Books Read: The Gift by Lewis Hyde 📚

The more we allow such commodity art to define and control our gifts, the less gifted we will become, as individuals and as a society. The true commerce of art is a gift exchange, and where that commerce can proceed on its own terms we shall be heirs to the fruits of gift exchange: in this case, to a creative spirit whose fertility is not exhausted in use, to the sense of plentitude which is the mark of all erotic exchange, to a storehouse of works that can serve as agents of transformation, and to a sense of an inhabitable world–an awareness, that is, of our solidarity with whatever we take to be the source of our gifts, be it the community of the race, nature, or the gods. But none of these fruits will come to us where we have converted our arts to pure commercial enterprises. 205-06