In Blakean words, our predicament is that we can exist and still not be, for being requires an awakeness from the dream of custom and of ourselves. The self is by nature turned outward to connect with the harmony of things. The eyes cannot see themselves, but something other. The strange and paradoxical rule of nature is that we are fullest in our being by forgetting our being. . . Behind the mask of custom there is a natural life, our poets have always said; inside history, light.

Guy Davenport in Afterword to Ronald Johnson’s Radi os