Saturday, May 20, 2006

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VACATION AND VOCATION IS O.

Browsing the library at the Banff Centre, a title proverbially leaps off the shelf at me. "To Hell with Culture" by Herbert Read. "Read" ha ha. "Culture," hmmmm. "Hell," now we're getting somewhere. Read was a publisher and poet, to which I can relate personally. He was also a critic, anarchist (libertarian socialist) and his work (over 1000 published volumes, gasp) was influenced by "imagism," defined by Wikipedia as a movement that favoured "clear, sharp language." Somewhere indeed.

And he was into Eric Gill, who said:

"That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please himself.

"That state is a state of Freedom in which a man does what he likes to do in his working time and in his spare time that which is required of him. That state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please God."
— from Art Nonsense and Other Essays (1929)
permanent link

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