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Show H WHY WE ALL LIKE TO KISS H Evidently Michael Monahan has studied the H oscmaiory arts and is willing to give the world B tho beneilt of some of his experiences. In hia H wonderiui Phoenix in an issue of recent date, he B has several tilings to say on tho subject. We B pubiiBh them as follows: B I rise to a point of order. There is altogether B too much kissing in the magazines and Sunday B newspaper supplements; also in the asbestos fa- B vorites of the circulating library. Two arts are B hereby joined in the indictment, for the literary B ohense is not less cuipable than the pictorial B crime. B A kiss in ono of the Hearst magazines, for ex- B ampie, is aimost equal to a statutory misdemeanor, B and it makes the guileless reader particeps crirn- B. inis. Tho artist always aims at the maximum of flj expression and effect, for the popular magazine is B expected literally to kiss itself into public favor. B' Each month its gay-tinted cover bears the likeness B of some pretty courtesan with rosy beak pouted B for the kiss. Hj There is no mistaking the Hearst girls among Bi tho many Cyprians of tho magazine trade; they B, have a way about them that is distinctly their Bi own and that only the connoisseurs of love fully B appreciate. B! A sort of orgy of osculation rages through-IB through-IB out the world of current fiction and magazinedom, B and tho kiss is being passed around as an ex-B ex-B ceedingiy good thing. A popular novelist like Mr. B Chambers is generally rated by his kiss I mean B his manner of describing and realizing for the B reader that species of caress between two per-B per-B sons of opposite sex. Upon this he (or she) lav-Bl lav-Bl ishes all the resources of his word painting and B all his power of suggestion. Likewise the popu-B popu-B lar artist is esteemed for his skill in depicting B the kiss, in surrounding it with all those yum-yum B attributes which are better felt than described, Bj at the same time avoiding any license too gross fl! which might give puritanism the alarm. It is a B subtle and delicate art, and no wonder that those Bj who excel at it command astonishing emoluments. Bj Women are very partial to it, as the kiss is the B tho symbol of their power and charm; and the B popular magazine is above all tilings concerned B with milady's approval. So even the prudent Mr. H Bok makes much of the kiss both in text and 11-B 11-B lustration; but it is of the special Ladies' Homo K Journal brand, if you please, sterilized and, as it B were, too good to bo true not in the least like B tho frank aphrodisiac of tho monthly Hearsts. B Mr. Bole's kissing girls never make you feel that B you have seen them under the "white lights," or B that they are out to sell anything except tho B Ladles' Home Journal. B The word kiss, you will observe, is of tho class B of vocables called onomatopoeic words that ml- B mic tho sound of tho thing signified; and, in a B sense, onomatopoeic must bo the art that ren- B ders it. itf B Magazine fiction offers us all sorts -and varie- B (ties of kisses passionate, burning, '' lingering, Bl languorous, Lesbian ' (the kind that makes you thrill all along tho keel and gives the uttermost sensation of goneness;) kisses soulful, ecstatic, exaned; kisses pleading and importunate, kisses that madden and intoxicate, kisses that do everything every-thing but deny. There are kisses that lead to no tmng wor&e than matrimony and a eugenic family, fam-ily, and there be kisses that conduct to paresis and the padued cell. Have a care then in making your choice, for many's the man whoso undoing is determined by a kiss. For indeed the kiss is the woman, and tho woman is your fate. Persons of curious competency in this province prov-ince tell us that tho kiss between lovers yields a minor satisfaction of desire; it is a pledge, a promise, an I O U of the inexorable Eros, a prelude prel-ude to possession. The kissed mouth will have the rest, says Balzac. Maupassant observes that the kiss is only a preiace to the Book of Love, but a charming preface, pref-ace, more delicious than the volume itself; a preiace that one can reread constantly with ever unsated pleasure, while ono is not always able to reread the "book! The same instructed artist describes tho kiss as tho most perfect, the most divine sensation given to human beings tho last, the supreme limit of happiness. It is in the kiss, in the kiss aione, that wo believe we can sometimes feel that impossible union, of souls of which we dream pernaps only the hallucination of fainting hearts. The kiss alone gives this profound, immaterial sensation of two beings that are as one. All the violent delirium of complete possession Is not worth the trembling approach of the lips, that first touch, moist and sweet, and then that kiss, silent, motionless, rapturous and long, so long! to both. Byron's description is better known to English readers: A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love And beauty, all concentrating like rays Into one focus kindled from above; Such kisses as belong to early days, When heart and soul and sense in concert move, When the mind's lava and the pulse a blaze. Certain rigid moralists hold that the woman who gives her lips to a man without lawful warrant war-rant abandons herself as effectively as if she gave all. . . This is perhaps going too far, but undoubtedly the kiss is a rare good thing, and wo are passing it around joyously at least in the magazines. The kiss is woman's supremo weapon, her most potent and subtle means of seduction; not Caesar, not Attila, not Napoleon might prevail against it. For verily the kiss has conquered nations, torn up treaties, laid kingdoms desolate, founded or destroyed religions, suppressed dynasties and changed the order of royal states. It is also, as we have seen, important to the prosperity of magazines, the fame of authors and the reputation of artists. Oddiy enough, tho kiss, as wo practice it in the west, is a stumbling-block and an offense to some eastern peoples, who are thereby moved to look askance at our morality. One hates to admit th fact, but those remote pagans, Buddhists or what not, unblessed with the Ladles' Home Journal or tho Hearst magazines (those disseminators of culture, cul-ture, sweetness and light), seem to have a more correct moral feeling than ourselves in this regard. re-gard. "Let the reader reflect for a moment," says Lafcadio Hearn, " how large a place the subject of kisses and carosses and embraces occupies in our poetry and in our prose fiction; and then let him consider the fact that in Japanese literature litera-ture these have no existence whatever. Such actions, ac-tions, except in the case of infants, are hold to be highly immodest." Elsewhere he points out that tho Japanese regard tho kiss as peculiarly sexual in its nature, and that they refrain from It, except in tho most private circumstances, as from an indecency. Even at social functions of a free character, where geisha are in attendance and sake is drunk without restraint, a Japanese guest is never known to kiss or embrace these girls, dedicate to pleasure as they are; this infraction in-fraction of good form is reserved to foreigners. . . But "East is East and West is West and' I refuse to go farther with Mr. Kipling. In our halCA of the world sexo is deemed the salt of literature as of life, in spite of a conventional hypocrisy which would pretend to "wave" it, in Podsnap-pian Podsnap-pian fashion, out of existence. So it is, by a shrewd compromise with our inherited in-herited puritanism, that we have perfumed ana prettified sex in tho persons of Gibson girls and "Bambl" heroines, and are enabled to pass around tho kiss as a good thing. Vivo lo baiser! Seo chapter on the "Eternal Feminine" in "Out of the East." , |
