THE FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

Bak explains, "As a child, I had a feeling that if Adam gave up Paradise in order to taste the fruit that would give knowledge and a capacity to distinguish between good and evil, it must have been a pear. I felt that an apple, which in my childhood memories was usually something very sour, had nothing in common with the sensual, wonderful taste of a pear."

The pear thus stands as an alternative symbol of the Fall of Man and all of its ramifications: the expulsion from Paradise into the world of time, the origin of free will, and the capacity to distinguish and choose between good and evil.