The Subsistence Ethic In The Poetry Of Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin,the most important British poet in the later half of 20 th century, his poems inherited the traditional English poetry characteristics and have the new era connotation.Larkin is good at capturing the finest point of everyday life, show the love,desire,dead and alive of the ordinary life. The paper talks about the subsistence ethic in Larkin’s poetry through three aspects :Larkin’s ambivalence to religious beliefs,thinking of the present life and the idea of seeking redemption and eternity.Religion is a clue throughout the whole paper that we can connect history and contemporary,Larkin’s thought son human being’s existence in the cross reference.Firstly,we can see division and reconstruction in people’s spiritual world in the social development and the historical process of change.The loss of religious significance for people in real life feel confused and pain and thus produced a new desire.The second part is thought of contemporary which analyze three parts:the human’s original sin,the survival of solitude and the death in limited time.This is the most prominent theme in Larkin’s poems and show the real life picture of the British postwar generation.The British young man no longer fight for become hero because they be hurted in the war and their life become mediocre and boring.With the rapidly development of economy and society,people were materialization and alienation,living in the world full of alienation lead human’s inner world become more desolate and death become the biggest crisis because of the pressure from limit time.We can integrate the three themes of life together and summarize Larkin’s pessimism.In the third part,we summed up Larkin’s ideal that build in mind which would resist to reality problem.The post refuse to stay with pain,he has strong sense of responsibility and face to life courageously.He hope to remove original sin, refine soul and acquire the spiritual detachment through pursuit of love and kind.Specifically,it’s create eternal connection with love each other in dealing with relationship with others;remains devout attitude in dealing with relationship with nature,blending in the nature that would comprehend life, return to homeland.Meanwhile,in dealing the relationship between human and himself,Larkin choose to acquire spiritual detachment through create immortal by writing which would save the value of spirit.From the complexity experience of the individual life to The value pursuit of human beings,the precious human light and ultimate value shining in Larkin’s poetry.