The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

The pessimistic final line does not exclude the possibility that love might in fact offer these things; it simply indicates that this woman has not found it to be so. Like so many of Larkin’s characters, she feels a failure in her own terms. Strangely the poem is autobiographical, or, at least, the songs belonged to Larkin, the relic of an old love affair. Language is used with exceptional subtlety to express this old emotion. The phrase, ‘frank submissive chord,’ plays on the idea of the dominant in musical terminology to suggest the openness of self-giving to another, while ‘Word after sprawling hyphenated word’ expresses the inept fluency of most people’s expressions of love by referencing the practice of splitting words up into syllables in the lyrics to sheet music, so that they match with the notes.

As in many of Larkin’s poems, light is positive – ‘that much-mentioned brilliance, love’ – but somehow too positive. The glare is more that we can easily bear; we are not really made for such light, and to be reminded of such positives brings tears and a recognition that love never really solved anything.

Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses

Larkin generally interests himself in life’s losers. This poem is exceptional in that it appears to concern a successful character – an academic – and thoroughly vile he is too! The first stanza watches him becoming increasingly smug, isolated from the ‘Crowds, colourless and careworn’ in his taxi: he is on the way to an Indian summer for free, all expenses paid by Bombay University.

He thinks of the wonderful paper he is going to deliver, recently such a success at Berkeley. Perhaps one day he will publish: ‘Chatto’ and Windus might be interested, but first he would need to appear on the ‘Third’ Programme, the old BBC Arts slot.

Filled to the brim with his self-importance, he looks askance at the fact that it is Remembrance Sunday – one of those ‘mawkish nursery games’ that ‘used to make [him] throw up.’ Larkin allows the irony of the situation to speak for itself: a sacrifice of millions so that such a self-obsessed individual as this professor can go off on jaunts to India.

The word ‘Comet’ refers to an old type of plane, whereas ‘Auster’ mean south (as in Australia). The usage, though, is ironic, and the character’s diction is revealing throughout: he loves using pretentious expressions like ‘down Auster,’ or jocular Biblical allusions, such are the idea of ‘Perceiving Chatto darkly/Through the mirror of the Third,’ which is a reference to St Paul’s ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly’ (1Cor 13:12).