AS:
Aristophanes' speech (in Plato's Symposium): "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..."
JM: A complicated line
of associations carried us from Pushkin's nut-case to the spherical
Platonic half-beings. In the horizon, a serendipity with moon and earth and
sun.
After all, as it
has just occurred to me, wouldn't Plato's role towards Socrates, in
the "Symposium," be somehow similar to Boswell/Johnson and
Kinbote/Shade?
Btw: Aristophanes wrote
obscene comedies. He was a clown, a buffoon, no? Although he was entrusted
with a serious presentation about "what is love", be it the longing for
completion in split woman-woman, man-man, man-woman.
Would Kinbote yearn for
Shade, though?