My Relations with Illusion & Reality

Perusing some of Philip Larkin's poems again, I started reading more about him via Google Books and found this quote, which I really liked.

"The real trouble with me is my relations with illusion & reality. Illusion is poetry, art, love, belief, confidence, and is what you are enthusiastic about. Reality is daily work, illness, death, money, sex, one's actions independent of one's beliefs or fancies, and is impossible to be enthusiastic about."

He also said: "Joy impregnates, sorrow brings forth; perhaps that is the explanation" ...on how his muse demanded that he be in a constant state of privation to be able to write. Or put another way, he said: "life, personally is unhappy: imperssonally it is happy."

Leave you with these lovely lines from Larkin's rather depressing poem, Aubade, which has been lauded as Larkin's almost perfect poem:

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,   

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   

That slows each impulse down to indecision.   

Most things may never happen: this one will,   

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without   

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave   

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.