Aristophanes’ Speech from Plato’s Symposium

After watching the Origins of Love (originally performed by Rufus Wainwright) segment in Hedwig and the Angry Inch it made me think about the post I did a while ago about our “other halves”, I still think it’s very true and lovely.

“His speech is an explanation of why people in love say they feel ‘whole’ when they have found their love partner. It is, he says, because in primal times people were globular spheres who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels (190a). There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the “androgynous,” who was half man, half woman. (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 because they resembled their parents.) The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods (190b-c). Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half.

After chopping the people in half, Zeus turned half their faces around and pulled the skin tight and stitched it up to form the belly button. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. He says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he thinks they are the bravest, most manly of all (192a), and that heterosexuals are mostly adulterous men and unfaithful wives (191e).”