Money - PHILIP LARKIN

 

 

Quarterly[D1] , is it, money reproaches me:

    ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully[D2] ?

I am all you never had of goods and sex.

    You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others[D3] , what they do with theirs:   

    They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.

By now they’ve a second house and car and wife[D4] :

    Clearly money has something to do with life[D5] 

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:

    You can’t put off being young until you retire,[D6] [D7] 

And however you bank your screw, the money you save

    Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing[D8] . It’s like looking down

    From long french windows [D9] at a provincial town,   

The slums[D10] , the canal[D11] , the churches ornate [D12] and mad

    In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

Money [19 February 1973. From High Windows] is a poem written in the aftermath of the oil shock in 1973. The government was frantically trying to make people spend more on goods and that the wisdom of ‘banking your screw’ (i.e. salary) was questioned by the credit crunch.

The first three stanzas are an accumulation of popular expressions. In contrast, the final stanza reaches a visionary mode. The full stop after the word ‘singing’ makes the readers to stop mid-line and consider a connection between money and the Sirens, a group of mythical creatures that lured unwary sailors to their untimely death with their singing in Homer’s Odyssey. The enjambments add to an ordinary townscape a surreal touch. The final rhyming couplet, while keeping with the basic rhyme scheme of the entire poem, challenges the poem’s initially casual tone by introducing the ideas of chaos of modern life represented by slums, canals, and churches as well as sadness the poetic persona feels at hearing the “money singing” which evokes the vision of the chaotic city.

In my view, the brilliance of Larkin is bound up in his effortless ability to turn rhymes that read as almost conversational. This subtle skill has — at least in my reading — two effects, the first of which is that Larkin’s poetry has an inviting quality; not only do you want to repeatedly return to some of his best work, you also find yourself quoting it, or silently reflecting on it, in moments that are otherwise utterly mundane. Larkin wrote about money, relationships, society, and family in ways as accessible as those topics are themselves familiar to all of us. Towards the end of his life, Larkin said that he liked to think that people in pubs would talk about his poems, and I’ll say that although I don’t currently have any friends who are interested in both poetry and pubs, if I did, Larkin would probably be the first name dropped in our hypothetical discussions.

The second quality of Larkin’s that I always find myself admiring is — and this may surprise devotees of his — the fearlessness with which he writes. It’s not easy to identify, much less write about, the shortcomings of one’s character, the wounds in one’s psyche. Yet Larkin never seems to flinch in revealing these elements of his personality. As Lawrence Durrell quipped, “It’s unthinkable not to love – you’d have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you’d have to be Philip Larkin.” And Larkin was certainly a distinctly neurotic and isolated person. But his cold eye on the world is always counterbalanced by the warming, heartening quality of his voice, as if he’s enjoining us to share in his view while also softly nudging us to reflect that we are comparatively well-adjusted and connected. There’s a reason why Larkin called his most-beloved collection of poetry High Windows: he stands remote, secluded and single, separated from the human universe by a pane of glass. There’s a reason why he’s looking down at the mad world of “Money”.

To note: “bank your screw” refers to the money earned at a day job that one then saves. The “shave” referenced is the third stanza is the final shave that an undertaker gives a corpse in the casket.

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 [D1]Once in every four months

 [D2]Money has to be spent in order to lead a good life, according to popular belief

 [D3]Creates a dichotomy of ‘me’ and ‘others’

 [D4]Essentials of life. Look at the order – material things come first

 [D5]The poetic persona does not seem to really grasp the connection between life and money

 [D6]Seize life

 [D7]This is what the modern capitalist consumer culture advocates

 [D8]Like the Sirens that lure the unwary sailors to their untimely death – The Odyssey

 [D9]Affluent houses

 [D10]Poverty

 [D11]Build mainly for commercial traffic

 [D12]Rich religious institutions