Larkin at 100

 Philip Larkin would have been 100 years old on Tuesday, 9 August, and so, in line with other media, one feels one ought to do something to mark the occasion and some sort of assessment of where we stand with him is the obvious thing to do.

One can't defend the indefensible indefinitely, as many in the government recently and eventually realized. Yes, Larkin became increasingly right-wing and no amount of excusing it as fourth form ribaldry or the influence of badly-chosen friends alters the fact that he was Thatcherite among many other failings. I wonder if shy, awkward, stammering men who lack confidence take up uncompromising ideas to bolster their confidence. Perhaps it takes more generosity of spirit to be liberal but he had plenty to be confident about as the most immaculate English poet of his generation with a big job he was good at in charge of a university library and he only turned down the O.B.E. because he thought he was worth more. We shouldn't conflate the idea of 'great writer' with 'great human being'. There's not much in Shakespeare biography to suggest that he was any better than a hugely talented writer shrewdly investing his profits from the theatre and looking after himself and his own status ahead of anybody else's but if we removed every writer from our reading lists on account of perceived flaws in their character we would have finished reading everybody left standing a long time ago.

The very idea of a canon of literature came under attack some years ago now, the assumption that there is a more or less agreed list of greats that represent literature through the ages. Certainly, we all have our own lists but each period can only provide a limited number of names that it will be remembered by. And some things, we can't help but think, are of more value than others even if fashions might change and reputations will wax and wane within those rarified strata.

Larkin was recognized as one of the most accomplished poets of his generation in English at an early stage, which happened once it dawned on him that he was the new Thomas Hardy and not the new Auden or Yeats. But the English poetry of the 1950's was regarded in some places as inherently 'minor'. It didn't have the high church intellectualism of Eliot, the engagement of Auden or the flamboyant flourish of Dylan Thomas. Certainly, 40-odd years ago, it was commonplace to regard Eliot as some kind of scripture, so monumental that he cast his shadow over C20th English poetry in the same way that Beethoven had over C19th European music. 

But Larkin's ordinariness and common sense were persuasive. Difficulty, implying cleverness, authority and thus 'greatness' eventually began to look dubious. Not everybody was happy being bullied by footnotes, esoteric reference points and the need for A Student's Guide. The times when a poet like Tennyson could be a national celebrity were long gone. John Betjeman and maybe Roger McGough were recognizable to many but, with considerable talents for being themselves in their whimsical ways, Larkin wrote poems worth returning to time and again. Austerity, like discrimination, can be good things when properly applied and, in paring down his poems to remove their excesses and then only publishing those he regarded as successes, he set an example worth following and without very much of a train of public appearances, big launches or other self-promotion, got his Companion of Honour, plaque in Westminster Abbey and lines that passed into the language.

He did treat people badly, not least Monica Jones, but he didn't know how not to. The point has been made, with regard to Larkin and any number of others, that we can admire the work without applying the same level of admiration to its author. As Andrew Motion said on the wireless, they were friends even though they didn't vote the same way. Good Lord, if we only had as friends people who voted the same way, we'd have significantly fewer and you need as many as you can get.

It's not at all clear which names are likely to be remembered as 'greatest' and representative of C20th poetry in English and it's for the best if it remains like that. My half dozen nominations aren't likely to be the same as yours. But Larkin has grown into a contender despite the adverse publicity. It's about the writing. I don't think he was quite John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester although he might have wanted to be.