As both an avid reader and passionate lover (see my picture below this article), I would like to present my three favorite kisses in all of literature. I have taken into consideration quality of writing, emotional impact, and the general power of the prose. I will do what I can to provide adequate context for each scene, although if you want the full effect it would be better to just read the book.
3. The first kiss of Robert Jordan and Maria in Ernest Hemingway’s "For Whom the Bell Tolls," Chapter 7.
Earlier in her life, Maria was raped and, being psychologically damaged by it, found herself unable to experience love prior to Robert Jordan (the protagonist). They are in a sleeping bag (not exactly, but the modern equivalent of one) together in a cave in the hills of Spain. It is dark and cold, and they have just confessed their love to each other. The quote is preceded by a long dialogue sequence in which Robert Jordan keeps asking Maria to kiss him but she, having a distorted view of romance, had never kissed a man and therefore didn’t know how:
“Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.”
“Look, turn thy head,” and then their mouths were tight together and she lay close pressed against him and her mouth opened a little gradually and then, suddenly, holding her against him, he was happier that he had ever been, lightly, lovingly, exultingly, innerly happy and unthinking and untired and un-worried and only feeling a great delight and he said, “My little rabbit. My darling. My sweet. My long lovely.”
The emotional context behind the kiss is what makes it so immortal.
2. The first kiss between Jay Gatsby and Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby," Chapter 6.
Jay and Daisy are walking down a moonlit street at night and leaves are falling all around them. They stop and look at one another:
"His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete."
Gives me butterflies every time I read it.
1. The Betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Luke 22:44-48.
Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane in deep anguish, praying to the Father to take the cup of suffering, crucifixion, from him:
"And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ he asked them. ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’ While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, ‘Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?'''
This kiss tops my list because of its impact on both literature and the society. Although the language is not as poetic as the first two, the event itself is of such enormous significance that it easily solidifies itself in my mind as the most important and powerful kiss in literature.
