Allen continues from here on the subject of eternality and stopping time
Student: Mr Ginsberg, I just wanted to say (that) there was a movie on, called My Dinner With Andre, where they were talking about this exact thing.
AG: Really? I never did get to see that.
Student: (Yeah, it was a real good film)
AG: Yeah it was a very famous one. It was a famous movie, everybody saw it.
Student: (I watched the guy, one of the authors, talking about it now. He said, the problem is, in one ten-second moment, or fifty-second moment, when everything stops, he couldn’t capture it, you know, it was fleeting, and it was gone, you know, and there was no way to hold onto that and try to figure out a way, and.. that kind of thing)
AG: There’s an interesting phrase of Ezra Pound – “Only emotion endures” – Only emotion endures” – This building will fall. We’ll die. Maybe, you know, the nation will die? But.. So what does he mean then? – “Only emotion endures”? – I interpret that as meaning, just as I was saying, when you hear one single note, or one single moment, that stops time in art you realize you’ve heard it before or (there’s a) sense of deja vu, or you’re breaking… or you’re touching on a universal recognition that everyone recognizes, and you realize that at the times, in other villages, in other nations, in other cities, in other centuries, everybody has had the same recognition. In other words, in particular, the pleasure we took out of nineteenth century Aristide Bruant, (the) same pleasure was taken in the music hall when he sang that, (or by the recording engineer when he was recording it, or (the) same pleasure, same recognition, inspired some scientist of 1912, working with Pathe Records to record Bruant). So the emotion endures in the sense that it’s recurrent. Emotion is recurrent. You know – I die but somebody else has the same emotion. So, in that, it’s universal because everybody recognizes (universal in the sense that everybody recognizes that emotion – the emotion of orgasm or climax, as you said, or the emotion of that moment of stepping in and out of .. the verse just halting a second and then just going on). But then Louis Zukofsky, a friend of Pound (who maybe invented the phrase) altered it slightly and said, “Only emotion objectified endures” – “Only emotion objectified endures” – meaning – the emotion is sempiternal, or perennial, or recurrent, from generation to generation (the emotion of falling in love, the emotion of dying, the emotion of other people dying, the emotion of [Allen starts singing] “‘Tis the last rose of summer”, the emotion of growing old), but unless you find some way of making an artifact out of the emotion, taking that emotion and putting it into an objective form – or, if you can find some way of putting that emotion into an object, making an object out of it, outside of your body, (like a poem, or a song, or a sculpture, or (a piece) of painting, or a piece of music – or perhaps a baby?) – but, anyway, unless you can take the emotion and make an object out of it… If you can do that, then “emotion endures”. So, Zukofsky, friend of Ezra Pound – “Only emotion objectified endures” – “Only objectified emotion endures” – Does anybody know that?. It’s in his book A Test of Poetry.. “l’ll have to look it up. .. where it says “Only objectified emotion” or “Only emotion objectified” endures”. And for years I puzzled what he meant by “objectified emotion”. How can a thing like.. a subjective thing like emotion be objectified? How can you use the word “objective” when you’re taking about something subjective (about him) . Well, he’s saying, “Yes, it is subjective, and if you can make an external object out of it (like an art work) then you can… it’s sort of like a.. The emotions that you’re experiencing while making it have a chance of reproducing their structure, in some way or other, in the art work that you make and catalyzing the same emotion in other people. How many know that song “Tis the Last Rose of Summer”? Anybody? – oh how rare! – My mother used to sing it to me all the time. It was like.. You know that at all? – I’ll bring that in next time – Amelita Galli-Curci . 1925.
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-nine minutes in and concluding at approximately sixty-four-and-three-quarter minutes in