Word: perella
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Mobil, another Conoco suitor, has hired the merger team of Merrill Lynch White Weld, which is headed by Carl Ferenbach, 39. Du Pont has retained the services of First Boston Corp., whose merger mentors, Joseph Perella, 39, and Bruce Wasserstein, 33, last March masterminded Fluor's $2.7 billion purchase of St. Joe Minerals. Their fee for that deal: $3.5 million. If Du Pont wins Conoco's hand, First Boston could pocket as much as $15 million. But even if some other firm walks off the winner, First Boston will still claim a $750,000 loser...
Framing his literary inquiry with the early Christian mystics and the late Renaissance, Perella points out that the history of kissing is closely associated with the tensions between Platonic and anti-Platonic thought. At one extreme is the purity of Plato's androgynous idea that love is a spiritual passion for the whole, and that the soul-which is on the lips when kissing-seeks union with the light of perfect truth. At the other extreme are the worldly 16th century Italian, French and Elizabethan poets who jocosely dealt in sexual double entendres that poked fun at speculation upon...
Amor Interruptus. Perella views early Christians as erotic mystics. The New Testament shows Christ to have been an active kisser, though in his case it must be assumed that kissing was the religious equivalent of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation...
...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...
...Perella is not happy with Castiglione. He sees him as a sophist who robbed love of the more highly charged and riskier mysticism of earlier, passionate orthodox kissers. In fact, after dealing with Castiglione, Perella registers a marked decrease in ardor for his major subject. The concluding chapter on the Baroque end of the Renaissance is not much more than a listless compilation of variations on kissing themes embellished with poetic examples. It is almost as if the professor had tired of cultivating his index cards and longed to be out doing field work...