There is a distinction between a classic a work that is merely very good. The classic unfolds. It offers us a glimpse into the inexhaustible depths of Being.

Concretely, every time you turn to the Iliad or Dante or Emma you find something new, and it is the exhilaration of that discovery, the sense of it unfolding within yourself and disclosing something that you seem to have known all along that keeps you turning back.

In these depths, the author is paradoxically most revealed and most concealed. The former because the greatness and scope of his creation most resembles the self-disclosure of the supreme Artifex. The latter because the greater the creation, the deeper the cooperation between the author and the Divine. The sheer Being of the latter overwhelms the former, absorbs and obscures him not through diminishment but through surpassing, as the sun obscures a candle.