Philip Larkinの"Negative Emotions"

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  • Philip Larkin ノ Negative Emotions
  • Philip Larkin's Use of "Negative Emotions"

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Philip Larkin is rather stoic in his attitudes towards poetry; he does not expect too much out of it. (For example, he does not like to treat it in terms of culture, myth, and so forth.) His poetic output is comparatively small, and he hardly shows any interest in theories of poetry. His only motive for writing poems lies in preserving things or experiences for their own sake and for himself. Larkin keeps close to his daily experiences, deriving most of his materials directly out of them. His observations of daily happenings, comments upon them, or sentiments occasioned by them, make up most of his poetry. But one can hardly expect anything 'poetic' in his poetry, since things that happen in post-war England are just what they are. Pleasure seems to be the least favourable ideal for Larkin. Larkin chooses his themes out of his daily experiences, where things seldom turn out to be what one expects them to be. Hence his poetry is full of disillusionment, loneliness, disappointment, a sense of defeat and loss, skeptical attitudes, self-mockery, resignation, or ennui. This tendancy towards a pessimistic view of life is reflected in his characteristic use of negatives. Negatives often reveal his (or other people's) sense of betrayal in life. But there are occasions when they are exploited in order to reverse the conventional sense of value. Such a technique brings Larkin's ironical attitudes more into focus than anything else. However, Larkin's use of negatives sometimes produces the qualifying effects or limiting effects in utterance, revealing the poet's reserved or skeptical ways of expressing himself. And in some cases this rhetoric of negation goes so far as to take him to the brink of self-nullification. Larkin's use of ntgatives is deeply rooted in his empiricism, but at the same time it seems to be closely connected with the self-destructive impulse (of the poet himself or of his age). In fact, he was able to give an original expression to the atmosphere of an age by exploiting the use of "negative emotions."

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