Weekend – fundamental truths in writing
I, as an author, believe that the basis for knowing the other is to know thyself. Therefore, I believe that there are but a few stories that exist, and that just as there are those who claim that all of Western philosophy is nothing more than footnotes to Socrates, and that human beings can be divided into Aristotleian people and Socratesian people, so there are those like Jorge Luis Borges. When I studied writing I was told that Borges thought that there were but two stories in the world, the story of Christ and the Odyssey. When I finally got to read his most interesting book of lectures – The Craft of Verse – I understood that what he was really saying is that there are three sources for stories in the world: the Bible, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Borges thinks, or at least that is how I understand it, that all of the stories that we need are in those three books, and original modern stories are a novelty we should put aside.     
I have no intention of quarreling with this point of view, but I do think that you do not have to be original all the time. I think that a nice writing exercise is to take for example the story of Cain and Able and to tell it again from your own point of view. Dan Pagis, who is a wonderful poet, brought this story to new heights and still, I will not discard any work just because Pagis has already written on the subject. The only real test for an artwork is whether it is good or not and whether it contains the spirit of its time.
This week I wish to deal with several plays that are so famous they have become classics. I would like to look at them from an arspoetic point of view. I do not know whether what I will say is a novelty, but I am certainly going to give them my perspective.