The Servant is Not Greater Than the Master

We know next to nothing about Homer, Shakespeare, and Molière, to take a few of so many, many, examples.  And yet we know Odysseus, Hamlet, and Tartuffe so well that they have become "types" we can immediately recognize.  In Hermann Hesse's Die Morgenlandfahrt, the protagonist H. H. learns the great lesson that fictional characters are, in fact, more real than their creators.  And that the one must diminish as the other grows.  That is the ideal.  The law of service, embodied in our willingness to do the task of creating a work of art, regardless of whether our personality or even our name remains attached to it.  Because, in the end, it is not ourselves or even our readers that we serve, but the work itself.  We have no right to demand fame or fortune or even recognition for our work.  The opportunity to do the work is all the payment that is due to us.  To understand this is liberation and joy, but it is also the best, perhaps even the only, means to assure that we will always do our finest work, freed from the burden of praise or censure, the burden of both failure and success.