The Old Fools-Phillip Larkin

January 13th, 2019

Hey world,
Happy New Year!
To celebrate the opening of the new year and all the hopes and aspirations that accompany it, I thought I would pick a nice cheerful poem about senile old people who are, for lack of a better phrase, slowly losing their marbles: ‘The Old Fools’ by Philip Larkin.

Philip Larkin is renowned for his honest, intimate, lyrical and often foul-mouthed verse, the latter description bringing his famous poem ‘This Be The Verse’ to mind. He is also renowned for being a bit of a pessimist. Using his own poetic technique he conveys his own discontent with his existence, but he does so with elements of humour and profanity. I have blogged about Larkin before on his poem ‘The Trees’ which is one of my favorites, so if you haven’t seen that post make sure to check it out before continuing.

Before Christmas someone gave me a collection of poetry which included Philip Larkin’s collection
of poetry High Windows, which was the fourth volume of his that was published in his lifetime, and I came across ‘The Old Fools’ while reading it. This poem deals with Larkin’s gerascophobia (fear of growing old or aging). This poem lingered in my mind after I read it for a long time.

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and
drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all 

night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some
September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or
tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's 

strange;
Why aren't they screaming? 

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend 

There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
How can they ignore it? 

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms 

Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: 

Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give 
An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night? 

Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.

This poem both fascinated and disturbed me.
As a teenager, growing old and the complications of the mind and body that come with it is not something that I have ever really thought about. I guess just because I am young and I have always felt young, being old seems like something far away and inconsequential. I have been too busy thinking about my life that is stretching out before me, and of things that I will do during it.

After reading this poem anyone would have a touch of gerascophobia. I know I did. Larkin describes it as being pretty grim and undignified, despite the fact that he was not old when he wrote this. I
think, like everyone else who is not convinced that it seems ‘more grown when your mouth hangs open and drools’, and who don’t ‘keep on pissing’ themselves, Larkin wrote this poem based on observation of elderly people around him who do all of these things.

At the beginning of the poem Larkin’s tone is frustrated, and unsympathetic. He is disgusted and almost accusatory when he asks ‘What do they think has happened, the old fools, to make them like this?’. The fact that he calls elderly people ‘the old fools’ indicates that he is disgusted by their reverting back into infanthood in that they are unable to care for themselves. He then proceeds to answer his own questions throughout the poem. However, as the poem progresses his tone softens and becomes less critical, and his language becomes more lyrical.

The third stanza is particularly beautiful and terrifying at the same time: Larkin’s metaphor of being old being like ‘having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting.’ This would explain why when you see or speak to an elderly person, why they seem so distant and quiet. Larkin thinks that they are watching a kind of play in bright rooms in their minds and the actors are ‘people you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms like a deep loss restored,’.

Isn’t that beautiful? They are watching a play inside their own heads with people whom they have lost earlier in life, that have come back and are standing before them in the form of memories.
Does this mean that we too will feature in some of our family’s and good friend’s ‘plays’ inside their heads? Will they one day watch us in the well lit rooms? Who will we see in our heads? It is kind of a creepy thought, but at the same time a comforting one.

Larkin is saying here that when we are old we are reunited with people we have lost during our life time. The downside is that because these old people are so captivated by these ghosts of the past that
are performing in their heads, they find it difficult to live in the present here and now at the same time. This is why, to Larkin, they seem so distant when we speak to them. To him this explains why
they have ‘An air of baffled absence, trying to be there yet being here.’

These actors are in a comfortable, familiar setting which the old people recognise. Isn’t that really what you would want when you are old? Comfort and familiar things.

The familiarity of the setting of what the old people are watching in their heads is shown when

Larkin says ‘from known doors turning’ or ‘extracting a known book from the shelves’. One of the most satisfying experiences now I think about it is tracing the spines of all your well thumbed books and pulling out the one you were looking for. Here Larkin is listing several examples of familiar things that haunt these people's minds.

Something that also stuck in my memory from the third stanza was 'on some lonely, rain ceased midsummer evening'. I love this image that he creates here. It brings to mind a picture of a mellow, midsummer evening when it had been raining earlier but had stopped leaving the trees dripping in the warm twilight, the crickets would be whirring sleepily and someone might be lounging in a hammock playing the harmonica softly in the dusk...
I think the fact that we are currently in the depths of winter probably had something to do with my attraction to the description. Also, the rain ceasing could symbolize relief and peace, both things that an old person would remember feeling fondly.

The final stanza is fantastic, and perhaps the most haunting:

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear 
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving 
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never throughout 
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.

Here Larkin describes how he thinks the old people find breathing difficult- 'the constant wear and tear of taken breath', and how they 'crouch below extinction's alp'. People crouching beneath an alp, which is a typically snow capped mountain top is a particularly thought provoking image.  Does crouching mean that in the end we are undignified, animalistic creatures in that we do not stand up straight? Extinction is death obviously. All together it isn't a very dignified condition, crouching beneath a mountain peak, cold and finding it difficult to breathe. Larkin says that the 'old fools' never perceive how near this peak is. According to him, we can always see this peak, it becomes closer when we are old. He says that because it is so close, the end that is, that is what keeps old people quiet, as well as the plays inside their heads.

Larkin says that for them, these old fools, the ground beneath them is rising to they are slowly ascending this mountain of extinction. I guess this is the same for all of us, maybe we can see this peak too but to us it is far away and in the far distance. This is similar to me and my thoughts of growing old and dying as I said at the beginning. For some reason this line conjures up an image of Mount Fugi in Japan rising from the mist...



A heartbreaking line in the final stanza is: 'Not when the strangers come?'. This must be the family and friends and anyone who are around these old people, but unfortunately they do not recognise them and get confused. This is the worst part of when a loved one gets dementia when you visit them and they stare blankly at you.
Another interesting detail I noticed was that Larkin's chosen place of extinction is very close to the sky, and is therefore a kind of analogy for heaven. Some people believe that when you die you go up into heaven, or your soul or spirit does. I think it does. I think that when these old fools do ascend extinction's alp, they are not watching the plays of their own memories anymore. Instead I think hat they are re-living them over and over again forever and are young again.

In the final lines of the poem, Larkin answers all of his own questions with 'Well, we shall find out.'
This line is particularly evocative and poignant and terrifying at the same time because he is right. We will all find out one day. We will all grow old, and we will all approach that peak of extinction and we too will ascend it.

I think Larkin's message here is do not fear growing old. It is a fate that awaits us all. He is trying to convey how life is short, and you should make as many memories as you can. That way, in the end, you will die with no regrets and you will be at peace.
Do not be afraid of old age, world.
-A. Heezen