"Deceptions" by Philip Larkin (poetry reading)

Mayhew refers to the early Victorian era of about 1840. The girl would have been about 12 years old. It's significant that she lived with her aunt because it meant that she was probably an orphan or illegitimate. The aunt must have wanted to get rid of her - the life of a servant girl was grim.

The picture is a detail of a portrait by Whistler around the same time - - but of course any girl who had her portrait painted would have been from a wealthy family.

Many children lived on the streets - there's a story told about Whistler meeting an urchin and asking him how old he was "Seven, if you please Guv'nor" ,said the boy. "Nonsense", said Whistler, "you couldn't possibly have got that dirty in only seven years."

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• Deceptions
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[thallassocracy]

You read well - but you choose even better.

I was at a poetry workshop once by the Welsh poet and publisher Sally Roberts Jones where she took up over half the time available saying how outrageous she found this poem.

It does sail very close to apologising for rape.

Much of Philip Larkin's meticulous verse runs very close to being tasteless - he is more like Rochester than people realise.

[SpokenVerse]

Larkin expresses his insight, which he has poetic licence to do. It is not sufficient to say that rape is "evil" and dismiss any attempt to understand it as an apology. People who do evil things have been deceived by their desires and experiences. They were deprived of something we got, lets say love, or they got something that we escaped, lets say abuse.

If we have no uncontrollable urges then we should consider ourselves to be fortunate not righteous. I think thats his point.

[amrit007100]

moving and scary. It is not about defending the rapist or sympathizing with his desires for fulfillment saying that they are deceptive. we can see the futility of chasing the fulfillment of a desire with the idea that performing the act would lead to satisfaction. It is something we do everyday.It is a concept on which the entire consumer based society is structured. Larkin separates the strands of desire, fulfillment and action and his genius lies in his craftsmanship and asethetic sensibility.

[craxmen]

'burst into fulfilment's desolate attic' is a great phrase. Julian Barnes used it in Flaubert's Parrot. Flaubert said the best day of his life was when he and a friend went to a brothel as teenagers, only to lose their nerve and run away before they even went in. 'The pleasure of an act, Flaubert implies, is in the anticipation of it. Why bother bursting into fulfilment's desolate attic?' I suppose rape must feel absolutely necessary to the perpetrator until immediately after it's carried out.

[jonno52]

Part 2: Isn't Larkin saying it would have been no comfort to the victim that her attacker lacked self insight while she experienced the world more directly? And I imagine an emphasis: "What CAN be said" - a speechless appeal against it all - words can't describe the horror. Or have I badly misread this? (note re: Greene's novel: the "Quiet American" is a reporter in 1950s war-torn Indo-China who tries to do good by channelling money to dubious political movements, which results in many deaths).

[jonno52]

Part 1: Earlier comment: "It does sail very close to apologising for rape." I've always found this poem both strange & highly disturbing. But never once has it seemed to me any kind of apology for rape. The last three lines carry a stark horror & do not seem to say that self-deception is an excuse, any more than the naivety of Graham Greene's "Quiet American" excused the appalling consequences of his actions. And the everyday things carrying on outside recall Arendt on "the banality of evil".

[Bernie150]

But isn't this more about context--he is explaining the rapist's situation in the context of (even as the punchline for) discussing the victim's suffering, thus seeming to trivialise the latter.

Then it's not so much a question of morality (sympathising with/ defending rapists) as it is of aesthetics.

[thallassocracy]

I am a confirmed devotee of Larkin, his friend Kingsley Amis, and of the Earl of Rochester. They all sometimes use the licence of poetry to say things one would not hear in polite company.

Like Sally Roberts Jones, I find this a very troubling poem. But I tend to value poems that disturb me.