lesleyjonesberry

I’ve been thinking about kissing recently, in part because of a story I’m writing.  We give kisses, and we receive them.  “En amour, il y a toujours celui qui donne les baisers et celui qui tend la joue” as the idiom goes, or possibly Balzac actually wrote at some point. 

Kissing, says Balzac (if it were he), is always a one-way act. There is an agent and a recipient. Relationships, he suggests, are never equal: one person is always more affectionate than the other; there is always one who loves more. I’ve then always understood that the greater power lies with “celle qui tend la joue”. My image is of a courtly woman, reclining on a chaise longue, arm outstretched along its satin-embroidered back, who permits the supplicant lover to approach, and grants this one moment of close contact. As the would-be lover approaches, the woman turns her head a little – to present the cheek more readily but also, in the same gesture, turning her own mouth away. The movement carefully denies, even as it grants. She permits a single peck on the cheek, from which the aspirant lover withdraws, trembling. In physical terms, so little occurs, but its significance is intense and immense.