But in art there are no initiators or precursors (at least in the scientific sense). Everything is in the individual, each individual starts the artistic or literary endeavour over again, on his own account; the works of his predecessors do not constitute, unlike in science, an acquired truth from which he who follows after may profit. […] He is not much further advanced than Homer.
— Proust, ‘The Method of Saint-Beuve’
Notes from a Room 