To put it right, THIS is what I wrote:

1. A funtabulous fusion of hilarity and seriousness, Eliot's lines from 'Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse' deserve to stand at the head of "Prufrock and Other Observations". {This is MY remark, not Vincent Sherry's.}

2. [Eliot's lines are, I observe,] an acid comment on [what Vincent Sherry calls] the "underside of urban modernity".

CR


--- On Thu, 5/27/10, Nancy Gish <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> First of all, this
> is a few lines out of context.  //Second, Sherry is not
> at all saying it is "funtablulous," whatever that
> might be, let alone a fusion of hilarity and
> seriousness.//  He is saying something quite different
> and serious--that at just this point, a poem that had been
> "evocative" of artistic decadence changes--a
> shift in rhythm "markedly, unpredictably. . . the
> measured cadence into the hurdy gurdy rigmarole of a Gilbert
> and Sulliven multiple-syllable rhyme."  This shift
> "trivializes the disturbance he was just on the verge
> of stirring up."  
>  
> The whole poem makes clear that the shift is a moment
> of what Sherry calls "a confrontation with the more
> difficult aspects of this [decadent]
> sensibility":
>  
> Here is a landscape grey with rain
> On black umbrellas, waterproofs,
> And dashing from the slated roofs
> Into a mass of mud and sand,
> Behind a row of blackened trees
> The dripping plastered houses stand
> Like mendicants without regrets
> For unpaid debts
> hand in pocket, undecided,
> Indifferent if derided.
> 
> Among such scattered thoughts as these
> We turn the corner of the street;
> But why are we so hard to please?
>  
> Replaced in context, it reads, like many poems of
> IMH, as a poem aiming at an evocative atmosphere
> and, in fact, achieving it to a degree before undoing it and
> then pondering it.  But it is not G & S as a
> poem.  The first few lines--especially the first
> four
> --would not seem especially out of place in
> Prufrock and Other Observations--but he was
> learning his craft, and they are not just hilarity.
> Nancy
>  
> 
> >>> Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> 05/27/10
> 7:00 PM >>> 

> //A funtabulous fusion of hilarity and seriousness,
> Eliot's lines from 'Fourth Caprice in
> Montparnasse' deserve to stand at the head of
> "Prufrock and Other Observations" -- an acid
> comment on what Vincent Sherry calls "[the] underside
> of urban modernity" // in his essay on Imperial Decline in
> 'Companion to T.S. Eliot' edited by David E.
> Chinitz, pp.92-93. Here's the link, again: 
> 
> http://books.google.com/books?id=geNTQe8OMoUC&printsec=frontcover&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
> 
> 
> I'm sure Eliot's lines will be found to have rich
> repercussions for the discussion at hand. 
> 
> Cheers, 
> CR 
> 
> 
> --- On Thu, 5/27/10, Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote: 
> 
> > // "The dripping plastered houses stand 
> > Like mendicants without regrets 
> > For unpaid debts 
> > Hand in pocket, undecided, 
> > Indifferent if derided." // 
> > 
> > -'Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse', IMH 
> > 
> > "[the] underside of urban modernity" -
> Vincent Sherry, 'A 
> > Companion to T.S. Eliot' edited by David E.
> Chinitz, pp. 
> > 92-93 
> > 
> > //a hilarious image// 
> > 
> > CR 
> 
> 
> 
>  
>