Any great work of art... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

Bernstein argues that the highest achievement of art is immersive world-making. A “great work” does not merely depict events in ordinary time and space; it reorganizes perception so that the audience temporarily lives inside its unique logic—its rhythms, emotional laws, and atmosphere. Success, in this view, is measured less by technical virtuosity or moral instruction than by the intensity of imaginative transport: the work “invites you in” and sustains the illusion long enough for you to “breathe” its air. The phrasing also implies hospitality and vulnerability: the audience must consent to enter, and the artwork must be coherent and vivid enough to hold them there.