On The Consciousness Of Time In Philip Larkin's Poetry

Philip Larkin mobilized morning, night, wind and so on with the intellectual language to form a variety of poetic imagery system. In this system, the word "time" and the images referring to time occupied the heart position. A personal experience of time permeated the construction of Larkin's poetic images so that time consciousness strongly soaked in these images and influenced the expression of the themes at multiple levels. Firstly, Larkin opened life's journey and wrote the life and the death as time changed and passed by. The poet sincerely quested and branded death in the net of time. Secondly, the anxiety of death caused by time urged Larkin to look for the salvation force prevailing over time in love, then proceed to extend the meaning and value of life. Larkin showed two widely differing kinds of views on love in the unlimited flow of time. Thirdly, Larkin's consciousness of time was the premise of his historical representation. History through the past, the present and the future into the overall time and formed a potential line of historical time in the poem. In the historical timeline, Larkin recalled the past and showed backward-looking historical consciousness. This kind of historical consciousness was just an emotional countercurrent and tried not to break the flow of linear time continuous forward. Larkin did not immerse into the remembrance of the past so as to deliberately evade the present time. On the contrary, the poet tried to suture the fracture of the historical timeline in the fusion of the past and the present, juxtapose the deep feelings of the past and the cool description of the present so that history could be saved and documented more realistically and comprehensively.