Word: kissing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...KISS SACRED AND PROFANE by Nicolas James Perella. 356 pages. University of California Press...
...champagne toast (the couple drank milk and honey). Tiny serenaded his bride and read plugs for the florist who had supplied 8,000 tulips, his hairdresser, and several other generous purveyors. After sign-off, the couple held an unruly press conference in which Tiny estimated that their kiss during the ceremony had been "about our fifth," but then proceeded to buss Miss Vicki 100 more times at the behest of the photographers...
Before a reader gets too cozy with Professor Perella's explication of the religio-erotic kiss symbolism in Western culture, it should be noted that not everyone has found mutual labial stimulation appealing. To the Chinese, for example, kissing had revolting associations with cannibalism. Even Dr. Freud seemed standoffish when he observed in his essay, "The Sexual Aberrations," that the lips are composed of mucous membrane and constitute the entrance to the digestive tract...
Fortunately, love conquers all, including clinical details. It even manages to overcome the index-card scholarship ot the author, a professor of Italian literature at Berkeley. Yet despite the innate beauty of its subject and its careful grooming by its author, The Kiss Sacred and Profane is the sort of book that one normally takes to lunch but rarely...
...some medieval mystics, the kiss seems to have been one of the higher forms of contemplation. It was, Perella says, the "terminus," not the "prelude" to lovemaking. As such, kissing fitted perfectly into the medieval concept that there are dynamic benefits to be had from unsatisfied physical desire. Sexual release killed love; amor Interruptus not only kept love pure and burning but could also, as part of a cultural self-improvement program, lead the lover to moral excellence...