In our world, though – and in this respect Proust and Kafka inhabit our world – matters are different: few can spot what is truly original when it first appears, and the burden on the artist is for that reason much greater: should he trust his instinct, which has so often let him down, or the judgement of others, which seems so massively authoritative and yet is so often at odds with his own?

[Kafka and other Modernists, as revealed in their letters and diaries] seem to have been able to develop and grow through an innate trust in the act of writing itself, in their willingness to embrace confusion and uncertainty and to find a new voice in the process.

from Josipovici, The Singer on the Shore