Poetcrit

Current Volume: 37 (2024 )

ISSN: 0970-2830

Periodicity: Half-Yearly

Month(s) of Publication: January & July

Subject: Language & Literature

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/POET

Online Access is Free for all Life Members of Poetcrit

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The Theme of Death - Life in Time: Larkin’s Perspective of Death, “A Black-sailed Unfamiliar”

By : Rajamouly Katta

Page No: 63-74

Abstract
For Philip Larkin, time initiates life with birth and advances it through growth ultimately to culminate in death, the end of life. Life turns a victim to the harsh reality of death, the deathprone reality to mark mortality. He, therefore, treats death as the climax and the curtain-fall of the drama of life. He looks at time as the only destroyer because it has eroding agents for corroding powers. Death marks mortality but not eternity of life, the spiritual aspect of life as in The Gita. The spiritualists are unlike him with his agnostic background. He treats time as a double-edged weapon for it turns our life mortal on one side and our life with all ambitions futile on the other. He, therefore, does not believe in life after death, the state of oblivion in life. Life is therefore a journey to flow from womb to tomb, the two oblivions of life. He further believes that death is “anaesthesia” because it does not let man know its silent occurrence. In time’s endless fleet, the evening, symbolic of old age, culminates in the night that symbolizes death. Time puts an end to life like winter to put an end to the cycle of seasons. Life, in the flux of time, is transient like the flower. Life is a hard journey through time as he finds the present hollow and dreary and the future bringing inevitable death. He grows conscious of the motionlessness, emptiness, nothingness of life as death puts an end to everything, causing pain and suffering. Life leads to the desperate cry in the horror of death. The fact of death constantly worries him “dreadfully.” His poetry reflects man’s struggle in evading the horrifying and terrifying fact of death. There is no poet to delineate death, the harsh reality, so vividly as Larkin. His poetry, therefore, presents the concept of death in kaleidoscopic details.

Author :
Dr. Rajamouly Katta :
Poet, critic, reviewer and translator is professor of English in Ganapathy Engineering College, Warangal (AP).
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/POET.2024.37.01.8

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