kiss To kiss — to make contact with the lips — is often a sign of friendship or affection. In this respect it is seen as a Western gesture of intimacy and is not, therefore, observed in all cultures.

The target of the kiss is not of course restricted to the mouth and can be directed to any part of the body, with varying pressure. There are different types of kissing behaviour, such as mouth-to-mouth, French kissing, and cunnilingus. The ‘French kiss’ is a type of sexual arousal in which two people kiss with their mouths open so that the tongues can touch. This is sometimes also called ‘soul kiss’ or ‘tongue kiss’. Cunnilingus is another type of sexual kissing whereby a person stimulates the external female genital organs (vulva, clitoris) with the mouth or tongue. The word ‘cunnilingus’ is derived from the Latin cunnus meaning ‘vulva, vagina’, and lingua meaning ‘tongue’ (or lingere ‘to lick up’).

The use of the kiss can also be seen as a religio-erotic symbol in the West. One of the most famous of all kisses was the kiss of betrayal: Judas' kiss. In the Christian tradition, Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss and in doing so brought death and treachery to an act that was associated with peace and unity. St Augustine later warns against the misuse of the physical kiss, especially if the heart is full of deceit and dishonesty. That Judas betrayed his master with a kiss was accounted by Christians as a betrayal of the kiss itself as well as of the Lord. In the early Christian centuries the kiss was a mystic symbol imbued with powerful feelings such as peace, union, and love. As Nicolas Perella states in The Kiss Sacred and Profane (1969): ‘The repeated use of this formula and the contexts in which it occurs suggests that the kiss was quickly institutionalized in the young Christian community as a mystic symbol both in liturgical and non-liturgical ceremony’.

In the early centuries it was the practice of Christian iconography to borrow motifs from well-established pagan myths; especially in the case of sarcophagi designs. Among the motifs applicable in this way were those connected with the myth of Psyche and Eros; one of the most favoured by the Christians of Rome was the image that showed a pair embracing and kissing. Psyche — the human soul of the departed, and Eros — always a powerful god of love. Nicolas Perella suggests that this was acceptable to the Christians because it could well depict a wedding union in heaven. It is Eros who bestows the kiss, with all the suggestion that he is infusing the spirit of new life into Psyche. Thus the adoption of the ‘kissing couple’ is understandable.

The kiss of life and the kiss of death, are the extreme life forces which have become powerful symbols for writers and artists. The breath or spirit of God has always been seen as a life-giving act, and the Holy Spirit can be given in the form of a kiss. For example, the Virgin Mary was kissed by the Holy Spirit so that she might become impregnated. The iconography of a kiss often portrays both ecstasy and death simultaneously. The kiss of death is at its most obvious when we see Judas kiss Jesus; this is both a physical and metaphorical manifestation, which results in a corporeal death.

By the sixteenth century, authors were using the kiss and death as sexual metaphors. The kiss, both given and stolen, is romanticized in poetry and prose. The traditional medieval motif, for example, of the poet seeking solace from his lovesickness is disguised in the wantoness of his lover's kisses. The poet was often chaste where his love and kisses were concerned; the Metaphysical poets, in particular, wrote of the constant turmoil where sexual and platonic love were concerned.

Another method of inviting a kiss, though not necessarily of giving one, can be found in the ‘language of the fan’ in the eighteenth century. Though used as a form of concealment, the fan, when pressed to the lips, indicated the anticipation of a kiss. The pressure of the fan on the mouth would often indicate the level of sincerity and passion involved.

A number of modern-day artists and writers have used kissing as a powerful and symbolic form of friendship, intimacy, and sexual activity. The well-known Parisian artist Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), for example, immortalized a man and a woman coming together in this way when he produced a life-size sculpture in marble, entitled The Kiss, in 1886. By contrast, in 1897 the French anthropologist Paul d'Enjoy remarked on the horror of the Chinese at seeing mouth-to-mouth kissing by Westerners.

Another way of using the kiss as a dramatic and controlling device can be seen as a power play between the two sexes, especially in the guise of fairytales. Twentieth-century notions of the male as hero, waking up and resuscitating the ‘sleeping’ female with his kiss have been challenged by feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir. Myths of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Snow White’, and ‘Cinderella’ that are handed down from generation to generation, usually to girls, depicting the all-embracing kiss, are being re-assessed in the wake of feminist theory.

Anne Abichou

Bibliography

Beauvoir, S. de (reprint 1970). The second sex. Bantam Books Inc., New York.
Kolbenschlas, M. (1979). Goodbye Sleeping Beauty. Breaking the spell of feminine myths and models. The Women's Press, Dublin.
Liggett, J. (1974). The human face. Constable, London.
Perella, N. J. (1969). The kiss sacred and profane. An interpretative history of kiss symbolism and related religio-erotic themes. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

See also body language; gestures.