Synopsis
Time is man’s element as it flows ceaselessly to bring about changes in life. For Larkin, time is a double-edged weapon. It has destroying forces and devastating powers to bring changes in life against human wish. In time’s flow, life, that starts with birth and traverses through childhood, youth, manhood, old age, and decrepitude to culminate in death, turns mortal on one side. It turns life futile or void and fills life with disappointments and frustrations by shattering dreams, expectations, hopes, wants etc in its flow. It has a dual goal as the double-edged weapon to turn life to mortality and futility. Man fails miserably as it conquers him by turning life into mortality and futility: so he concurs with it as a double-edged weapon. Life exists in linear time-dimension and time with invincible powers governs life. It is the mystery or the riddle of time.
Keywords: Life-journey, Double-edged, Mortality, futility, Disappointments, Invincible, Mystery,
In diverse ways, poets, thinkers, and critics deal with time and its inevitable effects on the life of man and nature. Life traverses through time in its inexorable flux as time is man’s element and an undercurrent in life. Man exists in time’s domain and his life is, therefore, rooted in time,
Days are where we live.They come and wake usTime and time over. (‘Days’, CP, 67)
Time flows endlessly like a living river. The use of images: river, wing, train, cock, clock and so on suggest the unstoppable flow of time. The frequent use of present participles in his poems reflects the endless fleet of time. Time moves ceaselessly, making all lives traverse, witnessing changes in them and around in its movement. It is time that does all functions and actions, Kaalah Karoti Kaaryani (dky% djksrh dk;Z.kh)
All life facts are measured by time or in time as they merge into it as an integral part. Philip Larkin, as man and poet, becomes conscious of time with its invincible powers as the essence of existence: “Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives” (‘Afternoons’, TWW, 44) .
For Larkin, life exists in linear-time dimension. It experiences all the changes that time brings about in its endless flow. It enthralls life despite its struggle in evading the hard realities and harsh truths of life:
Life is an immobile, lockedThree-handed struggle betweenYour wants, the world’s for you, and (worse)The unbeatable slow machineThat brings what you’ll get. (‘The Life with a Hole in it’, CP, 202)
For Larkin, time as a double-edged weapon brings about inevitable changes in life. First, it turns life mortal. Man in childhood looks at future to bring good fortunes. In time’s motion, the future turns into the present to find life dry and desolate and then into the past to be past and gone forever. It is the first power of time as the double-edged weapon to turn the future into the present, and the present into the past, “a past that no one now can share” (CP, 78). Time elapsed and passed will never be regained or reversed: “... its / No sooner present than it turns to past / Right to the last” (‘Next Please’, CP, 52).
Time’s inexorable flow, on one hand, thus, turns life transient and ephemeral against one’s wishes. It presents mortality to life as time moves and makes it traverse from birth to childhood, youth, middle age, old age, and decrepitude ultimately to culminate in death. In short, life is a journey from womb to tomb in time’s flow. After birth life flows in time, gaining age and traversing towards death as the sign of mortality:
Whether or not we use it, it goesAnd leaves what something hidden from us chose,And age, and then the only end of age.(‘Dockery and Son’, CP, 152)
Poets look at time with their distinctive approaches. Larkin, from his agnostic background, has a unique and distinctive perspective in treating time with its ceaseless flow as the destroying force or the devastating element in turning life transient and temporary. He treats time as a destroyer.
Poets, like Eliot, look at time from its spiritual perspective. For Eliot, time flows endlessly and is always present. Time past, time present, and time future are mutually oblivious. For him, time is both, the creator and the destroyer, as the past enlivens the present and modifies the future:
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time future,And time future contained in time past(‘Burnt Norton’, FQ, ll. 1-3)
The present contains the past and the future as Lord Krishna counsels Arjuna: Time past and time future
What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present(‘Burnt Norton’, FQ, ll. 46-48)
For Eliot, the past is not dead. Time is cyclic and the past is enlivened in the ceaseless flow of time:
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’Or ‘the future is before us’(‘Dry Salvages - III’ FQ, ll. 21-22)
Eliot believes in the sense of unity of the past, the present and the future in multiplicity, “unity within multiplicity.”1 He believes in his philosophy: “The end is where we start from.” For him, there is rebirth after death in the cycle: birth leads to death through growth but attains rebirth from his spiritual perspective.
Larkin is practical and pragmatic unlike Eliot. From his agnostic background, he believes that life exists in time’s domain and becomes mortal in its flow, traversing ultimately to culminate in death, the end of age. There is no life or rebirth after death. He feels that there is vacuum or void after death, causing endless silence. As a result, time in its flux makes man wake up to the reality of mortality:
Endlessly, time honored irritant,A bubble is restively forming at you tip.Burst it as fast as we can -It will give again, until we begin dying.(‘Dry Point, TLD, 19)
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” (CP, 208). For Larkin, time has a dramatic function in life. Man’s life is turned transient in the flux of time. Man’s vulnerability is due to the approach and inevitability of death.
In time’s flux, man’s life ultimately advances to culminate in mortality unlike trees that 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 leafLike something almost being said;The recent buds relax and speed,Their greenness is a kind of grief.(‘The Trees’, CP, 166)
Trees have the yearly trick of looking new by means of their restorative power. Man’s life turns transitory and mortal on one hand in time’s flow as the first devastating edge of the weapon.
For Larkin, time as man’s element and an integral part of his life makes life exist in its domain. Time is not an abstract idea but has multifarious functions, as it is a double-edged weapon to bring about destructive changes in life. The poet tries to fly away from it by rendering it abstract and remote from the actuality of life.
Time as the double-edged weapon has the second devastating feature to turn life futile. There is futility presented by time to life. Time flows endlessly as an annihilating force and brings about destructive changes. Time incessantly moves and relentlessly destroys our desires, expectations, hopes, and dreams against our choice. In the domain of time, life is a constant struggle and an unstoppable search for meaningful existence. For Larkin, life is prone to become futile in time’s domain. Bruce Martin says that, for Larkin, “Life necessarily means time”.
Larkin treats time as an unfailing governing force of man’s life. Man becomes time’s thrall all through life. Despite his concurrence with time’s supremacy over man’s life, he does not deify time due to his agnostic background. Unlike him, poets like Milton and Poe, who too agree with time’s powers, personify, and deify time:
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youthStolen on his wing my three and Twentieth year(‘On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three’, Poetry for Pleasure, 9)
Science! True daughter of Old Time thou artWho alterest all things with my passing years(‘Sonnet-To Science’, Poetry for pleasure, 22)
Milton bestows the status of spirituality or divinity on time: “Toward which Time leads me the will of Heaven” (‘On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three’, Poetry for Pleasure, 9).
Time destroys man’s desires, wants, dreams and expectations in its flow to fill life with frustrations and disappointments. Time, as a double-edged weapon, turns life mortal on one side and futile on the other.
All facts, all emotions and values and dreams are not only measured by time, but they merge into it, becoming one with it. Time as the nucleus theme of his poetry governs life, bringing changes in life.
Time in its ceaseless flow fills life with a series of disappointments as it diminishes all our expectations, pretensions, desires, dreams, and aims. Hence, life is a series of illusions in time’s domain. The illusory nature of choice in life tends to lead our lives to experience disappointments and frustrations in time’s disruptive force. As Larkin says:
Truly, though our element is time,We are not suited to long perspectivesOpen at each instant of our lives.They link us to our losses.(‘Reference Back’, CP, 106)
All time—present, past, and future—are a source of disappointment and pain in life. In time’s flow, there is always a sense of loss or futility in our lives as our hopes, desires and ideals are shattered. Life never witnesses any success as there is a clash between what we expect and what we realize in the world of reality. We learn the fact that life is a series of illusions and missed opportunities but continue to hope that the future is the harbinger of good fortunes:
Always too eager for the future, wePick up bad habits of expectancy.Something is always approaching; every dayTill then we say.(‘Next, Please’, CP 52)
By the time, future becomes present, filling our minds with dissatisfaction and frustration rather than enjoyment and fulfillment as time relentlessly destroys our desires and leaves us, “holding wretched stalks / Of disappointment” (CP, 52) as Larkin says:
We think each one will have to and unloadAll good into our lives, all we are owedFor waiting so devoutly and so long.But we are wrong:(‘Next, Please’, CP, 52)
We realize in the incessant flow of time that life has the sense of loss and futility but attains the knowledge of bitter reality because of “bad habits of expectancy” (TLD, 20).
Our “expectancy”, developed and sustained, dies out and this loss or futility is rarely compensated. Life’s “armada of promises” (CP, 52) is merely a series of illusions in the governance of time. The poem, ‘Triple Time’, states the fact that neither past nor future bestows on our present the sense of meaning because time turns our lives into futility.
Time, which fills our lives with a series of illusions, is also the illusion of illusions because past is past and uneventful, the present is empty, dry, futile, and void of meaning and the future is unpromising. 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 our selves....”
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 change by shattering our desires, aims, dreams, and pretensions in our lives are the chief functions of time.
Life is a series of missed opportunities. Hence life is futile, empty, and desolate. The sound of the siren brings in “horny dilemmas at the gate once more” (TLD, 44). David Timms says, “the siren is symbolises of the desolation and emptiness of life due to our wrong choice.” The phrase, “come and choose wrong” (TLD, 44) reflects man’s wrong choice that leads us to the inevitable disappointment in life, “happiness is going” (TLD, 44).
Time remains the insolvable riddle in life. As man and poet, he confronts the riddle of time. He says, “The passage of time, and the approach and arrival of death, still seem to me the most unforgettable thing about our existence.” Time, in Larkin, as Salem K. Hasan says, “Keeps on pressing heavily upon his thinking as he observes the changes mostly for the worse taking place around him.” The moving force of time becomes the focal subject of his poetry.
For Larkin, time is not an abstract idea but a double-edged weapon to turn life mortal on one hand and futile on the other. Time is wholly invincible but solely disruptive force of life. His firm conviction is that “our element is time” (CP, 106) and we are inevitable victims of time. As a poet and man, he deals with its destructive forces but not with its healing powers.
Works Cited
Hasan, Salem K. Philip Larkin and His Contemporaries: An Air of Authenticity. London: Macmillan,
1998: 44.
King, P. R. Nine Contemporary Poets. London: Methuen, 1979: 7.
Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. 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 Winows (HW), London: Faber & Faber, 1974.
—. ‘Letter to Pasty Strong’. Selected Letters of Larkin. London: Faber & Faber, 1992: 223.
Martin, Bruce. Philip Lakin. Boston: Twayne, 1978, 47.
Published
Poetcrit 36.2 (July - December 2023): 21
