theme song: the origin of love

Sometime around 3641 RHH, Plato wrote a story set in the year 3585 RHH that would today be called historical fiction. It took real people and placed them into a conceivable setting, a very familiar setting actually: a celebration party. You see, Agathon recently won a drama competition at Dionysia and invited some people over to celebrate with him. At the second day of the party, they're trying to decide how best to continue with the good times. A doctor present advises against yet more drinking since they were all very drunk yesterday, so he suggests instead that they compose praises to Eros as the entertainment of the evening. Plato's writing, the famed "Symposium", recounts the stories they told that night.

The men speak in order, with a small mixup because Aristophanes couldn't recover from his hiccups soon enough, so he went 4th instead of 3rd. When he did speak, though, the comic poet gave memorable voice to his insightful imagination. He tells them of the power of Love by explaining a lost history of humans, how they originally had a different form. Each creature had four hands, four feet, four ears, four eyes, "two privy members, and the remainder to correspond", set on a body that was round. And the sexes were not two as we have now, but three.

Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;-and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained.

So Zeus created a plan to split their bodies in half to diminish their strength. Moreover, he threatened, "if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg". So it was that the three sexes were split in half, with upright two-legged creatures (of only two genders) resulting. Apollo healed their wounds after the savage cut, sealing up the split and shaping it into a navel. The humans, though, continued to suffer. They threw their arms around each other trying to return to their full form. They neglected to eat or care for themselves, and they began to die.

They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.

Aristophanes goes on to warn one of his listeners not to read his story as having to do with two of the other guests at the party "who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class which I have been describing". Instead, he urges that they praise the god Love, who offers hope of restoration, peace, and happiness.

And so, finally, courtesy of Plato and Hedwig, here we have The Origin Of Love.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9FpWX57E

the last time i saw you, we had just split in two
you was looking at me, i was looking at you
you had a way so familiar, i could not recognize
cuz you had blood on your face, i had blood in my eyes
but i could swear by your expression that the pain down in your soul
was the same as the one down in mine
that's the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart
we call it love

Peace.