  Since the expressive world of a genuine artist is a new perspective onto the world that is identical with the artist’s whole idiosyncratic mode of being-in-the-world, there will be a deep, underlying continuity in his or her work. The communication that the work of art establishes across time and space operates, first and foremost, within the oeuvre itself, with themes and stylistic traits echoing each other throughout it (Camus 1942b, 102–103; Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 67). But there is an inherent fatalism in artistic activity. Expressive activity can only ever be an attempt at expression, and it is structurally doomed to fail because there is too much to reveal in the world. The means of expression are finite, and they operate in a twisted manner, just as much through direct designation as through ellipse and allusion. This leads Camus to conclude that creative activity, like all free activities, is in the end only another absurd attempt at dealing with the absurdity of human life (1942b, 130).