Mr Bleaney?

I wonder whether I now might be older than Mr Bleaney – how old was Larkin when he wrote the poem?  Surely quite young, and still, well, very Larkinesque. I suspect on some level he always saw himself as a Bleaneyan figure, Bleaney Agonistes... Which, if so, would have been totally bizarre as we are talking  about one of the foremost poets of his generation. But “success” is not an objective concept and in any case, in the end surely we all will fail, and all but the most too well wadded to realize it. There is no permanent achievement here, no success to compare with the failure.

This is the Finnish Pietist in me talking: I surely have gotten one of the least materialistic and least ambitious world views as a family inheritance. Though it could have been worse, certainly much worse, and not much better at all. But as to wordly achievement, being already past Bleaney (I think he must have been in his early 40's), there is prescious little to show. Lots of various stuff, some interesting, some even impressive, certainly, but little in the way of worldly success, and children hardly count as a life achievement, as desperately loved as they are, but as independent persons to be protected and sheltered, not to act as one's raison d'être.

I cannot fundamentally denounce this inheritance though, not finally: the things achievable here pale into insignificance with the things unachievable. To have material success in this world rather tells against you instead of for. Maybe Larkin fundamentally did know this, behind all the misery there might be other things, closely guarded. Him being an artist and all.

Under the category of eternity

I have (naturally rather respectfully) mocked here the impossible strivings of classic Western metaphysical philosophy. And, to be honest, what else is Heidegger for example attempting, or Derrida, to speak of modern Western philosophy? Universalizing of our irredeemably local and partial experience is by definition not possible, of course. Thus such philosophy has some fairly ridiculous, pompous cadences, aspects. But only partially - there is great majesty in such attempts, strange harmonies.

And a part of us surely will always belong under the category of eternity, however animalistic, failed, discoherent we simultaneously are. Art takes us there more directly, more efficiently than intricate sophistries and logical structures, and also life, also life, when lived vehemently, intensely, through love and understanding. We fail, naturally we fail: we cannot be fully coherent, fully meaningful, fully serious - but we won't fail totally, irredeemably. There are degrees - and individual stories: some will have only a flicker of this bright flame, well hidden under trauma and brutality (experienced and redistributed), some will burn like a great bonfire driving back darkness and hopelessness.