Review of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Aubade’

 Review of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Aubade’

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6e2f07

I request readers to read the poem first from the above link and then only my review. Thanks.

The poem is on the fear of death hovering in the evening of a person’s life. In the first stanza we find depiction of one who gets up too early often. As he gets up, the fear of death wakes up too without fail.

The following lines in the second stanza gives us the picture of the mind and what overshadows:

—The good not done, the love not given, time   

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   

 

      The third stanza is satiric. On one hand religion says we never die and we take another form and another life up there; on the other hand, some people try to apply logic and reasoning into life and death and bring out specious  arguments. At this stage, we are now seeing everything from the poet’s angle. There is no meaning in avoiding the phase before one finally accepts the unavoidable and inevitable end of life. This is very crisply brought out in the last line of the fourth stanza “Death is no different whined at than withstood.”

     

       In the last stanza we come back to his bed room with him just ahead of twilight. The following two expressions give us    the other side of life’s bitter truth:

1-     Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

2-     Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

The poet finds we are living in this rented world, only the length of tenancy remains mysterious. The next expression’ postmen like doctors’ is a profound metaphor. The doctors are not exactly messengers of death or end of life. They are actually visiting us to keep us healthy and alive as long as possible with their medical science. Nonetheless, their visits carry a clear message that they are servicing a pulsating machine that can be made to run for some more time, the length of which will remain suspense forever.

 

The poet faced the fear of death and moved on. The poem gives us in few lines the conflict and its turmoil within for most of men and women for years. That’s its success. The poet is no more with us. But his poems speak to us forever.