Jul 18 2008
History of Kiss
Despite the relative taste of kisses, they are generally described as mild. Tasting wine, strawberries and honey are some of the most common descriptions of lovers kissing, although some poets are more creative. For example, The Song of Songs: “Your lips that the drip honeycomb, my spouse: honey and milk are under your tongue.” The feeling of a kiss is also described in a multitude of ways, hammering the heart, trembling limbs, chest pain and accelerated respiration are a few examples.
The Persian poet Ha-Fez, wrote that he feared that “float its delicate lips” when he wrote kissing his beloved. The Spirit in a Kiss, “What else would touch that lips, but aim at a junction of souls?” The Babylonian goddess of love, Ishtar, said to hold life in his mouth, offering spiritual happiness to those who loved her. “This rare gift, honey kiss of love/On the land, happiness is milder than the gods enjoy,” she said one of his disciples. Another example of the use of kisses as an exchange of life force or spirit is in the Egyptian legend of Osiris and Isis.
When Osiris “jealous brother, Set, thrown into the Nile, his wife Isis searched for his body in the river and breathed life into him with a kiss.The Renaissance saw a rapid increase in the opinion of kiss as an exchange of souls, and as an offering of oneself to another person. Allusions to embrace poetry included in an eternal kiss, a swoon that carried the couple almost to death, and most importantly, the dissemination of a soul in the body of another.
Perhaps one of the most powerful notions of kissing revolves around the belief in its life force and vitality. The Romans in particular felt that kissing dying a lover to keep the spirit in the body. Ovid, in particular, expressed regret that his wife will not be able to prolong his life with his love because of his exile. Kisses could even follow the dead in the underworld as a solace for shadows of the dead.
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