A literary work's survival is sometimes taken as evidence of intrinsic durability: generations continue reading it because its language or questions remain compelling. But works survive through schools, publishers, libraries, prizes, and translation. These institutions select what remains available, and availability can later look like timeless appeal. Conversely, a compelling work excluded from those channels may disappear from view. The passage repeatedly uses survival in two senses. One is endurance under repeated reading; the other is preservation through repeated selection. The canon emerges where aesthetic durability and institutional reproduction reinforce—or fail to reinforce—one another.