and these particular works decisively illustrate that an artist can exploit the accidentals and attitudes of his culture in order to seek an understanding of it on one hand, or criticize it mercilessly on the other. By means of his work, he may observe or discover something previously unknown by the culture or discover to the culture something about itself that, by his lights, was previously unknown, unacknowledged, unexplained. He brings to bear his own literary power, which itself is a product of his personality and acculturation, on the problem of mediating observation with insight; this is merely the necessary declaration of genius and an assertion of philosophical standing. Inevitably, the artist will be concerned with the status or process of his culture, for why else is he moved to write for it? Equally, however, he may be concerned with the status or process of himself as person and as artist. These concerns may overlap, converge, mature, or otherwise shift as one work proceeds into another. Proust's endless revisions are a commonplace o
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