[...] Knowing, distinguishing, experiencing good and evil (without articles in front, excluded from the original) is an obligatory passage of the human species, renewed in every generation.
Without Eva’s gesture, one should imagine the indefinite extension inside a kindergarten.
The narrative entrusts the woman with the violation of the prohibition. She knows she risks her life, for such is the threatened consequence. And yet she pushes the limit and ventures into the unknown of consequences, thus opening the way of consciousness.
It is up to the feminine figure to inaugurate the story of freedom, whose conquest requires an act of disobedience, a risky original virtue of the human species.

~ Erri De Luca, "Virtù originale" October 26, 2021 from his Blog ~

Photo by Jean Deuzade, "Intelligent Child" - 1955 #chiaroscuro