ABSTRACT
T hey say that every year on Christmas Eve,Eugenio d’Ors, one of the finest minds Spain ever had, performed a special ritual: he
would identify the best page he had written
over the course of the year about to end, and
then give it to the flames. Not some random
fragment, or something of whose quality he
wasn’t certain, but the best thing he wrote
that year. If you are writer, parting like this
from something you’ve written is painful
enough, but destroying the best thing you’ve
come up with must be unbearable. Yet that’s
precisely the meaning of sacrifice: what d’Ors
was doing was a sacrificial ritual. For whatever
reasons, he took the performance of such an
act to be an important part of his life as a
writer. Even though the story may not be accu-
rate in every detail, it is exemplary. Se non e ̀ vero, e ̀ ben trovato.
