Installment Twenty...

Just as the savage in bewilderment picks up ...a strange object cast up by the sea?...something long buried in the sand?...a baffling object fallen from the sky? - intricately shaped, now glistening dully, now reflecting a brilliant flash of light - just as he turns it this way and that, twirls it, searches for a way to utilize it, seeks to find for it a suitable lowly application, all the while not guessing its higher function...
So we also, holding Art in our hands, confidently deem ourselves its masters; we boldly give it direction, bring it up to date, reform it, proclaim it, sell it for money, use it to please the powerful, divert it for amusement - all the way down to vaudeville songs and nightclub acts-or else adapt it (with a muzzle or stick, whatever is handy) toward transient political or limited social needs. But art remains undefiled by our endeavors and the stamp of its origin remains unaffected: each time and in every usage it bestows upon us a portion of its mysterious inner light.

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Nobel Lecture On Literature