Lip Service

THE KISS SACRED AND PROFANE by Nicolas James Perella. 356 pages. University of California Press. $10.95.

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 to bed.

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 mystical union through the lips.

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.

To 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.

Eventually the idea of sexual restraint became an important element in that brocaded bag of tricks known as courtly love. But it took the cleverness of Baldassare Castiglione, a 16th century popularizer of Platonic love treatises, to humanize the conceit for sophisticated courtiers. In The Book of the Courtier (1528), Castiglione distinguished between sensual love and what he called rational love. Rational love, he said, puts greater emphasis on the senses of sight and hearing. He argued that as conduits for soul mergers, the eyes and ears are superior to the mouth, which responds to the inflammatory sense of touch. In effect, Castiglione legitimized bedroom eyes and sweet nothings. But at a higher level, he encouraged women to converse with men, thus helping to refine the male while at the same time raising the female's status and dignity as a human being.

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.

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