[spoilers] Lucas. Just Lucas.

[binkie]

(13-12-2010 10:21 PM)Byatil Wrote:  Also, I was in London today looking at various art galleries, when I happened to stumble across this Blake quote in one of the exhibitions:

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create."

Naturally, my first thought was "Lucas!" (you know you're a fan of Spooks when... ), so I thought I'd share it with you to support the argument that Lucas has a desire to control the system rather than be under its control, yet perhaps because of his inability to control the system surrenders his control to others? Interpret as you wish!

Well spotted! What was the exhibition?

If I recall correctly (and there is every chance I don't), Blake gives these lines to Los - a figure emblematic of a sort of elemental imagination, who constantly and continually makes and re-makes his world, and bears responsibility (by his actions) for the creation of eternity.

Blake was a republican and a libertarian, pursuing a vision of dissent realised in a commitment to art and creativity as vital, experiential, necessary weapons against complacency and intellectual inertia. He was extremely distrustful of mathematics and science, the rational and analytical characteristics of which threatened his belief in the value of creative expression for its own sake.

I think the lines represent a moral, rather than a purposive, dilemma: create (renew) or die (atrophy or surrender). The assertion of one, Blake might suppose, would negate the capacity for the other. If you can create, you will survive. If you submit to the determination of another, you will be lost. Comparison within this illusory choice (illusory, because who, in Blake's rationale, would choose submission?) is redundant, a mere fiction of the tyranny of reason.

I agree, it would be very interesting to hear other interpretations of these lines. Blake always presents a potential for alternative readings.