Recognizing genius

One of the characteristics of genius, as it is often portrayed in commentaries, is that it has no self-knowledge and is incapable of self-explanation. What we know of genius therefore comes, for the most part, from the observations of another who is external to it. The history of genius is to a large extent the history of the forms and modes of its recognition - - but also of its misrecognition, one of the recurring fates attributed to genius being to go unnoticed by its contemporaries (Vigny, Balzac, Hugo).