ABSTRACT
The coupling of mourning with sexual difference is an old idea, readily found in both ancient and medieval texts. Perhaps the most well-known is Aristophanes’ description of love as a search for healing, predicated on finding one’s lost, indeed severed, other half in Plato’s Symposium. Aristophanes characterizes sexual difference (and desire) as deriving from an original androgynous wholeness: “So you see how ancient is the mutual love implanted in mankind, bringing together the parts of the original body, and trying to make one out of two, and to heal the natural structure of man.”1
