by Eliot · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
After Laforgue: an elegy for a dead marionette with a common, comic face; the puppet as emblem of empty modern mannequins and the mask, half-bullying half-imploring.
Connections
Archetypes: Fool Motifs: Concealment Hidden Identity, Moon Themes & Concepts: Alienation, Spiritual Emptiness Forms & Genres: Lyric, Elegy
Testo integrale / Full text
Humouresque
(AFTER J. LAFORGUE)
One of my marionettes is dead,
Though not yet tired of the game —
But weak in body as in head,
(A jumping-jack has such a frame).
But this deceasèd marionette
I rather liked: a common face,
(The kind of face that we forget)
Pinched in a comic, dull grimace;
Half bullying, half imploring air,
Mouth twisted to the latest tune;
His who-the-devil-are-you stare;
Translated, maybe, to the moon.
With Limbo’s other useless things
Haranguing spectres, set him there;
‘The snappiest fashion since last spring’s,
‘The newest style, on Earth, I swear.
‘Why don’t you people get some class?
(Feebly contemptuous of nose),
‘Your damned thin moonlight, worse than gas —
‘Now in New York’ — and so it goes.
Logic a marionette’s, all wrong
Of premises; yet in some star
A hero! — Where would he belong?
But, even at that, what mask bizarre!
Spleen
Sunday: this satisfied procession
Of definite Sunday faces;
Bonnets, silk hats, and conscious graces
In repetition that displaces
Your mental self-possession
By this unwarranted digression.
Evening, lights, and tea!
Children and cats in the alley;
Dejection unable to rally
Against this dull conspiracy.
And Life, a little bald and gray,
Languid, fastidious, and bland,
Waits, hat and gloves in hand‚
Punctilious of tie and suit
(Somewhat impatient of delay)
On the doorstep of the Absolute.