As readers too — look! — brought to a standstill before the page — how wide, now, we must open our eyes.

The eyes, the lips, of the reader move, then, and as they move, the music of the work begins; those moving lips sustain it; but, for this great novel, it is as if the eyes were lighting here, then there, upon the surface of a series of tapestries, observing in each place the signs: symbols like the figures of the lion and the lady, the little dog, the silver moons, sung above an oval island.

– William H. Gass,
Introduction to The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
by Rainer Maria Rilke