Allen Ginsberg on Dharma Poetics continues from here
AG: ..And wearing out the nostalgia and preoccupation of the self. There are many examples of that in Wallace Stevens. There’s very great passages in which he finally gets to a theoretical statement of living in this world. I think it’s “One might have thought….” In which he actually examines the senses and accepts his senses – accepts working with the senses. “One might have thought of sight, but who could think/Of sight, for all the ill it sees” is the phrase – “One might have thought of sight” – as a solution, or acceptance. “One might have thought of sight, but who could think/ Of sight, for all the ill it sees. [Editorial note – “One might have thought of sight, but who could think/ Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?” is Stevens’ precise phrasing]
It’s a poem that… I think (it’s) “Esthetique du Mal,“… I’ve forgotten, but it ends – “Who would have thought to find / So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,/ Merely in living as and where we live” [Editorial note – “One might have thought of sight, but who could think/ Of what it sees, for all the ill it sees?/Speech found the ear for all evil sound,/But the dark italics it could not propound/ And out of what one sees and hears and out/ of what one feels, who could have thought to make/So many selves, so many sensuous worlds – / As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming/ With the metaphysical changes that occur/ Merely as living as and where we live.’}
And there’s another poem that’s much older, that is in his old age, that ends on a much more disillusioned note, but a kind of heroic disillusioned note. It’s “Weaker and weaker..” – it’s a poem called “Lebensweisheitspielerei.” – “Weaker and weaker, the sunlight falls/In the afternoon. The wise and strong/ Have all departed./ Only the weakest remain,/ In the stale grandeur of annihilation” – [Editorial note – the poem’s actual beginning – “Weaker and weaker, the sunlight falls/ In the afternoon. The proud and the strong/ Have departed.“]
And the poem ends, there’s a few more lines, but it ends – “In the stale grandeur of annihilation.” [“Each person completely touches us/With what he is and as he is,/
In the stale grandeur of annihilation.”] And there’s that line, “Only the weakest remain, the finally human.”
Larry Fagin: What’s it called? (And that line – “One might have thought”…
AG: “But who could think….” – (that’s a great line) I think – “One might have thought of sight but who could think/ of what it sees”