How To Live, Part Ten: "A Life Reprehensibly Perfect"

The following poem by Philip Larkin provides a good companion piece to Frank Ormsby's "My Careful Life."  As one might expect, jolly old Philip suggests that a careless, ostensibly rebellious and romantic life may be every bit as hollow as a careful life.  This would seem to lead to what some might call a characteristic Larkinian conclusion:  we are doomed either way.

But might there be more going on here?  As is often the case (and, as I have noted before, he shares this quality with Robert Frost and Edward Thomas), Larkin gets cagey with us at the end of the poem.  Something is given; something is taken back.  Maybe, come to think of it, the choice is not between "careful" and "careless."  Perhaps, in the end, there is no choice at all.  One should remember what Larkin said about the poetry of Edward Thomas:  "The poetry of almost infinitely-qualified states of mind, so well paralleled by his verse."

            Poetry of Departures

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
Its specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived (1955).

                                 William Ratcliffe, "Attic Room" (1918)