When I was in Cardiff two weeks ago I had a couple of hours to visit the National Museum. It was the first time I had seen a life-size version of Rodin’s famous sculpture The Kiss. What really threw me was not the sculpture itself, but the textual explanation on the side. I had no idea before what the image actually depicted: two lovers in an adulterous embrace who will later be slain by the woman’s jilted husband.
It was a real hermeneutical challenge to me, showing how one’s lifelong perception of a situation or event can be partial or distorted or misleading.
I’d always taken this beautiful sculpture to be a symbol of intimacy, tenderness, passion and romantic love – which in many ways it still is. But when you know the story, it shows how something so pure, beautiful and even ‘innocent’ as romance can sometimes do such damage, when it causes someone to separate themselves from everything else that has been important to them – from all their other loves and commitments.
Passion and romance seem to justify themselves, in the heat of the moment, and to justify all the decisions that flow from them. Love, in our culture, often seems to have the final, decisive word; as if there is no possibility of having another perspective on it, or putting it in a larger context.
Don’t misunderstand me: love, passion, romance – these are good things; as long as they help us to deepen and make sense of the life we have, rather than destroying it. (And nor does the understandable passion of the betrayed husband justify him murdering the lovers…)
Here is the caption from the Tate website (referring to their marble version):
The Tate’s The Kiss is one of three full-scale versions made in Rodin’s lifetime. Its blend of eroticism and idealism makes it one of the great images of sexual love. However, Rodin considered it overly traditional, calling The Kiss ‘a large sculpted knick-knack following the usual formula.’ The couple are the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, who were slain by Francesca’s outraged husband. They appear in Dante’s Inferno, which describes how their passion grew as they read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere together. The book can just be seen in Paolo’s hand.
Bridges and Tangents 
Oh No how sad. . . . I wish you hadn’t posted this. I have always liked this sculpture, and it is the one sculpture that I have actually touched. How could I have missed the caption :O(
I love art and writing where the unifying unbroken intimacy of kissing is so perfectly captured. It is the metaphorical creative artistic tangible moment that we can see the bodies and beloved souls which have joined together, visually transcend into the spirit and become One. No other art for me captures it. The higher Holy union
Gustav Klimt’s Kiss is perfect art even if over produced! one beloved almost flows into the other, a pouring in. When I now scan up to Rodin’s sculpture it is actually quite awkward a pose they are holding, all angular elbows, shoulders, knees and hard rock and look at their heads and the actual kiss. . . . theres just no spirit to be seen. Its a big sculpture in real life, I couldnt have seen its flaw. :O(
Give me Psyche and eros or Gustav any day.
In an answer to your question – No! Even the thought of the kiss (if lingered over) is a betrayal.
On the question in the title. . . . I guess it depends on what you call betraying and whether it were a legitimate or a second else pure marriage.
If somebody were to Love God, God who is Love so very much that they trusted Him with their whole being and accepted events which unfolded as His Will, and that in turn meant the spouse felt betrayed, but then the situation brought that spouse to their salvation because they were no longer comitting a mortal sin. Then I think it is just.
I’m sure my husband would have walked past the statue and said “they’re not married!”
Christ was betrayed by a kiss.
Not in context with the above sculpture but in response to shieldsheafson. The gospel plan of salvation is pictured figuritevely as a kiss
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” “Your love is better than wine” (Song of Solomon 1:2; cf. 8:1).
http://www.christianarticles.org/Articles/McCord/Bible%20and%20Kissing.htm. . . interesting.
Some may say it is not betrayal if the marriage they feel ‘stuck’ in is a destructive and abusive relationship that has resulted in suffering for them and their children.
The answer to the question is obviously “no!” but to me it raises a mirror of the question Orwell poses about Dalí (can an outrageously unwholesome person produce great art) by asking whether something which is objectively bad or evil can ever legitimately be portrayed in a sympathetic form. This is one example; Milton’s Lucifer is another. Can the beauty of the art seduce us into downplaying what it portrays?
Yes. Look at St Augustine, somebody who was sleeping outside of marriage, created another life from his own, left them behind where it almost would have been impossible for the woman to now find a husband to care for her and her child, and then went on to live a life in Love with God and write his confessions.
Ultimately, i think its sentimental.
The real love affair we’re ALL meant to have is with God. A love affair, that in the cases of Ss Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Aliva, for example, lead to ecstasy of the soul, with ultimate (please God) union with the Divine after mortal death.
I think Wuthering Heights evokes brilliantly the possible dangers of sentimental, romantic love.
Romantic love (between spouses) is good (and there are lots of different flavours of love) as long as it does not become an idol. True romantic love can only ever be with God, at the centre, with the blessed in Heaven all around (metaphorically-speaking), branches of this this central Love.
And we need (Divine) sense of humour from taking human romantic love too seriously (although, of course, serious to a degree).
Superficially this is great art (genius in its evocation of human emotion – no doubt) but from a Christian POV fails as a moral piece, fails as a piece that brings one closer to God.
I think (might be wrong ..).
So question is – i think – what really is art?!
For me art is a projection of inspiration realised and executed by the artist, to be perceived interpreted and realised by its viewer. The gap in between perceptions is where the real magic of creation manifests. Revelation.
Hi. I think like every iota in life, art has to point, in some way, towards the Divine. The above painting points to human “love”. Human love is an illusion, self-indulgence and idolatory, i think. And it can be dangerous (think Wuthering Heights – brilliant book for evoking this dangerous kind of “love”). I think human love is, ultimately, about lust and covetousness, masked as “love”). True, romantic love (where it also includes sex) has to be between spouses, and ultimately, about more than the two, spiritually. It’s ultimately about (loving / being loved by) God and (loving) others (loving as individuals and as a couple) and, then, paradoxically, the love (and all its different flavous) between the couple flourishes.
I think (?!) God bless
Hi Ed, my description was of art not Love. Art does not always point toward the divine. It only suggest so in that it is created by a human who is in themselves created in the image and likeness of God. Inspiration comes from ‘to breathe in’ humans can just as well breathe in evil.
Love in its Truest purest form is not idolatry as it is in Triune. Lover Loved and the ‘byproduct’ for want of a better word Love. Him creator, inspirer, bestower. To know true Love in God is to know that that Love does not have to include sexual intercourse.
God Bless x
Hi Mags,
“Art does not always point toward the divine”
– then i don’t think it is real art (from a Christian POV)!
It doesn’t intentionally have to point to the Divine, though, i think, for example, Huckleberry Finn was written by an atheist, but for me, it’s full of the Divine (the joi de vivre of Huck is divine in my view).
I take back my comment about Rodin. You shouldn’t have to know the background of the piece to judge whether it is art or not.
And not just making a moral argument (as important as that is) but a philisophical one as well in the context of the Divine (i know that’s not a theological turn of phrase, but i’m not a theologian, and one can discuss these things intuitively without knowing the formal theological language).
“Love in its Truest purest form is not idolatry as it is in Triune” – i meant sexual “love” outside marriage is idolatry.
God bless
“Art does not always point toward the divine”
– then i don’t think it is real art (from a Christian POV)! ”
Its good to differ. “There is one glory of the Sun, another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars for one star diffirith from another star in glory”
:O) God Bless Ed. p.s what is real ?
Mags,
“what is real ?”
I meant “real” as in worthwhile!
And by “worthwhile” i mean arts that ultimately brings us closer to the Divine (it could be art that is directly about God ie Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son, or indirectly, ie Lord of the Rings, or “art” that’s more vague but at least calms down your spirit and perhaps celebrates creation i.e. – painting of flowers or whatever – in some way making you more open to the Divine.
I think “art” is either worthwhile or not (in a work of art itself its normally both yin-yang scenario of bit of bad / lot of good, and vice versa).
If “art” draws you away from the Divine, overall, then forget it, it’s pretence / posturing. And if you love arts, then i think you have to think all the time: does this bring me closer to the Divine / the heavenly or not – and it great “art” doesn’t necessarily have to be pleasing to the senses at some degree, but can, obviously, be something that challenges us, stirs us to think about the Divine – often both .. Remembering how formal Christian art includes the Cross (suffering) as well as, of course, Transfiguration (joy) and Resurrection (new life) etc both suffering and joy, and so on.
Apologies for stream of consciousness ..
God bless sister!
In a sense, for me, there is only One thing that = real. And that one thing is Love. What dies away is dead. Love transcends death and is still very much alive….
God Bess you with Love Ed †
Amen to that Mags, God bless
Today it is Rodins 172nd birthday and google are celebrating him. I clicked on it, and a few clicks led me to this. . . .
“The lovers’ lips do not actually touch in the sculpture, suggesting that they were interrupted and met their demise without their lips ever having touched.”
Brilliant . . .
And that explains why we can not see the spirit beyond the kiss!
or ‘the bodies and beloved souls which have joined together, visually transcend into the spirit and become One. No other art for me captures it. The higher Holy union dipicted in a kiss’!
because the kiss did not happen!