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develop as one, so when they were mated together in a close embrace,
they were not two, but a two-fold form, so that they could not be called
male or female, and seemed neither or either. (Ovid 2000, IV. 367-400)
Not two but one. Do not let the fact that in this world this can only be
perfectly accomplished through death bother you. Hero and Leander,
Abelard and Héloïse: we could continue this list, as I have described.
Death ends the difference between two bodies. It ends the “and.”
The curtain exists between perceiver and perceived. Is it like Hegel’s
curtain, which only shows what is hidden deep? Or is it like the curtain
of Parrhasius, which seems to cover something,” while the reality is
the curtain itself. And the truth is the self itself. The other, which
is oppositional at first, later becomes the subject of reconciliation,
through which the same recognizes itself, or else it recreates its solid
sense of self by destroying itself. It finds perfect reconciliation in
death, not in the world, and not in the unity of the spirit. Then what
or who is the alien? And what or who is the enemy?
31 Pliny tells the story in his Historia Naturalis in which two Greek painters,
Zeuxis and Parrhasius, entered a contest to see which of them is the greater
and more capable painter. Zeuxis, who was justly famous for his paintings,
painted such a lifelike bunch of grapes onto the canvas that the birds land¬
ed on it and tried to pluck the grapes. Encouraged by this judgment of the
birds, Zeuxis stepped in front of the canvas of Parrhasius and said that it
was impossible that the painting behind the other artist’s curtain could ever
match his own, and he told him to draw the curtain aside to show what he
had created. This is when Parrhasius told Zeuxis that he could not, as the
curtain was the painting. According to the story, Zeuxis admitted defeat.
He admitted that while he had been capable of fooling the birds, Parrhasius
had fooled him, the painter. According to the other variant of the story,
Zeuxis painted a boy carrying a bunch of grapes that were so realistic the
birds landed on them. When he heard this, Parrhasius became so enraged
he exclaimed that he can fool not only the birds but people as well. This is
why, when Zeuxis went to the gallery and sought a painting, he said that it
was there behind the curtain. When Zeuxis tried to draw the curtain aside,
it was revealed that the curtain itself was the painting.