“All that authentic poetry and what is most absolute in art and in music can accomplish is to say: “komm it mir zu Atem/und drüber hinaus”, ‘Draw breath with me, and go past, go beyond that breath’. This going beyond, this literal transcendence being that which I am seeking to define: the motion in progress towards realisation and the incompletion which this motion must make sensible. Incompletion as the denial of ‘finish’, with its connotations of ‘polish’, of ‘veneer’, of high gloss.”

• George Steiner, Grammars of Creation