I Remember I Remember
Philip Larkin writes:
... 'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. 'I was born here.'
...
Our garden, first: where I did not invent
Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
And wasn't spoken to by an old hat.
And here we have that splendid family
I never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be
'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that,
The bracken where I never trembling sat,
Determined to go through with it ...
... in those offices, my doggerel
Was not set up in blunt ten-point ...
[The ellipses are included for fear of the copyright mavens. Please refer to the complete poem (copyright Estate of Philip Larkin) ]
It seems to me that there are three or four references here to other (quasi) autobiographical works, but I cannot for certain identify a single one of them.
First, the botanical expert. Who he/she?
The old hat. Experienced by the same person?
The "splendid family". My guess is HE Bates, but I can't pin it down. Are you an HE Bates enthusiast who can - or who can tell me I'm wrong?
The chap whose work (in 10 point) was read by the mayor's cousin. Kingsley Amis, perhaps?
I got in touch with David Rees, on the authoritative Larkin site
http://www.philiplarkin.com as follows:
"Larkin's Collected Works, Drabble, the net generally and your forum in particular have not cracked my question, which probably has a straightforward answer.
Larkin's adoption of Thomas Hood's title is apposite in putting us immediately
into a sense of the theme he is addressing.
However, what is the provenance of the extended reference from
... where I did not invent ...
to
... had we the gift to see ahead"
and includes the quotation "all became a burning mist"?
I guess at HE Bates' Darling Buds of May (Pop Larkin et al). Am I right? And
should the mayor's cousin's reading be connected to the mystery author? "
David Rees graciously offered an extended response, including:
"I'm not aware of any specific allusions within this part of the text to other material. That doesn't mean there aren't any ... but generally he ... made do to achieving effects without depending on what he called 'the common myth kitty'. That was a fairly obvious reaction to, say Eliot, where you could argue that there was very little else but cultural rehashing.
However ... he has written about IRIR as satirising the type of biographical story that includes dramatic and melodramatic changes of life direction such as those he here denies as ever
happening to him. "
If you can help out, please do. It seems to me that if we can acknowledge references to Hector, Andromache etc, we should help each other out when the "contemporary myth kitty" from which our more recent poets draw becomes obscured by the darkening age of 21st century know-nothingness.
