‘WANTS’

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

An analysis by

Dr. Dhriti Ray Dalai, Asst. Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University

Robert Conquest’s anthology New Lines published in July 1956 attempted to

showcase a new brand of poetry, “genuine and healthy poetry of the new period”,
the period coinciding with the end of the Second World War. Poets who figured in
this anthology were Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Donald Davie, D. J. Enright,
Thom Gunn, John Holloway, Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin and John Wain. These
were the ‘Movement’ poets, with their primary geographical location at Oxford,
where Amis, Larkin and Wain would have frequent poetic gatherings. The
‘Movement’ poets were not so much united by their class bearings or by their social
practices like beer drinking, pipe-smoking or jazz appreciation, as by their antipathy
towards the poetic, intellectual and aesthetic snobberies of the culturally
pretentious groups of Bohemia and Bloomsbury. They were fundamentally reacting
against the elitism of modernist writing.

These poets’ ingenuity lay in their choice of subject matter, attitude and
tone, trying to capture the essence of post-war turbulence of English society. The
quotidian and banal experiences of daily life were reflected in such poetry. As one
commentator would note: “the Movement embodied the intention of these poets
to avoid bad principles, rhetorical gestures and strong feelings. Clear thinking and
expressions marked some of the characteristics of their writings, down to earth and
rooted in common experience. Anti-Romanticism was an important aspect of their
programme.”

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Dr. Dhriti Ray Dalai, Asst. Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University

Philip Larkin (1922-85) was a distinct voice of ‘The Movement’, and who
considered Thomas Hardy to be the most important influence on his life, offering
alternatives to what was provided by Modernism. Like Hardy, Larkin too attempted
to explore these themes such as loss, time and the inevitability of death.

The present poem ‘Wants’ from the 1950 collection, The Less Deceived
explores the possibility of certain dark truths about human nature, contrary to
normal assumptions. The poet-speaker speaks of the desire for oblivion, for death,
as a possible source of release from the mundane, the routine, the suffocating
chain of events that typified modern life. Much like the existentialist philosophers
of his time, Larkin poses the ultimate question as to the meaning of life, the purpose
of existence. The will to live has to now vie with the legitimate will to die.

The refrain lines that enclose each of the two five lines stanzas corroborate
the death wish, “Beyond all this, the wish to be alone” and “Beneath it all, desire
of oblivion runs.” This is also the poem that Larkin himself intones at the end of the
film the Monitor made with another poet John Betjeman in 1964. As Larkin would
have it, the camera pulls back at the end of the shot, with him walking away as if to
illustrate this very “wish to be alone” in a mad and world.

The demands of society on the individual has him performing certain duties.
This poem is an articulation of those duties and the possibility of a way out from
the unadmitted sufferings that a social life entails. The second, third, fourth,
seventh and eight lines of the poem are a focus on these performative aspects of
modern man’s existence both in the public and private spheres. Tasks and

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Dr. Dhriti Ray Dalai, Asst. Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University

obligations keep man busy but does he find happiness at the end of the day? Does
not W. H. Auden pose a similar unpleasant question at the end of ‘The Unknown
Citizen’- “Was he free? Was he happy?”

The sky growing ‘dark with invitation cards’ could be reflective of the endless
nature of social engagements that keep man busy juggling different roles and tasks
at the same time. There could be some ambivalence in our response to the sky
growing ‘dark’- dark as in the prospect of the gathering of rain bearing clouds,
pregnant with relief, with water, with life essence. Nevertheless, the darkness
could equally suggest something ominous, unpleasant, cutting off of the natural
source of light. The ‘invitation cards’ also imply the formalities that characterize a
metropolitan existence. Modern man is trapped, as if, in a web of formalities and
formulations like Prufrock. Similarly, “the artful tensions of the calendar”, hint at
the pretentious and mechanical trajectory of human engagements, designed to
aggravate pain than give any pleasure. Life, which is time bound, is a superficial life
with love and emotions programmed to manifest themselves only in designated
times and not at opportune times.

The deliberate use of the first person plural lends credence to the notion that
this plight is not visited upon any one specific specimen of humanity but on all those
caught in the throes of modernity. The boring rituals of modernity afflict not one,
but every man of the age, of the times. Recalling once again lines from “The
Unknown Citizen”, we notice how the Establishment expects all and sundry to

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Dr. Dhriti Ray Dalai, Asst. Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University

oblige with the norms- “He was married and added five children to the population,
/ Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of / his generation”.
Nothing much has changed, it seems, in Larkin’s England in the 1950s, where one
continues to uphold this façade of normalcy with the happy, complete ‘family …
photographed under the flagstaff.’ There are obligations of the individual towards
not only the family but also the community and the nation, and he is compelled to
oblige. There is seemingly an overwhelming sense of duty that underlines human
existence.

What strikes a discord though in this affirmative picture of social existence,

is the requirement of man to follow “the printed directions of sex”, if we accept
that sex was supposedly a natural, biological and fundamental facet of human
existence. Why we may ask this need to follow ‘printed directions’? Does it mean
that the sex drive too has been conditioned to serve some ulterior force? Has it
been brought under control, checked, beaten into submission to the state directive,
political or otherwise? Similarly, “the tabled fertility rites” of the eighth line, may
allude to literature on sex - on conception and various means of either ensuring or
preventing conception. The ‘fertility rites’ though operative still are but ‘tabled’,
which render them mechanical.

The truth of the matter remains, that, the ‘invitation cards’, the ‘printed
directions of sex’, the family ‘photographed under the flagstaff’, the ‘artful tensions
of the calendar’, the ‘life insurance’, the ‘tabled fertility rites’, are ways and
methods employed to deceive man and channelize him into a mad pursuit of
happiness, of life. These are apparently ways of affirming life. What can surely

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Dr. Dhriti Ray Dalai, Asst. Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University

jeopardize such pursuits could be the realization on the part of man of the artificial
nature of existence, and the rootless unhappiness of humanity in general, caught
in an existential crisis. Man’s engagements with life are nothing but false
engagements; they are really “costly aversion of the eyes from death”, which is the
ultimate truth. Death, oblivion and solitude are the real desirables that can release
man from the web of lies deceits and a meaningless existence. Sigmund Freud too
had theorized about this ‘death wish’, that is, thanatos, drawing inspiration from
Greek mythology, where Thanatos is the God of Death.

Death then, in this poem, can seem to be a state of welcome relief, a repose.
The arch of life makes death inevitable but here it is possibly the most wanted, the
most desirable. Stylistically speaking, the last line of each stanza is a repetition of
its first line. We also notice how Larkin repeats certain conceptual words
throughout like ‘desire’, ‘wish’, and ‘wants’ on one hand, and ‘alone’, ‘oblivion’,
and ‘death’ on the other.

A Study Material prepared for the B.A Sem-IV, Under Graduate Students (B.H.U)

Dr. Dhriti Ray Dalai, Asst. Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University