An adaptation works best when it is a genuine transaction between the old and the new, carried out by persons who understand and care for both, who can help the thing adapted to leap the gulf and shine again in a different light. In other words, the process of social, cultural, and individual adaptation, just like artistic adaptation, needs to be free, not rigid, if it is to succeed. Those who cling too fiercely to the old text, the thing to be adapted, the old ways, the past, are doomed to produce something that does not work, an unhappiness, an alienation, a quarrel, a failure, a loss. But
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