To a certain extent, the artist can be considered the most utilitarian of persons, for he uses even unusable things, he is the one who uses insignificant perceptions and arbitrary acts to invent, outside of a practical interest, a background interest, a secondary necessity. The unique quality of artistic invention is to lend these useless impressions such a value that not only do they become as indispensable as any direct perception, but as they are given to us we feel even more the need to find them again and to enjoy them. This is what Paul Valéry calls the “aesthetic infinite.”
—Maurice Blanchot, “Poetics,” Faux Pas, translated by Charlotte Mandell, Stanford Univ. Press, 2001
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