The later and posthumous Larkin : the intellectuality of an unfailing philosopher

Abstract EN

Philip Larkin, as his collected works published posthumously prove, is more a prolific writer than his four slim collections indicate.

Thwaite‘s Colllected Poems (1988) and later Burnett‘s Complete Works (2012) offer access to the poems uncollected or even unpublished during the poet‘s lifetime.

This study is intended to shed light on some poems which Larkin chose not to collect and/or publish; these poems bear thematic or even intertextual relations to some of his collected poems or treat related topics from different angles of vision.

The target is to expose a poet‘s poetics that is by no means discursive and a mentality that continued to explore the esoteric dimensions to thought with a profound and sophisticated vision.

Whether the poems were written as early as 1945 or three decades later, they exemplify a consistent pursuit of the same themes that have a lot to do with essential philosophical and existential questions.

And though they may argue on behalf the same personae whose concerns and anxieties converge despite the temporal haitus, the trajectory of Larkin‘s career remains hardly linear; rather it varies and adjusts to his poetical as well as psychological transformations.