The separate elements of a phenomenon are most clearly placed in relation to one another; a large number of conjunctions, adverbs, particles, and other syntactical tools, all clearly circumscribed and delicately differentiated in meaning, delimit persons, things, and portions of incidents in respect to one another, and at the same time bring them together in connection; like the separate phenomena themselves, their relationships - their temporal, local, casual, final, consecutive, comparative, concession, antithetical, and conditional limitations - are brought to light in perfect fullness; so that a continuous rhythmic procession of phenomena passes by and never is there a form left fragmentary or half-illuminated, never a lacuna, never a gap, never a glimpse of unplumbled depths.
Mimesis, Erich Auerbach, p. 6-7.