In an earlier post, I overthought the Paul Simon line “I was living in London with the girl from the song before.” In an earlier draft of that post, I quoted more of the song.
Good intention: I copied and pasted from a lyrics site, to avoid making a typo.
Poor execution: The site I copied from had “the summer before” as the lyric!
Continue reading “Footnote to an allusion”I’ve been thinking about allusion recently, specifically the claim that “it is impossible to properly appreciate an allusion without considering what it is an allusion to.”1
Of course, it is impossible to understand an allusion in a semantic sense if you don’t know what it’s alluding to. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to properly appreciate it in an aesthetic or artistic sense.
Take this example, from the Paul Simon song “The Late Great Johnny Ace”:
Continue reading “The magic of allusion”I was living in London
With the girl from the song before2
