Larkin's ‘Absences’ and ‘Here’

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Abstract Philip Larkin is known for his rejection of metaphysical consolation, and yet in some of his more philosophic and existentialist poems, such as ‘Absences’ and ‘Here’, many critics describe a desire for freedom that leads to a metaphysical transcendence that seems at odds with the vision of such a confirmed atheist. This interpretation of transcendence in these poems by Larkin is a misreading of his thought. What Larkin is describing in ‘Absences’ and ‘Here’ is freedom without transcendence, arrived at through the promise of the endless creation of new limits. The philosophic framework for this insight is from Nietzsche, an influence that is pervasive in Larkin though little acknowledged.