The Whitsun Weddings

Abstract

The success of The Less Deceived (it was mentioned in The Times on 22 December 1955 in its ‘books of the year’ round-up) and his association, in critics’ minds at least, with the Movement were mixed blessings for Larkin. Of course, he welcomed the praise and recognition but his growing reputation imposed burdens too. In The Less Deceived, Larkin had learned to deal with deeply personal issues in ways that externalised them. By using slightly differentiated personae, he made his poems ‘multivocal’ and ‘dialogic’¹ and by broadening the range of linguistic registers he could modulate more effectively into lyricism. One of these personal issues was his sense of failure; now, by accepting failure, he had begun to triumph.² And now that Larkin knew he had an audience, the strategies by which he protected his essential core of privacy had to become more devious. ‘Fame endangered his poems by threatening the delicate balance between a desire for private rumination and a longing for a public hearing. He wondered how he could continue to “be himself” if his self depended on remoteness and disappointment, neither of which he could truly be said to possess any more.’³ Questions of identity and its relation to love and death remain at the centre of The Whitsun Weddings.