For Larkin, there is a stage after tears, which doesn't continue to escalate into violence or tragedy, but rather sinks down into a kind of lame gloom, from which any undulations out of its pessimism – including tears themselves – are part of the problem they purport to express, as a melodramatic holidaying from realism and an indulgence of idealistic expectations. That is to say, for Larkin, what's saddest of all is that life is less than tragic. Indeed, to his mind, tragedy is secretly a modality of hope, for the extremity of complaint is seen as a sort of covert refuge whereby our suffering is accorded a significance it doesn't deserve and thus surreptitiously 'redeemed'.

from Hopps's Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart