Reasons for Attendance by Philip Larkin
"Reasons for Attendance" is a poem by Philip Larkin that explores themes of desire, detachment, and the complexity of human experience through the lens of a dance hall setting. With a structure of four cinquains and a consistent rhyme scheme, the poem juxtaposes the lively world inside the hall against the speaker's hesitant observations from the outside. The speaker is drawn to the dancers, characterized by their youthful exuberance, yet remains skeptical about the happiness they seem to embody. Larkin delves into the dual motivations of attraction and art, suggesting that while the dancers are engaged in a physical communion, the speaker grapples with the more solitary pursuit of artistic fulfillment.
Throughout the poem, Larkin employs ambiguity and paradox, creating a rich tapestry of emotions and reflections. He questions whether either the dancers or himself truly understands their experiences, culminating in a sense of uncertainty about happiness itself. The poem ultimately leaves readers contemplating the intricate relationship between desire, art, and the often conflicting paths individuals navigate in their search for meaning and satisfaction.
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Subject Terms
Reasons for Attendance by Philip Larkin
First published: 1955, in The Less Deceived
Type of poem: Lyric
The Poem
“Reasons for Attendance” is a short poem of twenty lines that is divided into four cinquains with regular rhyme scheme based primarily on slant rhymes. The title hints at Philip Larkin’s multiple concerns in the poem. He ponders why the young couples with “flushed face” move “to and fro” inside the dance hall while he remains outside. Similarly, he considers why he, despite his protests that he does not need the happiness inside the hall, is drawn “To watch the dancers”—that is, to “attend” to them, in the archaic sense of “give heed to.”
“Reasons for Attendance” begins with the speaker standing outside “the lighted glass” feeling compelled to watch the dancers inside. For the remainder of the poem, Larkin alternates between the perspectives of the observer outside and the dancers inside the hall. In the third line of the first stanza, he shifts from himself to the particulars of the dancers, who shift “intently” and “Solemnly on the beat of happiness.”
The second stanza brings another shift in perspective, as the poet focuses on what he senses (“smoke and sweat” and “The wonderful feel of girls”) as he attempts to penetrate the atmosphere inside. The first line of the stanza (“Or so I fancy”) raises the possibility that the earlier sensations described inside the dance hall were only what the poet’s “fancy” projected onto the scene.
Beginning with line 2 of the second stanza, the poet presents the two competing motivations that inform the poem—sex, seen by many as “the lion’s share/ Of happiness,” and the “lifted, rough-tongued bell” of art, which demands a separateness of its followers. In the third and fourth stanzas, Larkin seems to resolve the conflict by asking that the dancers and the detached observer be allowed to follow their own “voices”—the dancers to follow the “trumpet’s voice” of communion and sexuality, and the speaker, the “individual sound” of his muse’s bell. He concludes that “both are satisfied.”
With the last line of the poem, however, the poet undercuts this apparent resolution by raising the possibility that neither party has found happiness: “If no one has misjudged himself. Or lied.” This ambivalence saves the poem from the kind of easy truce between competing ethics that Victorian readers admired and contemporary readers may find too pat in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “He works his work, I mine.”
Forms and Devices
In “Reasons for Attendance,” the poet uses ambiguity and paradox to suggest his uncertainty over the choices he has made and his ambivalence toward the dancers. In the final line of the third stanza, the poet moves toward a clear declaration of his position concerning human choices: “It speaks; I hear.” “It” seems to refer to the vague concept in the stanza’s second line—“that lifted, rough-tongued bell.” Sensing that the reader will not be able to understand the significance of the bell, Larkin parenthetically identifies it as “Art,” only to withdraw certainty with his qualifier “if you like.” If the bell is art, the statement bridging the third and fourth stanzas seems deliberately ambiguous: “others may hear as well,/ But not for me, nor I for them.” May hear what? the reader might ask, since the “others” in the poem—the young dancers—have heeded the trumpet’s call to communion, not the voice of art. When the poet concludes “and so/ With happiness,” the reader can only wonder, and what with happiness? since “so” apparently refers to the preceding ambiguous statements about hearing.
The poet ends with a final instance of ambiguity, this time a pair of demonstrative pronouns presented in parallel positions, neither with a clear referent: “Therefore I stay outside,/ Believing this; and they maul to and fro,/ Believing that.” The poet has worked himself into a state of confusion concerning his own motives and implies that the young dancers experience a similar confusion.
Larkin creates a sense of the uncertainty he feels about the world inside the “lighted glass” of the dance hall through a series of paradoxes. The young dancers move “on the beat of happiness,” yet they shift “Solemnly.” The poet juxtaposes the “smoke and sweat” inside the dance hall with the “wonderful feel of girls.” He also creates a paradox in his use of a lion metaphor: The sexuality enjoyed by couples may be “the lion’s share/ Of happiness,” but the young couples “maul to and fro.”
Instead of letting his confusion rage, Larkin remains detached, controlling his emotions through a number of poetic devices. In the second stanza, when the poet senses his own anxiety over the possibility that sex holds “the lion’s share/ Of happiness,” he distances himself by shifting to the purposely pretentious tone of the third stanza: “What calls me is that lifted, rough-tongued bell/ (Art, if you like).” Larkin also reins in his fears by using a consistent meter (iambic pentameter) and relentlessly adhering to his chosen rhyme scheme (albeit most often through less obtrusive slant rhyme). Finally, the poet guards against his own emotions by using understatement throughout the poem: “It speaks; I hear,” “and so/ With happiness,” “both are satisfied,” “Or lied.”