Aubade read by Philip Larkin 

He's just being honest

Does the doctor/postman simile mean anything though or does it just sound good

@@whywhywhy9659 I think Larkin is linking the mundane door-to-door visits of postmen with the inevitability of an eventual visit by the doctor (they made house visits in those days for serious cases) - the implication being that sooner or later everyone enters their final illness and the doctor calls, as the postman does, and as death does. just another of gloomy Larkin's musings on the inevitability of death.

@@pauldonald827 I was being very lazy so I appreciate the explanation, the routine of the post does have an unnerving quality: postmen now replaced by Amazon and it's hyper-death feeling efficiency.

I actually have a slightly different interpretation, that the post and phone calls that bring us our obligations and activities during the day, keeping us busy, are the only reprieve we have from existential dread.

Who wrote ‘the million petalled flower of being here’…?

I love this poem more than any other, but I just now stumbled upon Larkin himself reading it for the first time. What surprised me most was how much humour his reading seems to lend the text. Maybe it was always there and it took the author to make me see it.

I read this a few years ago in a class, and when I saw it in devs it seemed really familiar, but I couldn't place it. I think it might be my favorite poem now

@@yazef8940 definitely mine too. After I heard it on Devs I immediately googled it because it was really shocking to hear. Amazing poem though. Definitely my favorite poem of all time.

I read that book recently, do not remember the poem being used in the book? Maybe it's only in the film, would you reccomend it?

I'd say courage makes considerable difference. Hysteria is unmanly.

For you, there s no death. Poetry is not for believers, other than religious poems. Be coherent. Not a clown to your own intelectual integrity.

What is puzzling and in the end unsatisfying about Larkin's work is that it is mostly lacking in humour, and there seems to be a total absence of an enquiring mind. There's no sense of the enjoyment of exploration and finding out something new, and he's never happy unless he's sad.

@@splinterbyrd go to a circus, or listen to miley cirus, bad bunny, if u r looking 4 humour. Ridiculous comment. Wtf

@@splinterbyrd without death, there s no room for poetry, tonto

@@splinterbyrd u generalize based on your interpretation. That s a logical mistake. Read cartoons, 4 children preferably

He's a genius born not made

Food for thought, thanks for posting your thoughts. As for the 'identical' rhyme at the end of S2, I see the rhyme not as 'with' with 'with', but of 'think with' and 'link with' although I'm happy to concede that you're technically correct.

"An outsider in faith" doesn't make clear sense. We confront death, whatever we believe.

kuriosoranj Me too. Strange, I had this same thought recently.

I don't get it when people say it's depressing! It's uplifting and funny to me!

My thoughts exactly! You obviously have a good life, but can see (but not be dragged down by) the fragility of life!

Well said.

Tony Heptinstall I like hearing the poet read his work how he intended it to be

lov2aclr8 If there was an award for RU-vid comments, this one would win for sure.

lov2aclr8 lol

@@vivthefree Why?

@@jonharrison9222 I guess I thought it was funny at the time?

Not if 'e ain't got the proper loicense tho, bit sad really.

Every person does. This is why many think religion was created. A concoction evolved by the fear of the human higher mind. The ability of man to know his impending doom. No other creature can have this insight like we do and because of this, we created God to take our mind away from this constant abyss that smiles at us stronger every year we inch closer to the grave.

The thing is in England the sky is often like that - in winter sometimes you don’t see the sun for 2 weeks or more

Julian Meek Larkin's Last Masterpiece 1974.

"the essential understanding one craves that Larkin alone seems to provide" means what exactly? I can think of countless poets who would dwarf him.

He tells us plainly why it is specious. The terror is to lose everything we are; our thoughts, senses and emotions.

@@chomskysarmy3965 No. He tells us why he thinks it is specious. However, it is not. It is logical. I still love the poem, in spite of this flaw, though.

@@franzgeistworm Well, you are obviously coming at it from a place of religious superstition which the poem shows is one aspect of the way people try to deny the fact of their own inevitable annihilation.

@@chomskysarmy3965 Not at all. I'm an atheist. I believe we die and become nothing-roughly the view of Beckett's "Fin de partie," or "Endgame." However, I don't believe dying and not feeling or linking is as bad as the poem implies,. Moreover, the philosophical argument that the speaker (Larkin himself maybe) tries to refute by fiat is legitimate and not "specious."

Except Shakespeare, Blake, Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Hopkins, Wordsworth, Wilfred Owen, Thomas Hardy, John Keats, Dante, Rilke, Milton, etc.

+Allan Lindsay Your choice of the adverb 'merely' would, I'm sure, strike Larkin as droll, as it does me. WH Auden once noted 'Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings'. The form Larkin's expression of fear takes is original and quite affecting, but I look forward to reading the 'new insight(s)' you may know others to have.

+Trevor Bailey, Hi Trevor, thank you for the very insightful and 'weighted' reply. I'm very glad you picked up on the "merely" aspect which is indeed a word of some significance. I need to think some more, most especially as you bring Auden to the table as it were. Someone whom I hold literally speaking in very high regard and whose work I love. Poetry being the purest form of expression must now equate to "poetry being the purest form of expression of mixed feelings" maybe that's even closer to the truth? Perhaps. Is our Phil exhibiting mixed feeling in Aubade? Or conversely is he "merely" exhibiting fixation? As I say let's think some more and see where we might go with this or indeed where this may well lead us. .

+Allan Lindsay Your rejoinder raises an interesting point with respect to the object of poetry writing, Allan. The 'mixed feelings' evident in Aubade, I would argue, go to Larkin's existential struggle with 'unresting death' on the one hand, and the need we all experience to fill our lives with vain distractions. So what's new? Auden, you will recall, said 'Poetry makes nothing happen' ('In Memory of WB Yeats') and, in so far as the use of poetry as a didactic tool goes, 'Aubade' may fail the test. After all, as you seem to say, we are easily persuaded of Larkin's deep fear of death, but such subjective feeling says little to us other than provide an all-too-common excuse for alcoholism. On the other hand, if we set aside instrumentalism in favour of looking upon Aubade as a work of art, then Larkin's own definition of poetry comes to the fore: 1) recognise a strong emotion within oneself; 2) commit that feeling to writing; and 3) hope to reproduce that emotion in the reader - the real test of poetry's worth. Accordingly, Larkin's 'fixation' on death (which you rightly diagnose) was put to the service of great art which, in turn, helps people like me think & breathe away another day of 'slow dying' ...in celebration of the here & now!

+Trevor Bailey. Hi Trevor, thank you once more for an excellent appraisal and might I add - excellent use of our language in doing so. I perceive that thou too, are a poet sir! The immediate impetus is for me to home in on the fourth "paragraph" you offer . . . first. I think works such as these, because they are seemingly on the side of the, "life is meaningless campaign or ideology" and thus seemingly come uncluttered with religious connotations and what people perceive such to be, not that they truly can hence Larkin mentions religion; albeit somewhat dismissively. Anyway these works, perhaps do a great service, in that while many people because of the aforementioned connotations associated to and often gleefully pinned on religion, now heavily burdened as it is, by detrimental misuse, may resist being brought to the banquet table of "what is life and death" [the most important of all issues?] by "gloomy" religion, most particularly Christianity, wherein one of the fundaments is to maintain concentration if not meditation on the ready acceptance of death, since it leads to the resurrection. Works then such as these bring a focus to bear on the matter to those resistive of religion? I'm not claiming this was/is Phil's intent, but it is a by-product of his "hope to reproduce that emotion in the reader." Writing poetry myself I totally concur with that point [3] you make in relation to what Larkin said, but would be tempted to add amendments. [God working both sides of the fence here?] So to the "here and now", the crux, what we require perhaps is a great and precise work on that subject, for does the "here and now" not appear illusory of and in itself? That being the case I think this was crucial to the battle Phil fought each day. Death, the grim reaper never sleeps, always stalks, and in the meantime the "here and now" is what exactly? It is certainly one definition of ephemerality; the Arabs have a saying along the lines of "time is like sand the harder to you try to hold onto it the faster it slips through your fingers". Larkin too honest perhaps, certainly in his work to exist in a compromised half-way house of a vague wishy-washy "there is a heaven", which most of us do, encapsulated in a protective "I don't really know, but I just want to get by" philosophy. Ergo, "when I think of it which is not often - sometimes it seems like there is definitely something else beyond at other times it doesn't" a mood dependency condition thus prevails. Anyway, Larkin found an anesthetic was necessary and reached for the bottle. I have to say life compromised by a death phobia is not life at all [must we define life?] and might drive me to find a constant anesthetic and of course other than death itself, there isn't one! But we may have a hold of a tail in the dark that leads to body that seen in the light raises the question is this why so many of us need to escape the "here and now" as alcoholism and drug usage proliferates? One other point in closing, Larkin highly intelligent as he was had to appreciate that his lifestyle hastened the very thing he dreaded! A "let's get it over with" [subconscious] condition? Therein lies a veritable plateau to be explored on the way to higher or indeed lower ground. I would like to respond to your other points later otherwise we'll have a thesis on our hands here and now! Thanks Trevor.

Indeed. Some try and mask the fact of death by taking refuge in religion, which is far worse.

You mean he should've drank more than he did? I.e. not "moderately"? Because getting "half drunk" isn't getting drunk. The fact that we die has nothing to do with the consumption of alcohol. The poem has nothing to do with soul, as you term it; the use of such a word and concept would have had no place in his vocabulary.

And I suspect you have nothing to offer but a cheap shot at something that dwarfs you.

We’d never have his poetry without it, most likely.

I just cannot see that. I’ll read it again and again, see if I think differently. Larkin’s is so stark, evocative.

revol148 philip larkin was very of his time, bounded by world wars, the cold war, changing society.. He wrote out of his fear of death, death was his muse but he wouldn't have ever killed himself, he was too terrified of it. Sadly, when he stopped writing, he died. He needed the presence of death to write but he would never have sought it out. . Sorry I really identify with him haha maybe I'm wrong but I think it's more a fascination and terror rather than desire although fear and desire do go hand in hand..

Marnie O'Brien although he did kill himself in a way. it was like he was scared of life in a way.. He worked hard, he drank hard, he smoked hard and it did die relatively young.

+Marnie O'Brien In his sixties?

No, it isn't about suicide, it's about dying and being dead. There's no hint of suicide in it.

+SuperHoldenC I respectfully disagree.

The universe is godless. Tough luck if you can't deal with it.

I disrespectfully disagree,Atheism doesn't suck

I don't think you guys understand. He is dealing with it. When I first became an atheist, hell not being real was a real big lifting of fear off the shoulders. But after about a decade of not worrying and finding yourself closer death than ever... the fear comes back in the form of nothing. The nothing, can't take your fear with you, because there will be no more you. Sure you had no problem before you were born but you didn't know life. Now life is all we know. It's hard to part with.