Experience, Words and Meaning in Philip Larkin's The Less Deceived

Abstract

In his famous "Statement" in 1955 Philip Larkin said: "I feel that my prime responsibility is to the experience itself." His first mature collection of poems (which can be read as an organic whole) is a demonstration of this credo, but also a manifestation of his sceptical attitude. In most poems of The Less Deceived he made efforts to preserve experience, but also had to admit at least a partial failure. The first and the last poems ("Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" and "At Grass") form a frame: in both texts Larkin realizes that knowing the past of other individuals is impossible for him, therefore his experience is incomplete: it is an experience about not having an experience. Although Larkin was a central figure of the Movement, and as such, denied any kind of literary inspiration, still intertextuality enriched these poems. Some of the poems can be read as responses to other poems ("Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album", "Wedding Wind"), and some texts as parodies ("I Remember, I Remember", "Church Going"). In my analyses I distinguish between the real poet, the implied poet and the speaker in the poem. The speakers in most cases cannot be identified with Larkin, but through the masks he wears and the characters he constructs he represents questions about his own life strategies. The whole volume can be read as the work of a conventional poet who still responds to the questions of the postmodern age.