A Kiss

The Song of Songs opens with the lines “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” A line which instantly brings into question the idea of 'absence' and 'presence'. Whose mouth could Solomon kiss with if not his own? On one interpretation we can claim that the phrasing draws us immediately to an invocation of the divine, the kiss that is more than a kiss, the song that is more than a song, the fire that is more than a fire ... “The kiss we speak of is therefore the product of divine humility. Far from a mere touching of lips, it is a spiritual union with God. The human and the divine are mingled. Two become one. This is the kiss desired by the holy ones from long ago.” The kiss therefore expresses the desire not of communication but of presence. Bernard of Clairvaux begins his sermons on the Song by focusing on this line, the sermons serve the function of detailing the presence of God in his life but at the same time the meaning pulled from this opening line is obscured by the opacity of that line. The phrase 'holy ones from long ago' refers to the prophets who foresaw Christ's coming. Bernard is then insinuating this sense of divine longing in the Shulamite's desire toward her loved one.


Solomon and the Shulamite are only described as together in the first of the six songs. The other five detail searching, arriving and social separation “Nevertheless, and through the very flight that is assumed by both protagonists – lovers who do not merge but are in love with the others' absence – no certainty affects the existence of the one who is loved and loves ...” The absence is also more explicitly invoked by the fluid concept of identity between the protagonists. In the opening line and Song 3 the male protagonist is clearly identified as Solomon yet at other parts the male protagonist is mentioned as being a shepherd as well as any number of more sensual images, the only role consistently designated to him is as lover. Solomon then borrows upon imagery used by the Shulamite to describe his lover in return, again transforming any notion of a stationary identity by referring to a barrage of imagery and different designatory positions. This focus on identity, presence and absence is intended not to show an identity crisis within love, but rather a sense of movement, something which becomes vital for the Hegelian and Sartrian traditions.

“In truth, the lover and the beloved are not identifiable
characters; by this I mean the bearers of a narrative identity. In this
respect, it is not out of bounds to suggest that the question “who,”
ordinarily linked to narrative identity, comes into the poem only to
accentuate ... the appearance of origin ...”5

But there is no definitive response to this appearance of origin, rather the poem is situated within a flux of imagery and places. This extends to the point where even a necessary application of narrative is seen as irrelevant. Rather the Song progresses through an intensification and increased reliance on metaphor until the climax near the middle of the song. Yet the inclination towards this notion of origin as described by Origen, focuses the poem on the ambiguity of identity.


“The sensitive and the significant, the body and the name, are thus not only placed on the same level but fused in the same logic of undecidable infinitization, semantic polyvalence brewed by the static of love ...” The above conclusion reached by Julia Kristeva has already been argued for. Yet the this essay has not yet done due justice to certain aspects of the Song. What is precisely in question here is the role played by nature within the textual framework of the song. What is needed for a thorough analysis of the song is an explanation as to why there is a transference of desire onto natural imagery. This has on occasion been alluded to as a way of placing the text within the scope of issues of national identity – insofar as the imagery is apparently located to a specific geographical point aiding the reading of the song as demonstrating a relationship between god and Israel, or Israel and Egypt. The invocation of natural imagery acts as way of making the narrative more physical. The absence of the loved one is countermanded by the presence of nature. So that on the narrative level an element of tension is added to the text invoking
the desired object through it's very absence. The chiasmatic relationship then is added through lines such as “I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me”7 Here we have, at its most explicit, a dialectic between the physical and non-physical transference of identity.