Abstract
In his middle age Larkin became more aware of the essence of existence and the problem of time. Time keeps on pressing heavily upon his thinking as he observes the change, mostly for the worse, taking place everywhere around him. By capturing moments of dissatisfaction with life, Larkin introduces in ‘Mr Bleaney’ a remarkable vision of that state when we are far away from the fulfilment of our wishes. This poem demonstrates the response one feels upon arrival at a new residence. It also depicts the life of the previous lodger by speculating on his belongings, the surroundings of the bed-sitting-room and a few remarks the landlady makes about him:
‘Mr Bleaney took My bit of garden properly in hand.’
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook….
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Notes
Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (London, 1980) p. 100.
Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Poetic Artifice (Manchester, 1978) p. 58.
Lawrence Durrell, Key to Modern Poetry (London, 1952) p. 37.
Donald Davie, Articulate Energy (London, 1955) pp. 41–2.
Harry Chambers, ‘Laureate of a Fallen Landscape’, Phoenix (Spring 1964) p. 38.
Frederick Grubb, A Vision of Reality (London, 1965) p. 234.
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J. Korg, Language in Modern Literature (Brighton, Sussex, 1979) p. 172.
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Philip Hobsbaum, A Theory of Communication (London, 1970) p. 219.
Colin Falck, ‘Philip Larkin’, in The Modern Poet, ed. Ian Hamilton (London, 1968) pp. 108–9.
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Anthony Thwaite, ‘The Poetry of Philip Larkin’, in The Survival of Poetry, ed. Martin Dodsworth (London, 1970) p. 48.
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John Wain, ‘Engagement or Withdrawal?’, Critical Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer 1964) p. 175.
Terry Whalen, ‘Philip Larkin’s Imagist Bias’, Critical Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2 (Summer 1981) p. 31.
Quoted in Wylie Sypher, The Ethic of Time (New York, 1976) p. 6.
T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (Bristol, 1980) p. 49.
Harry Blamires, A Short History of English Literature (London, 1974) p. 429.
Jocelyn Brooke, Ronald Firbank and John Betjeman (London, 1962) p. 28.
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© 1988 Salem K. Hassan
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Hassan, S.K. (1988). The Whitsun Weddings. In: Philip Larkin and his Contemporaries. Macmillan Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19329-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19329-5_4
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