'The Whitsun Weddings' by Philip Larkin
'Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal' - Eliot.
As a preface to 'The Whitsun Weddings' I quote these lines from 'The Dry Salvages', the third poem of the 'Four Quartets' by TS Eliot.
It's not possible that Larkin wasn't influenced by those words even if only in the echoing of the powerful symbolic importance of the train as agent of transformation.
In 'Adelstrop' , the journey taken a few weeks after Whitsun on 24th June 1914 the indelible impression made on Thomas paradoxically reminds us of the unprecedented transformations in his own life and the world around and beyond.
I dare say that more than one student of English has written an essay on the genealogy of the 'train poem'
Isn't it odd that this, the most frequently requested of Larkin's poems is so out of character being so optimistic - or at least leaving room for the hope that things might just work out alright....
From the 'Dry Salvages' by TS Eliot
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death"—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
You can listen to Larkin reading the poem himself here.
Postscript:
Arriving at a London train terminal still fills me with excitement and the anticipation of fresh discoveries to be made.
It goes back sixty years ago when for my seventh birthday, my Dad took me for a day trip to London (the Science Museum and the British Museum) - via King's Cross, the destination for Larkin too. Exhausted at the end of very busy day we caught the last train back to Bradford and settled cosily into one of the little compartment they used to have.
Our companionable silence was rudely broken by the arrival of a very large Asian family who filed silently in at the sight of Dad scowling at them. He could be a ferocious presence and an intimidating interlocutor. He would get into terrible arguments with strangers - once on another train I remember vividly and on another occasion the two of us were ejected from an 'Ideal Home Exhibition' in Lister Park in Bradford because of a shouting match with a man demonstrating how a potato peeler worked, Dad being unconvinced of the tool's durability or utility. Asian immigrants were decidedly not very welcome in Bradford in the 1950s. I can still fell the hot and cold sweat of fear as we made our long, slow, progress North.
Around midnight, we got to Retford mixing up the name with 'Bradford', the Elder hurriedly gathered and led his extended family out onto the very dark and cold platform. With only a moment or two (and certainly not more than three) of hesitation, Dad jumped out after them, explained their mistake and ushered them back on board.
Of course the atmosphere was utterly changed as the Elder and Dad made as much friendly conversation as they could with the limited vocabulary available to them, while the rest of the family chatted animatedly - if entirely unintelligibly - amongst themselves.
As I slipped into a profoundly relieved and happy doze, I awoke to find my hand being held by the Pakistani gentleman as he traced and told my good fortune in my palm to Dad who was amused and proud to listen to what was being said as it echoed his own expectations of my life.
I drifted back into sleep with a new awareness of what my Dad was: a man of the world, capable of looking after others in need when his inclinations might have been otherwise. A deeply satisfying experience which left all of us changed - and changed for the better. For me whose guiding principle has always been to do the right thing only when I have exhausted all the other possibilities, the incident nevertheless must have at least alerted me to possibility (and benefits) of 'doing the right thing' - if only to avoid feeling so awful for having done the wrong thing.
If ghosts have access to the Internet, thanks for that Dad.
AND FINALLY.....
And...... what else happened this weekend for me? Yes of course, forty two years ago on this day Teresa and I got married at St Joseph's Catholic Church, Leytonstone, witnessed by our friends John and Judith and then up to Scotland in glorious Bank Holiday weather with the roof down all the way......in my purple TR6.....
That went like a train too.....
As a preface to 'The Whitsun Weddings' I quote these lines from 'The Dry Salvages', the third poem of the 'Four Quartets' by TS Eliot.
It's not possible that Larkin wasn't influenced by those words even if only in the echoing of the powerful symbolic importance of the train as agent of transformation.
In 'Adelstrop' , the journey taken a few weeks after Whitsun on 24th June 1914 the indelible impression made on Thomas paradoxically reminds us of the unprecedented transformations in his own life and the world around and beyond.
I dare say that more than one student of English has written an essay on the genealogy of the 'train poem'
Isn't it odd that this, the most frequently requested of Larkin's poems is so out of character being so optimistic - or at least leaving room for the hope that things might just work out alright....
From the 'Dry Salvages' by TS Eliot
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death"—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
You can listen to Larkin reading the poem himself here.
THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,
As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that
Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known
Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem
Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
Postscript:
Arriving at a London train terminal still fills me with excitement and the anticipation of fresh discoveries to be made.
It goes back sixty years ago when for my seventh birthday, my Dad took me for a day trip to London (the Science Museum and the British Museum) - via King's Cross, the destination for Larkin too. Exhausted at the end of very busy day we caught the last train back to Bradford and settled cosily into one of the little compartment they used to have.
Our companionable silence was rudely broken by the arrival of a very large Asian family who filed silently in at the sight of Dad scowling at them. He could be a ferocious presence and an intimidating interlocutor. He would get into terrible arguments with strangers - once on another train I remember vividly and on another occasion the two of us were ejected from an 'Ideal Home Exhibition' in Lister Park in Bradford because of a shouting match with a man demonstrating how a potato peeler worked, Dad being unconvinced of the tool's durability or utility. Asian immigrants were decidedly not very welcome in Bradford in the 1950s. I can still fell the hot and cold sweat of fear as we made our long, slow, progress North.
Around midnight, we got to Retford mixing up the name with 'Bradford', the Elder hurriedly gathered and led his extended family out onto the very dark and cold platform. With only a moment or two (and certainly not more than three) of hesitation, Dad jumped out after them, explained their mistake and ushered them back on board.
Of course the atmosphere was utterly changed as the Elder and Dad made as much friendly conversation as they could with the limited vocabulary available to them, while the rest of the family chatted animatedly - if entirely unintelligibly - amongst themselves.
As I slipped into a profoundly relieved and happy doze, I awoke to find my hand being held by the Pakistani gentleman as he traced and told my good fortune in my palm to Dad who was amused and proud to listen to what was being said as it echoed his own expectations of my life.
I drifted back into sleep with a new awareness of what my Dad was: a man of the world, capable of looking after others in need when his inclinations might have been otherwise. A deeply satisfying experience which left all of us changed - and changed for the better. For me whose guiding principle has always been to do the right thing only when I have exhausted all the other possibilities, the incident nevertheless must have at least alerted me to possibility (and benefits) of 'doing the right thing' - if only to avoid feeling so awful for having done the wrong thing.
If ghosts have access to the Internet, thanks for that Dad.
AND FINALLY.....
And...... what else happened this weekend for me? Yes of course, forty two years ago on this day Teresa and I got married at St Joseph's Catholic Church, Leytonstone, witnessed by our friends John and Judith and then up to Scotland in glorious Bank Holiday weather with the roof down all the way......in my purple TR6.....
That went like a train too.....
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