I was re-reading 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufock' yeststerday morning just before I left for work. As you do. It's a poem I've always loved, but what really struck me this time was just how funny it is. Of course, Raymond Chandler makes fun of the lines about the women quoting Michelangelo at one point in The Long Goodbye, but I think he must have missed the point that the poem itself is comical. It's hard to pin down just what the humour is precisely. It read like a self dramatising performance. I remember reading somewhere that Eliot was prone to representing himself as a old man even when he was still young, and there are repeated references to aging, but isn't that often a youthfull attitude? For myself at least, I know that I was a lot more upset about growing old before I turned 30 than I have been since.
If it put me in mind of anyone else, I think it was probably Morrisey, back in his heyday with The Smiths, whom I haven't listened to in an age. There's a similar self dramatisation at work, and the humour feels the same, so subtle that it could easily be missed, a delicate balancing act. It's a wallowing in misery and self conciousness whilst simultaneously laughing at oneself.
"Heaven knows I'm miserable now..."
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