An Arundel Tomb

This poem, for me, is one of Larkin's best. The poem is significant in that it almost seems to show a glimmer of hope in it's conclusion; 'What will survive of us is love'. This, however, is counteracted by the fact that this is 'almost-instinct almost true'. It seems that Larkin is not entirely convinced that love will survive of us. (Could this be another of Larkin's rejection to ideas - See 'Love Songs in Age' for an example) However, I think that the fact that this slighty more optimistic poem is the final poem in the collection is siginificant; Larkin, instead of leaving his reader with less-hopeful poem such as Mr Bleaney, has left his reader with the final line 'What will survive of us is love'. Surely this can be thought of as a moment of optimism from Larkin, although even this seems to be loaded with doubt.

This poem is the last in his collection and it is deliberately chosen to add a more gloomy feel to his entire collection. The title suggests that it marks the end of it all, and a 'tomb' is not exactly a very comforting object. It sort of hints that a definite resolution cannot be found for all his questions in his themes, and all leads to death eventually. It is sad that even at the very end, we cannot even be truly enlightened in our quests for answers.

The poem talks about 2 statues, having gone through time and weathering, seemed to have lost its original feel that was intended as could be seen from here: 'Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:'. Only those who looked beyond the surface would have an idea of what it was meant to be.

Most would choose 'To look, not read', and end up 'washing' away and eroding the identity of the statues. 'Time has transfigures them into
Untruth.'

What would survive is perhaps an 'attitude', an attitude of love. Even in that, the narrator seems to be unsure if what remains of the attitude is totally pure and uncorrupted.

More than just relating to the issue of love being the only entity that perhaps can withstand the test of time, the poet might also be hinting to us his own feelings about faith. Most people who look at the surface and not look deeper would never really see the light. They only saw what they wanted to see. In this instance, the poet perhaps felt that if they had looked deeper, they will realise that the reality is not all so rosy as their faith promised. The reality that those people saw is the 'untruth' that had 'transfigured by time'. So what is the reality really?

At the end, the poet offers a resolution for himself, perhaps as a consolation or even a mild level of self-deception. He proclaims that love is the only element that can survive all. He did not mention anything about God or faith, perhaps that is the distinction that he had made between love and faith. Faith perhaps may not be all about love at all. Till the very end, the poet is never truly convinced with whatever answers he offered for himself.

I think Larkin is identifying that although the image of the earl and countess has survived, what they were actually intended to stand for hasn't, i.e to illustrate the honour of their family name. Time has infact 'transfigured them into / Untruth'. Although the couple's hands are clasped, Larkin observes that this may only be a triviality due to 'a sculpter's sweet commissioned grace'. The Latin at the bottom of the monument is now ignored; onlookers prefer to look at the hands and think of them as a symbol for everlasting love. This highlights one of Larkin's popular themes that we hold love in too high esteem and rely on it to fulfil our dreams, when actually, that romantic notion is only 'almost' true. The fact that people now cannot read the Latin illustrates how this monument cannot adapt with time - is this a suggestion that love cannot adapt and is therefore misunderstood? This poem is the only one of the collection that allows the reader to take a soppy and sentimental view, but is that really a very Larkin thing to do!?

I've known and admired this poem for some years now, but there's always something to learn. Apparently, the clasped hands that form the central image of the poem were not the work of the original sculptor, but a Victorian addition. This came as a bit of a shock to me, almost to the extent of undermining the meaning of the poem. But, after a little thought, it now seems to me to be an apt and ironic comment. The poem is, after all, deeply ironic in its implication that subsequent ages have misunderstood the sculptor's intentions, and ascribed to him meaning that he almost certainly did not intend. He therefore dismisses the symbolism of the clasped hands; they do not necessarily betoken love as we understand it.
It seems, therefore, appropriate that the hands were the work of a later, more mawkishly sentimental, age.
Nevertheless, if anything of us, from whatever age, is going to survive, it must be a manifestation of the human spirit in its most divine form. I feel Larkin is right in identifying that virtue as Love.

I personally think,that apart from hearing about Philip Larkin being so boring and a solitary man who finds little interest in life,I seem to see a glimmer of interest and things that engage him to have interest,especially in "An Arundel Tomb".He has a considerate interest in what he's doing.The first time i read this poem i found it a bit difficult to understand but now i understand that Larkin's poem is a lovely artifact of language.The language creates a sense of despair.I particulary enjoyed reading the last line " What will survive of us is love".I reckon that Larkin is linking to the couple and how they lived their life.However it may also represent an image of our perception of love being idealised.

The thing I admire about this poem is the transience it seems to express, the continual and undinted march of time and change. Throughout the long passage of time, the sculpture endures. Time has made the couple remote from us, eroding their identity, reducing them to historical relics; wispy, vaporous traces of 'their scrap of history'. Yet their fidelity is stone; cold and inert, an abstraction from real life. The true condition of human life and love is transience, not survival. And I don't think that Larkin ended the poem with an affirmation of the enduring power of love, but rather the persistent human belief in love; our 'almost-instinct' is ratified by an indistinct statue that has been moulded to create a symbolically perfect love.

It seems that some commentators know and others do not that this poem was inspired by a real tomb of real people. They were Richard Fitzalan, 2nd Earl of Arundel and Eleanor his wife. She died in 1372 and he died in 1376. The carvings are currently in Chichester Cathedral. They were originally sited in Lewes Priory but were saved after the dissolution of that Priory (circa 1536)and transferred to Chichester.

Each figure is a separate sculpture combined with other carved stones to make the complete monument. When I stood beside it today and read the poem for the first time I felt a real frisson - hair tingling on the nape of the neck.

The individual figures were drawn in 1781 by S. H. Grimm. The drawings show the Earl with his right hand gauntletted holding the left gauntlett. His left arm is broken about six 1nches below the shoulder. His wife has her left hand folded under her robes with the hand placed on her heart. Her right arm is extended across her waist towards the Earl but in 1781 is broken six inches below the elbow. What is very unusual about her pose is that she is carved with her right leg over her left leg so that her whole body is turned towards the Earl. All other couples I have seen lie flat on their backs side by side. The reference for the drawing is BL Add. MS 29925, fol. 26. This evidence was used by E. A. Richardson to suggest they were originally joined together and the statues were restored as such. This was subsequently questioned . Current interpretation in the Cathedral explains that further proof has now been obtained that shows that this reconstruction of the figures is true to their original form.

For tombs of this date their are never any Latin inscriptions, so this part of the poem is poetic licence. At that time very few people could read at all. Literate people were usually clerics. There is some question about whether the tomb chest on which the figures lie is the original but this should not spoil the fact that a real tenderness was expressed back in 1375. This is the year that the two sculptures were shipped from Poole in Dorset to London and subsequently transported to Lewes. In the Earls will written in December 1375 he specifically instructs that his tomb in the Chapter House of Lewes should not be higher than his wife's. Thus he probably saw the completed effigies before his death and approved.

It is a stunning poem about a stunning sculpture.