What Philip Larkin can teach us about depression

A couple of years ago I taught The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin to some A-level students. In the last class they summed up their feelings about his poetry. ‘It’s bare depressing, innit’, said someone (this wasn’t Eton), and someone else agreed: ‘I guess it’s good poetry but I can’t lie, it’s way too gloomy for me.’ Then one young man piped up: ‘But that’s how life is for a lot of people – you know, really bleak.’

Yes, I quietly thought, and you might discover that acquaintance with bleakness awaits you, too. But hang on, aren’t today’s teenagers meant to be depressed and anxious? One of the girls who had dismissed him as too depressing had been off for a term with mental heath issues. Don’t they therefore connect with the humbug from Hull? It doesn’t quite work like that. Depression has different faces. There are different breeds of black dog.

When I was an undergraduate I was anxious and depressed most of the time, and plain lonely.