ABSTRACT
After the creation and reception of an original work, the cultural field is different; some old possibilities have disappeared and some new ones have been born—the latter consisting, as we noted earlier, both of formulae that can be imitated and of an unaccommodated alterity that may act as a spur to further originality. The experience of originality can be a powerful and pleasurable element in our present enjoyment of a poem, a painting, a string quartet, even though it is an attribute located in the work's past. There are, of course, a number of pragmatic issues at work in determining whether a private creation achieves the status of a public invention. The originality in its own time of a work of art, of engineering, of mathematics, or of philosophy can be registered and enjoyed at a later time in an exercise of historical imagination.
