  Wenn ich nur selber wÜsste, Was mir in die Seele zischt! Die Worte und die KÜsse Sind wunderbar vermischt. Oh, could I but decipher What ’tis that fills my mind. The words are with the kisses So wond’rously combined. Heine. Dante, in the fifth canto of his Hell, has celebrated the power a kiss may have over human beings. In the course of his wanderings in the nether world, when he has reached the spot where abide those who have sinned through love, he sees two souls that “flutter so lightly in the wind.” These are Francesco da Rimini and her brother-in-law Paolo. He asks Francesco to tell him: “In the time of your sweet sighs, By what, and how love granted, that ye knew Your yet uncertain wishes?” Whereto she replies: “One day For our delight we read of Lancelot, How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point Alone we fell. When of that smile we read, The wished smile, so rapturously kissed By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er From me shall separate, at once my lips All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day We read no more.” I have had a special object in prefacing my studies on the history of kissing with these famous verses, for I regarded it in the light of a duty to caution my readers emphatically, and at the very outset, as to the danger of even reading about kisses; and I consider that, having done this, I have warned my readers against pursuing the subject, and “forewarned is forearmed,” or, “homme averti en vaut deux.” |
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