The Concept of the Past: “The Forgotten Boredom” in the Poetry of Philip Larkin.

Larkin as man and poet finds time as man’s element. Time is not an abstract idea but a moving force. Life is rooted in time with “eroding agents”. Life initiating with birth looks into the future as seen from childhood. It traverses from the future to the present and finally to the past. Time is practical for him as fate to a fatalist, reason for a rationalist and the divine to a theist or spiritualist. Time has mysterious powers to turn life into mortality and futility. In life, birth initiates childhood to have all expectations about the future, proceed to manhood or womanhood to find them unfulfilled in the present that turns into the past. He treats the past as the uneventful experience. He considers childhood in his middle age “forgotten boredom” and “unspent”. His poetry reflects the past sans sentimentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]