he had punctured his eardrums. It would have been more logical actually, since it was through his ears that he learned the dreadful truth about his past, but it wouldn’t have the same cathartic effect. It might arouse pity, perhaps, but not terror. Or Milton’s Samson: ‘O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, without all hope of day.’ What a heartbreaking cry of despair! ‘O deaf, deaf, deaf . . .’ doesn’t have the same pathos somehow. How would it go on? ‘O deaf, deaf, deaf, amid the noise of noon, / Irrecoverably deaf, without all hope of sound.’ No.
Of course, you could argue that blindness is a greater affliction than deafness. If I had to choose between them, I’d go for deafness, I admit. But they don’t differ only in degrees of sensory deprivation. Culturally, symbolically, they’re antithetical.Tragic versus comic. Poetic versus prosaic. Sublime versus ridiculous. One of the strongest curses in the English language is ‘Damn your eyes!’ (much stronger than ‘Fuck you!’ and infinitely more satisfying - try it next time some lout in a white van nearly runs you over). ‘Damn your ears!’ doesn’t cut it. Or imagine if the poet had written ‘Drink to me only with thine ears . . .’ It’s actually no more illogical than saying drink with thine eyes. Both metaphors are equally impossible concepts, in fact an ear is more like a cup than an eye, and you could conceivably drink, or at least slurp, out of an ear, though not your own of course . . . But poetical it isn’t. Nor would ‘Smoke gets in your ears’ be a very catchy refrain for a song. If smoke gets in your eyes when a lovely flame dies it must get in your ears too, but you don’t notice and it doesn’t make you cry. ‘There’s more in this than meets the ear’ is something Inspector Clouseau might say, not Poirot.
The blind have pathos. Sighted people regard them with compassion, go out of their way to help them, guide them across busy roads, warn them of obstacles, stroke their guide dogs. The dogs, the white sticks, the dark glasses, are visible signs of their affliction, calling forth an instant rush of sympathy. We deafies have no such compassion-inducing warning signs. Our hearing aids are almost invisible and we have no loveable animals dedicated to looking after us. (What would be the equivalent of a guide dog for the deaf? A parrot on your shoulder squawking into your ear?) Strangers don’t realise you’re deaf until they’ve been trying and failing to communicate with you for some time, and then it’s with irritation rather than compassion.‘Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind,’ says the Bible (Leviticus, 19.14). Well, only a sadist would deliberately trip up a blind person, but even Fred lets out the occasional ‘Bloody hell!’ when she can’t get through to me. Prophets and seers are sometimes blind - Tiresias for instance - but never deaf. Imagine putting your question to the Sybil and getting an irritable ‘What? What?’ in reply.
It’s a very unequal contest between the two organs. Eyes are the windows of the soul, they express feelings, they come in subtle, alluring colours and shades, they brim with tears, they shine and gleam and twinkle. Ears, well they’re funny-looking things really, especially when they stick out, all skin and gristle, secreting wax, sprouting hair, no wonder women hang earrings on the lobes, men too of course in certain societies and periods, to distract the eye from the furry hole that leads to your brain. In fact what other function does the ear lobe have? Perhaps that’s how it evolved, this otherwise useless flap of boneless tissue: prehistoric people with enough flesh on the lower rim of the ear to accommodate earrings had an advantage in the mating process, so got selected. But it would have been no advantage if the ears hadn’t served their primary purpose.
Of all old women hard of hearing
The deafest, sure was Dame Eleanor Spearing!
On her head, it is true
Two flaps there grew
That served for a pair of gold rings to go through,
But for any purpose of ears in a parley,
They heard no more than ears of barley.
Thomas Hood, ‘The Tale of a Trumpet’. Not quite in Larkin’s class - but Larkin never wrote a poem about being deaf, as far as I remember. Perhaps he found it too depressing to contemplate, though he