ABSTRACT
In accordance with Greek philosophy, it is said to be about prmitive androgynes, whereas the text in fact portrays three sorts of ancestors for humankind: the first with entirely masculine characteristics, the second with entirely feminine ones, and only the third with a combination of both. It can be seen as combining the paternal and maternal lineage, recalling the feminization of the first and the masculinization of the second. By emphasizing the perfection of young people in the form their continuing wholeness, he aims to show that the myth of the fall is not universal. An interest in hermaphroditism, suggested en abyme by Elstir's paintings, lends the novelist Proust also to portray it as the path to salvation. The price of taking the path of androgynous perfection is mutilation, loneliness and divine or human disapproval: even when it is represented as exultant, this path is still threatened by the dangers apparent in the earliest tales of androgyny.
