Larkin's "Aubade" is, on an impressionistic reading, a hackneyed meditation on the inevitability of death. But it is the poet's use of simple language that lends the poem a veneer of transparency; rather, the sparseness is suggestive of greater depth in the poem's meaning. The stark plainness of language is telling of the fact that the merit of the poem lies mostly not in its literary finesse, but in its uncompromising verisimilitude in exploring the subject matter of existential anxiety. Accordingly, what I will argue in this paper is that Larkin's "Aubade" is not, unequivocally pessimistic as it first appears, but puts forth a complex representation of existential angst as being composed of a duality of opposing forces.
This duality is alluded to in the poem in its recurrent rhyming couplets, notably in "And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, / Not to be anywhere," (line 18-19) and "No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, / Nothing to love or link with" (28-29). This duality is also a characteristic of both the aubade, the poetic form that is the namesake of Larkin's poem, as well as much of existentialist philosophy. The aubade, which is defined by the OED as "a musical announcement of dawn, a sunrise song or open-air concert" and by the Merriam-Webster as a "poem greeting the dawn" or "a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn", makes for an apt title, on one level, because Larkin's version of the aubade is also a poem of the morning. On another level, the inherent dualities that exist in the traditional use of the aubade converge at an ideological level with what is explored in "Aubade"- the dualities that exist in a state of anxiety. As a poem of separation at daybreak, the aubade is at once a commemoration of the night's romance and a lament of the morning's separation, a poem of the cessation of love and of the commencement of a new day, and a poem of the anticipation of daybreak and of the inevitability of separation (York). The same sort of tension can also be found in the existentialist ideas of Sartre and Heidegger that preceded and presumably informed "Aubade". For example, there is an apparent contradiction in Sartre's famous proclamation that we are "condemned to be free" (Being and Nothingness 566) and in Heidegger's thought that we are 'being[s]-towards-death' or 'to be is to die'. Consequently, in his exploration of existential despair—or 'anxiety', as it is often referred to in existentialist literature for good reason, as will be shown later—Larkin presents this particular mental state as a paradoxical mixture of being simultaneously epiphanous and trite, unifying and distancing, invigorating and dispiriting.
The seemingly revelatory nature of the persona's ruminations on death at four in the morning is demonstrated by the line, "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" (2-4). That the realisation of our mortality is any true revelation at all is later contested by the first three lines of the last stanza which dismisses the observations as banal: "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" (41-43, emphasis mine). Insofar as the realisation of the pervasiveness of death is truly an insight—"I see what's really always there: / Unresting death, a whole day nearer now." (4-5)—such increased perceptivity is immobilising. The revelation "slows each impulse down to indecision" (33) and has the effect of "Making all thought impossible" (6). While the persona's thoughts seem epiphanous, they are uninformative and lack any practical merit, merely an "[a]rid interrogation" (8). In other words, the persona's musings are superfluous, indulgent and can be said to be merely a specious way of being afraid (a word-play on "special" (21) and "specious" (25)). This dichotomy between the persona's romanticised notion of death at four in the morning and the pragmatism of the working world is also mirrored in the traditional use of the aubade in which lovers must part at the call of worldly responsibilities. Further challenging the idea that this state of anxiety is a heightened mode of awareness is the fact that anxiety concretises the reality of death as "The sure extinction that we travel to" (17), while the nebulousness of all that happens after death is amplified—"how / And where and when I shall myself die" (6-7) is "a small unfocused blur" (32). The hazy line separating profundity and unoriginality straddled in anxiety is also echoed in the curious nocturnal nature of the persona's realisation.
While the state of anxiety is an introspective mood spurred largely by one's isolation from the external world, as acknowledged by Larkin in the line, "And realisation of it rages out / In furnace-fear when we are caught without / People or drink" (35-37), it is also counter intuitive that clarity should be found in darkness rather than in light. Conventionally, light is associated with knowledge, as in 'to see the light' or 'enlightenment', but subversive connotations are attached to light and darkness in "Aubade" as they are used to represent both cognizance and ignorance. Light's power to illuminate in "Slowly light strengthens and the room takes shape" (41) is juxtaposed against its ability to paralyse and blind, as in "Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. / The mind blanks at the glare" (10-11, emphasis mine), and its ability to bleach what is otherwise vivid. Light itself further carries religious allusions, as in 'to be filled with God's light', and suggests optimism, as in 'the light at the end of the tunnel' —two attitudes towards death that Larkin would denounce as escapist. These conflicting representations of anxiety as being simultaneously insightful and uninformative encapsulates nicely that in the face of existential anxiety, one is acutely aware of the inevitability of death and yet at a loss of what to do. It also reflects the state of one becoming privy to the underlying structure of human life at the same time as one's understanding of social constructs become dissolute.
The effect of 'distantiality' (as termed in Heidegger's philosophy) is a disenchantment of the meaning, classifications and functions artificially prescribed to people and objects in the world-meanings that are normally comprehended only through worldly know-how and social adeptness. The sentiment of 'distantiality' is best illustrated by Sartre in Nausea:
Words had disappeared, and with them the meaning of things, the methods of using them, the feeble landmarks which men have traced on their surface. . .the diversity of things, their individuality, was only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, in disorder—naked, with a frightening, obscene, nakedness. (182- 183)
This radical distancing of oneself from the culturally and socially defined frameworks that shape our perceptions of the world is usually what brings about a state of anxiety. In the lines "In furnace-fear when we are caught without / People or drink" (36-37), the line break symbolises the persona's literal break from the social world. The collapse of the conventional distinction between human beings and inanimate objects—as in Nausea in which the protagonist likens himself to a black root, seeing himself as an object or an en-soi (being-in itself) as opposed to a pour-soi (being-for-itself)—is exemplified through the organisation of telephones, postmen and doctors into a singular category of 'bearers of news of death'. The telephone is personified and adopts a human quality of crouching, whereas postmen and doctors are conversely portrayed as automata programmed to "go from house to house" (50).
The consonance in "people or drink" (37) and "postmen like doctors" (50) similarly illustrates how things begin to lose their individual significance and dissolve into "soft, monstrous masses, in disorder" (Sartre 183). Everyday objects start to take on an ominous, ghostly air. The persona's reclusion from society and the external world is perhaps most lucidly expressed in the lines "uncaring / Intricate rented world" (46-47) and "Nothing to love or link with" (29). However, in the very line, "Nothing to love or link with" (29), the flipside of the coin is expounded. "Link with" (29) is in fact linked with "think with" (28) from the preceding line through rhyme. As mentioned, the duality manifests in the fact that the underlying structure of the world becomes ever more salient when the breakdown of social constructs is taken granted for. In anxiety, one's craving for real human connection is heightened. Through the use of straightforward and everyday language, "Aubade" Larkin propagates the message that death is universal, and thus it is also the shared temporality of our being that unifies us. This sense of solidarity is fortified by the recurrent use of the pronoun 'we'—the use of which also reveals the dialogic nature of the poem, which is a feature of the stanzaic form. As in the conventional aubade which is sometimes written as a conversation between the lover and a watchman who cautions of the lovers' impending separation at dawn, the persona in Larkin's "Aubade" doubles as a mortal man contemplating his mortality and the watchman reminding readers of their mortality. It is also of note that poetic conventions are still adhered to rather devotionally throughout the poem, such as in the poem's regular ababccdeed rhyme scheme. It is also written in iambic pentameter, except for the penultimate line of each stanza. In "Flashes afresh to hold and horrify" (10), the alliteration not only locks 'hold'and 'horrify' together, but is one of the literary devices that literally holds up the structure of the poem. Poetry and language itself, is a form of expression and a medium of communication. Thus, it seems that in anxiety, one is simultaneously markedly severed from and in unusual proximity to the world of the living.
The previous two points, however, can perhaps be said to culminate in this final and wider point that experiencing anxiety is, in some manner, like dying and living. After all, Heidegger often referred to anxiety as 'existential death'. Death is construed in "Aubade" as the cessation of consciousness:
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. (27-30)
It is exactly this sterile imagery that is put forth in the persona's description of anxiety: in "soundless dark" (2), there is "no sight, no sound" (27); in dread "making all thought impossible" (6), there is "nothing to think with" (28); "when we are caught without / People or drink" (36-37), there is "nothing to love or link with" (29), in which 'link' also rhymes with 'drink'. It cannot be dismissed as a coincidence then that "dread" (8) should rhyme with "being dead"(9). In fact, a sense of desolation pervades the entire poem in its characteristic lack of descriptive terms that pertain to the tactile, the olfactory, the gustatory or the visual. The barrenness of the poetic landscape is encapsulated in the line "The sky is white as clay, with no sun" (48). The deadness of passion is also revealed in the use of language, which is often stoic. The line "realisation of it rages out / In furnace-fear" (35-36) employs cold, calculated alliteration, as opposed to the visceral spewing (raging out) of words that is demanded by the sentiment of "furnace-fear" that is being expressed.
Conversely, to avoid this feeling of anxiety, the persona turns to alcohol, which is likewise akin to dying since it is a dulling of the sense and an anaesthetic. Therefore, the sober introspection of death in the state of anxiety conversely must in fact, be living. Like how the conventional aubade progresses visually and temporally towards the separation of its lovers, Larkin's "Aubade" similarly draws the persona (and readers) gradually closer towards death. However, the poem is simultaneously cyclic, in that the penultimate line "Work has to be done" (49) mirrors the first line, "I work all day" (1). This suggests that dread can be thought of as part of routine life. Alternatively, instead of construing dread as living (in the routine and mundane sense of the word), existentialists believe that contemplating mortality may also incite one's transition into leading an 'authentic' life:
Anxiety throws Dasein (Being) back upon that which it is anxious about—its owned ability-to-be-in-the-world. Anxiety individualises Dasein for its ownmost being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities. Therefore, with that which it is anxious about, anxiety discloses Dasein as being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individualisation. (Heidegger 232)
In fact, Heidegger argues that "Being is that which is an issue for every such entity [ourselves as human beings]" (67)—to 'care' for our being is what makes us human beings. This is to say that in the unthinking conviction and routine with which "Work has to be done." (49) is written, one becomes less human, and more 'dead'. This is also reflected in the subsequent line, "Postmen like doctors go from house to house" (50), whose work rounds are similar only in routine. The resulting absurdism and bizarreness from this comparison can possibly be explained by the conjecture that "house" (50) is inserted simply, and unquestioningly to rhyme with "rouse" (47) for the sake of a rhyming couplet. It is also apt that as the "uncaring / Intricate rented world begins to rouse" (47, emphasis mine), the night's anxiety or care for one's being, is doused. In a state of anxiety, one is caught in between coming to a life affirming conclusion on our raison d'être and a cynical, nihilistic one.
The poignancy of "Aubade" lies in Larkin's deftness in capturing the nuances and apparent contradictions that characterise existential anxiety and render existential anxiety markedly distinct from depression or any simple passing thought on death. This then justifies the choice of the term, 'anxiety' (as is used in many English translations of Heidegger's Being and Time) to convey the existential state of mind over less illustrative terms such as 'clinical depression', 'anguish' and, to some lesser extent, 'angst'. The OED's definition of 'anxiety' as "the quality or state of being anxious; uneasiness or trouble of mind about some uncertain event" illustrates clearly the eloquence of the term 'anxiety' in expressing precisely that which is elucidated in "Aubade"– the conflicting forces and duality inherent in the existential state of mind.
San Weng Kin is a second year Philosophy + USP student, planning to minor in English Literature. He is interested in metaphysics and moral philosophy, and hopes to learn more about political theory, epistemology, aesthetics and late 20th century developments in metaethics.
Works Cited
York, Jake Adam. "Craft Note: The Aubade: Poem of Beginnings." The Kenyon Review. The Kenyon Review,
11 Mar. 2012. Web.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. London: Harper, 1962.
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Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E.
Barnes. New York: Routledge, 1969. Print.
———. Nausea. Trans. Robert Baldick. London: Penguin, 1963. Print.