Philip Larkin's “Aubade”

A Pens and Poison Poetry Analysis

Philip Larkin’s “Aubade,” a sober yet startlingly familiar meditation on mortality, is perhaps the twentieth century’s most famous poem about that most universal of universal human themes—death. Larkin’s last major work is at once stark and introspective, painting a vivid scene of one man’s rumination on the inevitability of leaving our world behind. What can we learn from this singular take on ephemerality? Let’s read “Aubade” to find out.

Aubade by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.   
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   
Till then I see what’s really always there:   
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   
Making all thought impossible but how   
And where and when I shall myself die.   
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse   
—The good not done, the love not given, time   
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,   
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,   
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,   
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,   
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   
That slows each impulse down to indecision.   
Most things may never happen: this one will,   
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without   
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave   
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.   
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,   
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,   
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring   
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

The first thing you might notice is that the poem is simplistic and straightforward. We have none of T.S. Eliot’s abstruse literary allusions or Sylvia Plath’s complex metaphors for womanhood. Instead, the poet tells us directly how he spends his days: “I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.” The first line of the poem introduces its main theme—the human attempt to avoid the inevitability of death—and, as we progress, the poem oscillates between such quotidian experiences and the narrator’s inner turmoil. In the middle of the night, for instance, Larkin, neither working nor drunk, is forced to confront his own mortality as anxiety becomes personified as a being of its own.

Larkin then asks himself what to make of his new companion—and whether we should fear death or accept it as an inevitable part of life. In the following stanza, the poet frets about how little time he has to interact with other people and wonders whether a given individual can truly have an impact on the collective good. He describes death as “the sure extinction that we travel to,” emphasizing its inevitability in plain terms to provide a sobering contrast to the typical poetic discussion on the topic—it does not do us well, Larkin assures us, to couch death in poetic language to attempt to mitigate its haunting reality.

As the poem progresses to the third stanza, Larkin considers the role of religion as a sort of analgesic against death and concludes that not even devout religious belief can allay the terror of knowing that everything must pass. Here, we enjoy the poem’s first elaborate metaphor, with religion portrayed as a more noble contrast to the poet’s previous earthly musings. Religion, however, though a “musical” brocade, becomes moth-eaten—a futile endeavor that has eroded over time and a decorative accessory that has lost its value. Larkin then goes so far as to argue that staunch religious belief only exacerbates the fear of death, for it misguides us into thinking that it is not possible to fear something that we cannot experience—a notion that the poet rejects as false. In so doing, Larkin equates death with nothingness and claims that it is precisely this nothingness that human beings fear the most. If life is a sensory experience—filled not only with sight and sound but also with conscience—then death, with its absence of all sensation, is its prime antithesis.

Is there an antidote, then, to the fear of death? Larkin devotes the next stanza to this question yet does not come up with a satisfying answer. He personifies death as “a small unfocused blur,” emphasizing the ambiguity of an event that every living being is privy to yet never will consciously experience. The way we typically quell anxiety, Larkin suggests, is by assuring ourselves that the outcome is highly unlikely—yet here, the method is faulty, for death is sure to happen. We can, perhaps, distract ourselves from the thought of death by surrounding ourselves with other people or indulging in food or drink, but for a moment, Larkin invites us to stare death in the face and imagine a world without these sweet distractions. Courage, he claims, will not save us. There is not much we can do aside from acknowledge the reality of death—at the end of the day, neither fear nor bravery will make a difference.

Yet despite the darkness that permeates the poem, Larkin leaves us with a layer of optimism as we progress into the final stanza. Night gives way to day as light spills into the room, transforming the hazy shadows of the unknown into the tangible, recognizable wardrobe of the morning. Death becomes personified as a quotidian fixture of life, ushering in the telephones and offices of the work day and other such familiar distractions. The notion of death is still ominous—with the offices locked-up and the world uncaring—yet in the daytime, it becomes more ordinary and comprehensible. Dreariness gives way to a subtle optimism that negates the anxiety the narrator previously experienced. The sky is white as clay, the sun is gone, yet life goes on—if only for a moment.

“Aubade” is far from a cheerful ballad, yet in contrasting the daytime and the beauty of life with the grim imagery of the night, Larkin highlights life’s intrinsic value and suggests that while we must all come to term with death, we must also embrace the ordinary joys of life and make the most of the short time we have on our planet.

Perhaps, then, we have an optimistic poem after all.

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