For many artists and writers, the first encounter with “the canon” can feel like standing at the base of a mountain range. Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Austen, Tolstoy—the list goes on, stretching behind us like towering monuments. To even pick up a pen or brush in their shadow can feel absurd. How can any of us today hope to live up to that? And worse: if we don’t find a way to surpass them, to push art into “new territory,” haven’t we failed before we’ve even started?

This anxiety is widespread, but it rests on a false premise: that art is supposed to be about originality and progress. It isn’t.

The Myth of Progress in Art

In science, “progress” makes sense. Knowledge builds. We know more about the structure of the atom today than we did a hundred years ago. Medicine improves; technology advances. But art doesn’t work this way. You can’t say that Beethoven is an “improvement” on Bach, or that Toni Morrison represents an upgrade to Virginia Woolf. Different eras produce different works that speak to their circumstances and audiences. Art changes, but it doesn’t progress.

To think otherwise is to set yourself an impossible task. You can’t outdo Homer at being Homer any more than you can outdo Picasso at being Picasso. You can only be yourself, making the work only you can make, in your time.

Originality Is Overrated

The obsession with originality—this pressure to say something never before said—can paralyze us. But originality is not a prerequisite for meaningful art. Most art emerges from dialogue: with predecessors, with peers, with the present moment. Shakespeare’s plays drew heavily on earlier stories. T.S. Eliot called tradition not a burden but a vital web of connections in which every new work takes its place.

Originality, when it exists, is rarely about inventing something from nothing. It’s about the particular inflection you give to old forms, the way your voice carries echoes yet still resonates in its own key.

The Canon Is Not Law

Finally, let’s reconsider the canon itself. Too often it’s presented as a fixed scripture, a definitive record of what counts as “great art.” But the canon is not law—it’s a conversation, a product of historical choices, cultural biases, and shifting values. It expands and contracts over time. It’s been rewritten to include voices once ignored. And it should continue to evolve.

This means you’re not beholden to it. You can wrestle with it, reject it, embrace it, remix it. You can be indifferent to it altogether. The canon is not your master; it’s a library.

What Art Actually Asks of You

If there’s any “duty” in making art, it’s not to be original or to move humanity forward like a research lab. It’s simply to attend to your work with honesty. To make something that feels necessary for you. To engage with your time, your materials, your questions.

Art is not a ladder stretching upward into history, where you must climb higher than those before you. It’s more like a field: vast, varied, with room for all kinds of voices, including yours.

So, when you feel the crushing weight of the canon, remember: you don’t have to bear it. You don’t have to compete with the dead, or prove your work “progresses” the field. You only have to write, paint, compose, or create in your way, now. That’s not just enough—it’s the only thing art has ever asked.