Question 5: Abel’s “rewriting” of Adam & Eve Myth:
Abel is fascinated with sexuality and his own sexuality cannot be confined to merely homosexual or heterosexual. In this way, Abel’s illustration of the originally hermaphroditic Adam is the primal sexual state that he wishes to encapsulate. Abel is a social outcast, and this sexual fluidity disables him from living happily with Rachel, and homosexual tendencies would make him even more monstrous, unable to reproduce. The "Edenic-Adam," prior to Eve, is the closest embodiment of the ogre’s sexual experiences; he sees the old-Adam’s solidarity and potency as the ultimate.
“One cannot escape the more or less conscious fascination of the old Adam, armed with all his reproductive apparatus, having to lie down, perhaps incapable of walking, certainly of working, a constant prey to amorous transports of unimaginable perfection, in which he was both possessor and possessed, except – who knows? – During the periods when he was pregnant by himself. And then what must our fabulous ancestor have been like, man-cum-woman become cum-child into the bargain, like one of those nests of dolls that fit one inside the other!”(P.17)
Abel’s latter description of our “fabulous ancestor” is crude, but the comparison drawn between hermaphroditic Adam and Russian Nesting Dolls is poignant. Just like the nesting dolls, Abel has many layers to him; he is a complicated compilation of experiences and beliefs as an outcast of society. The fact that Abel rejects society makes the multitude of layers to be even more dense and complicated, as his ideas and fascinations are much different from ours as a part of society.
Abel desires to be happy in an Eden of potent solitude, as the old-Adam had lived, before the fall of man. Abel rewrites the Biblical fall of man to be the breaking of original Adam into three “unfortunates.”
“For if there is a fall of man in Genesis, it is not in the episode of the apple: on the contrary, the acquisition of knowledge of good and evil is a step upward. No, the fall consists in the breaking into three of the original Adam, letting fall woman and child from man, and thus creating three unfortunates: the child, eternal orphan; woman, solitary and afraid and always in search of a protector; and man, light and alert, but like a king stripped of all his attributes and made to work at degrading tasks,”(p. 17).
These three unfortunates are unable to exist in complete solitary happiness, each lacks important qualities that the other possesses, however; one cannot be happy with the burden of all of these qualities in solitude. God made Eve in removing all of the sexual parts of Adam, as hermaphroditic sexual parts were too “cumbersome” for one person. Abel rejects marriage, as an attempt to reunite what was disassociated by God, “Let no man join what God has put asunder!”(p. 17).
Abel’s rewriting and rejection of marriage is pessimistic, undoubtedly rooted in his own discontent and unusual nature. God divided Adam because all the necessary hermaphroditic parts rendered him immovable and miserable; in separating these parts the need for another person (namely, female) was created in order for reproduction. The child is the product of these natural needs and actions, yet all three are unhappy because of traits that the other has, and they are without. Woman is fertile and capable of birthing children while men are unable to become pregnant, conversely, women are afraid and in need of a protector whilst men are able to protect themselves. This tit-for-tat perpetuates desires, discontent and need.
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