems to echo Hume’s theory: “time is evil
and illusory”6. Time which serves as a three-fold illusion is
recurrent in Larkin’s poetry.
“Triple Time” also presents Larkin’s attitude towards
time. The dreariness and emptiness of
the present are evoked by the “empty-street” and “indistinct” air. The present is “A time traditionally soured/
A time unrecommended by event” (TLD, 35) as our expectations go wrong in
reality. We think of the future to be the harbinger of good fortunes. We hope
that the future, “adult enterprise” (TLD, 35) will be successful in making our
dreams true but fail miserably. The present “on another day will be the past”
(TLD, 35), a frustrated past: “A valley cropped up fat neglected chances”. We
witness the “inevitable decrease” (TLD, 35) and decline in our lives.
The poem “Triple Time” states the fact that neither the past
nor the future bestows on our present the sense of meaning because time turns
our lives into futility. Then we feel life is illusory as it is a series of
illusions. Life turns to be the illusion of illusions. He treats life as a
three-fold illusion result of illusionary nature of triple time. He feels no
attachment with the past that is past and uneventful.
Larkin’s idea of time
entails a great mystery and reflects the fact that the secrets and wonders of
time remain unknown. Time has attracted many literary minds for ages in
different ways. How to measure, how it moves and brings about changes; and how
it shatters our desires, aims, dreams and pretensions in our lives are
significant factors to be discussed.
TRIVENI, December 2023
Works Cited:
Larkin, Collected Poems :Philip Larkin, London, The Marvell Press, 1988
………. The North Ship (TNS), London. Fortune Press,
1945
……….The Less Deceived (TLD), Yorkshire, Marvell Press, 1955
…….…The Whitsun Weddings (TWW), London, Faber Faber, 1964
.……….High Windows (HW), London: Faber Faber, 1974
1. Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature, (London:University
of California Press, 1974) 15
2.
Michel Schmidt, 50 Modern British
Poets, (London:
Heinman, 1979) 334.
3.
Ibid , 334
4.
P. R. King, Nine contemporary
poets, (:
Methuen, 1979) 7.
5.
Ibid 7
6.
Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature, (London: University of California
Press, 1974) 31.
Published: Triveni 2023, Jan-Mar.
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