tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post7548906022870636565..comments2024-03-23T20:37:37.891-07:00Comments on First Known When Lost: "What Will Survive Of Us Is Love"Stephen Pentzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-78100757375642881372014-07-30T01:23:02.220-07:002014-07-30T01:23:02.220-07:00Anonymous: thank you very much for bringing in &q...Anonymous: thank you very much for bringing in "Church Going" as counterpoint -- it makes a nice pairing with "An Arundel Tomb." I agree with your assessment of how Larkin saw the modern world. He was never one to look away, and his fear of death was visceral, wasn't it? It is the prevailing undercurrent to much of his writing.<br /><br />Thank you as well for printing the final stanza. As you say, it is another of those classic Larkin endings, isn't it? An aside: I've always liked "a serious house on serious earth it is." But the whole stanza is lovely.<br /><br />Thank you again.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-75286636763588163242014-07-28T16:42:56.393-07:002014-07-28T16:42:56.393-07:00Larkin perhaps more than any other poet understood...Larkin perhaps more than any other poet understood clearly the price our culture pays for having lost its belief in religion, in a coherent plan for the universe, a ritual for our lives. <br /><br />Nothing is left now, thinks Larkin, but death, and it creeps closer each day, this unavoidable extinction, a mindless heap of clay. The world emptied of its illusions of divinity has sadly found nothing to replace it--unless its a mindless and frenetic materialism--the madder music and stronger wine of Dowson.<br /><br />In his poem "Church Going" the narrator, whom we can assume to be Larkin, stops and goes inside a church. He finds nothing there, nothing of any spiritual value. <br /><br />Nothing is what he always finds, and yet he admits that he often stops by empty churches. He wonders what churches will be used for when nobody worships in them anymore. <br /><br />In fact, Larkin admits that he has no idea "What this accoutered frowsty is worth," but it's of no real matter since "It pleases me to stand in silence here."<br /><br />(I know a man who has been visiting his son's grave since the boy died--thirteen years ago. He admits that in all this time he has yet to find a single thing to say. He looks at the marker, sees the name and the dates, struggles to find some words, but he can't. Yet he goes each week.)<br /><br />Larkin ends the poem with something like hope, though Larkin like, he qualifies it. (I have pasted the last stanza below.) A church is a place, he goes on to say, where one finding "A hunger in himself to be more serious," can go. He will find some wisdom there, "If only that so many dead lie around." So here we have another example of Larkin giving and then taking it back to some degree.<br /><br />I don't know that any other poet understood the true bleakness of a secular society moving about under indifferent and fathomless skies, nothingness piled on nothingness, nothing left but death: a black- / Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back / A huge and birdless silence," the sullen silence of a Godless world. <br /><br />from "Church Going"<br /><br />A serious house on serious earth it is,<br />In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,<br />Are recognised, and robed as destinies.<br />And that much never can be obsolete,<br />Since someone will forever be surprising<br />A hunger in himself to be more serious,<br />And gravitating with it to this ground,<br />Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,<br />If only that so many dead lie round.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-65365271287743510002014-07-26T19:26:05.248-07:002014-07-26T19:26:05.248-07:00Sam Vega: as always, thank you for visiting, and f...Sam Vega: as always, thank you for visiting, and for your thoughts.<br /><br />What a nice coincidence that you regularly see the tomb!<br /><br />As you may know, in his annotations to The Complete Poems, Archie Burnett provides a number of details about the tomb and the poem. He notes that it is actually a dog and a lion, not two dogs, at their feet. Larkin also confessed that it should have been "right-hand gauntlet" rather than "left-hand gauntlet." And, in relation to your point about the restoration, in response to a scholarly inquiry, Larkin said that he wrote the poem before he became aware of the restoration. <br /><br />But, as you say: "Nevertheless, what will survive of us. . ."<br /><br />Thanks again.Stephen Pentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14882220887712092005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5010170380967519230.post-72045387946471197232014-07-26T04:19:28.010-07:002014-07-26T04:19:28.010-07:00Thank you for a very perceptive and beautiful offe...Thank you for a very perceptive and beautiful offering. I like "Equivocal reversals"! And being reminded of Larkin's poetry always deepens and clarifies thought.<br /><br />Incidentally, I see the Arundel Tomb very often. We live in Chichester and attend the Cathedral every Sunday. The story of the hand withdrawn from the gauntlet and holding his wife's hand is actually quite prosaic - a later botched repair job, rather than a sign of mediaeval tenderness. Nevertheless, what will survive of us...Sam Vegahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05978971199859845931noreply@blogger.com