There are only four stories.
One, the oldest, is about a fortified city that is stormed and defended by heroes.
The defenders know that the city is doomed to sword and fire, and that resistance is futile; the most famous of the conquerors, Achilles, knows that he is doomed to die before victory.
The centuries have brought elements of magic into the plot. Thus, it began to be believed that Helen, for whose sake the armies died, was a beautiful cloud, a vision; a ghost was also a huge hollow horse that sheltered the Achaeans. Homer will not be the first to retell this legend; from a poet of the fourteenth century there remains a line that comes to my memory, "The borgh britten and brent to brondes and askses."[1] Dante Gabriel Rossetti will probably imagine that the fate of Troy was already decided at the moment when Paris was inflamed with passion for Helen; Yeats would prefer the moment when Leda is entwined with God, who has assumed the form of a swan.
The second, related to the first, is about the return.
It is about Ulysses, who, after ten years of wandering the formidable seas and stopping at enchanted islands, sails to his native Ithaca, and about the northern gods who, after the destruction of the earth, see it rising again from the sea, green and radiant, and find in the grass the chess pieces with which they had fought the day before.
The second, connected with the first, is about the return.
It is about Ulysses, who, after ten years of wandering the fearsome seas and stopping on enchanted islands, sailed to his native Ithaca, and about the northern gods who, after the destruction of the earth, see it rising again from the sea, green and radiant, and find in the grass the chess pieces with which they had fought the day before.
The third story is about the search.
It may be considered a variant of the previous one. It is Jason sailing for the golden fleece, and thirty Persian birds crossing the mountains and seas to see the face of their god, Simurgh, who is each of them and all of them at once.
In the past, every endeavor ended in good fortune. One hero would eventually steal the golden apples, another would eventually succeed in capturing the Grail.
Now the quest is doomed to failure. Captain Ahab is caught in a whale, but the whale does destroy him; only defeat can await the heroes of James and Kafka. We are so poor in courage and faith that we see in the happy ending only a crudely fabricated pandering to mass tastes. We are incapable of believing in heaven and even less in hell.
The final story is about the suicide of a god.
Atys in Phrygia maims and kills himself; Odin sacrifices himself to Odin, himself, hanging from a tree for nine days, nailed with a spear; Christ is crucified by Roman legionnaires.
There are only four stories. And for however long we have left, we will retell them - in one form or another.
(c) Jorge Luis Borges
