Mr Bleaney
A CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF THE POEM MR BLEANEY
BY PHILP LARKIN
‘Mr Bleaney’ by Phillip Larkin is essentially a poem about a circumstantial situation that is given as dramatic monologue, and rather like a drama, tells a story that is full of lucid mystery. There are two distinct scenes in the poem, in the first, which occupies the first three stanzas, of this seven-stanza poem. The reader is presented with a landlady showing a perspective lodger a room that has been vacated by her previous tenant, the mysterious Mr Bleaney. Mysterious in that he seems to be an ethereal entity, and is never presented to the reader, except as a metaphor for what has gone before. Appearing in the first half of the poem in a recollected past, the landlady’s past. The first half of the poem is slow and deliberate and helps to create a macabre feel to the poem. A change of pace occurs in the second half of the poem though not immediately apparent. It does seem to be despairingly urgent, as Mr Bleaney subtly moves from a recollected past to an observed present, through his mediation with the new tenant.
Larkin has used the landlady and to some extent Mr Bleaney, as the focus for the humour in the poem but it is the landlady who comes across as the comic if somewhat pitiful character. The ironic humour is used as the lighter side of the poem to contrast its dark overtones and highlights the contrasting duality that is inherent throughout.
It becomes apparent as the drama unfolds that Mr Bleaney had been a simple but predictable man. As the landlady shows her client the dingy room in the first stanza, one gets a sense that the landlady regret’s the loss of her last tenant. It was his utterly predictable routine that she had come to depend on, and forces beyond her control had taken this away from her. In the tonal quality of the landlady’s speech one can almost hear the resignation in her voice and it almost sounds as if she’s tutting.
‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed
BY PHILP LARKIN
‘Mr Bleaney’ by Phillip Larkin is essentially a poem about a circumstantial situation that is given as dramatic monologue, and rather like a drama, tells a story that is full of lucid mystery. There are two distinct scenes in the poem, in the first, which occupies the first three stanzas, of this seven-stanza poem. The reader is presented with a landlady showing a perspective lodger a room that has been vacated by her previous tenant, the mysterious Mr Bleaney. Mysterious in that he seems to be an ethereal entity, and is never presented to the reader, except as a metaphor for what has gone before. Appearing in the first half of the poem in a recollected past, the landlady’s past. The first half of the poem is slow and deliberate and helps to create a macabre feel to the poem. A change of pace occurs in the second half of the poem though not immediately apparent. It does seem to be despairingly urgent, as Mr Bleaney subtly moves from a recollected past to an observed present, through his mediation with the new tenant.
Larkin has used the landlady and to some extent Mr Bleaney, as the focus for the humour in the poem but it is the landlady who comes across as the comic if somewhat pitiful character. The ironic humour is used as the lighter side of the poem to contrast its dark overtones and highlights the contrasting duality that is inherent throughout.
It becomes apparent as the drama unfolds that Mr Bleaney had been a simple but predictable man. As the landlady shows her client the dingy room in the first stanza, one gets a sense that the landlady regret’s the loss of her last tenant. It was his utterly predictable routine that she had come to depend on, and forces beyond her control had taken this away from her. In the tonal quality of the landlady’s speech one can almost hear the resignation in her voice and it almost sounds as if she’s tutting.
‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed