MALE/FEMALE, MAIN UNIT AND DISTORTIONS OF UNITY

Abstract

Fecund in European myth and beyond, the androgynous (gr. andros – “man” + gyne – “women”) constitutes, maybe the best, the desire for perfection, aspiration of all ancient civilizations. The synthesis of the male and female it is a mythic, philosophic or artistic fiction, part of archetypal nostalgia, spiritual ideal, but also erotic plethora. From Plato to Gnostics and to the Mystics of the Middle Ages, then to the European romanticists, aspire to this type of perfection, more rudimentary or more sophisticated, initiating rituals allowing the access to the primordial unity. The Narcissus myth can be a form of the androgynous myth, which suspends the search for the other half,  because the human being, such as it can be, is divided based on the Platonic myth on the one hand, and  because the woman created from Adams androgynous body is self-sufficient on the other.  Another hybrid form is Hermaphroditism. In the mundane plan, this is considered as a kind of profanity, deformation, and travesty. The world literature retraces the contents in an artistic way.