A Kiss is Still a Kiss Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Song of Solomon

"The Song of Solomon" (a.k.a "The Song of Songs" and "The Canticle of Canticles") occupies a unique place in the Scriptures. Essentially, it is an extended love poem, consisting of a dialogue between a man and woman (the bride and bridegroom) and containing lengthy passages which are unequivocally erotic. Scholars have pointed out that the style of the poem bears certain similarities to Egyptian love poetry of the same era. The author of the poem was almost certainly not Solomon (though he is mentioned in the text), and there has been some speculation that it may have been a woman. Certainly, the poem's opening line, quoted above, would seem to support this theory.

To explain the place of "The Song of Solomon" in the Scriptures, some Judaic scholars have argued that the poem is an allegory, describing in poetic terms God's love for his chosen people; Christians have similarly attempted to explain it as an allegory of the love of Christ for the church. Increasingly, many Biblical scholars have rejected both of these interpretations, and have argued that the poem is exactly what it appears to be- a celebration of human love in all its aspects (including physical love).

Answer: The Meeting at the Golden Gate

Between 1302 and 1306, Giotto painted a series of frescoes for the Capella degli Scrovegni in Padua, chronicling the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, including Mary's conception and birth. According to legend, Mary was born to an elderly couple, Joachim and Anne.

The couple was childless, considered a sign of divine disfavour. Joachim's sacrifice was rejected at the Temple, and Anne suffered the indignity of being mocked by one of her own maidservants. While Joachim was away on a journey, both husband and wife prayed separately, and each was informed in a dream that Anne would bear a child. "The Meeting at the Golden Gate" depicts the moment when Anne greets her returning husband at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem, each already knowing the happy truth.

The kiss between the elderly couple is one of the most affecting in Western art, and is the focal point of the fresco. To the couple's right, a group of servants joyfully descend to congratulate the happy pair; behind them, swathed in a dark hooded robe, stands the unkind servant who had mocked Anne, her face immobile with shame.

Answer: Othello

Othello had been goaded into the murder of Desdemona by the villainous Iago, who had convinced him of her infidelity. Upon learning the truth, Othello stabs himself; in his dying moments, he recalls that he had kissed Desdemona before strangling her: "No other way but this, killing myself, to die upon a kiss".

In Giuseppe Verdi's operatic version of the play, Othello and Desdemona share a passionate kiss at the end of the love duet in Act I. The kiss is accorded its own "leitmotif", a Wagnerian device which Verdi usually avoided. The music of the "kiss motif" occurs, very movingly, when Othello kisses the sleeping Desdemona in the final act and, again, after his suicide, when he kisses her for the last time.

Answer: Rose

The title of the Brothers Grimm tale is "Little Brier Rose" ("Dornrnroschen"), though the princess is named Aurora in other versions. It was adapted from German folklore and published in 1812 in the collection entitled "Kinder- und Hausmarchen". As the result of a curse by an evil fairy, Briar Rose pricks her finger on a spindle upon her fifteenth birthday and falls into a deep slumber, which shall last one hundred years. A thick hedge of thorn bushes grows around the castle. Lured by the legend of the sleeping princess, many unfortunate princes lose their lives attempting to hack through the thicket. At length, after a century has passed, a more fortunate prince decides to try his luck. As he approaches, the spell is broken and the thorns turn to roses. He easily makes his way through and finds the princess, whom he awakens with a kiss.

"The Sleeping Beauty" was the subject of a famous ballet by Tchiakovsky (which features a "Rose Adagio", in which numerous princes offer roses to the princess on her birthday) and an opera by Humperdinck, best known for another fairy-tale opera, "Hansel und Gretel".

Answer: Faust

Goethe had begun work on "Faust" in 1774 and worked on it sporadically over the next fifty-eight years. It was completed shortly before his death in 1832. The first part of the poetic drama concerns the rejuvenated Faust's tragic romance with Gretchen, whom he seduces with the connivance of Mephistopheles. Gretchen's "spinning scene", consisting of her great monologue "Meine ruh ist hin" ("My peace is gone") occurs shortly before her final seduction, and indicates that, emotionally, she has already given herself up to Faust.

The monologue is a perfectly contained drama in itself, and has been memorably set to music by Franz Schubert and French composer Hector Berlioz. Schubert's celebrated "Gretchen am Spinnrade" underscores the girl's passion in the piano accompaniment, which depicts the frantic rhythm of the spinning wheel.

The romance "D'amour l'ardente flamme" from Berlioz's concert-opera "La Damnation de Faust" sets Goethe's text in a translation by the eminent poet Gerard de Nerval.

Answer: Paolo and Francesca

Rodin's "Port de L'Enfer" was a large carved portal depicting scenes from Dante's "Inferno". It was commissioned by the Directorate of Fine Arts to be presented at the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Rodin eventually removed "Le Baiser", which he felt to be out of keeping with the tone of Dante's work; the grouping was replaced by a more tragic depiction of the doomed lovers. "Le Baiser" was exhibited separately under its present title in Brussels in 1887. Although in later years, Rodin would dismiss "Le Baiser" as being too conventional and perfunctory, it remains one of his most admired works.

Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo Malatesta were murdered in 1285. Francesca had fallen in love with Paolo when he was sent to woo her for his brother, Giancotto, and the two became lovers after her marriage. The affair was discovered and they were slain by Giancotto. In Dante's "L'Inferno", Francesca relates that they had first consummated their relationship after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere (the book can be seen in Rodin's sculpture). The story of Paolo and Francesca has been depicted in art by Ingres and Delacroix, among others, and was the subject of a play by Gabrielle D'Annunzio.

Answer: Gold leaf

Klimt's painting depicts a couple dressed in heavily gilded robes, which seem also to be encrusted with mosaic tiles. The man is placing a passionate kiss on the woman's upturned cheek; only the heads and hands of the couple, along with the woman's left arm and her feet, are seen protruding from their heavy robes.

The couple are silhouetted against a background of dark gold, and stand on highly stylized carpet of tiny, jewel-like flowers. The passion and ardor of the kiss stands in marked contrast to the artifice of their surroundings and the heavy robes in which they are encased. Klimt was heavily influenced by Byzantine, as well as Egyptian art and used gold leaf in a number of his paintings, including "The Beethoven Frieze" (1902), "Danae" (1907), and "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907). Earlier, in 1895, Klimt had created an equally erotic, but much more conventional painting entitled "Love".

In this painting, a young woman clad in virginal white turns up her face to receive a passionate kiss from a swarthy, bearded lover (possibly a pirate or gypsy).

Answer: "The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux

Written in 1910 "Le Fantome de L'Opera" is easily the best-known of the novels of Gaston Leroux (1868-1927). A former journalist and critic, Leroux only began to write fiction in the last quarter-century of his life.

The "phantom" of the title is the hideously disfigured Erik, who controls the Paris Opera through a campaign of terror and outright murder. Apart from opera, his one great love is the beautiful young soprano Christine Daae, whose career he has mysteriously guided. When Christine falls in love with the handsome young Raoul de Chagny, Erik becomes desperate. He imprisons Raoul and threatens to blow up the opera house unless Christine becomes his wife; to avert tragedy, Christine agrees. Despite the evil he has done, she pities the desperately unhappy Erik. When she unflinchingly accepts his kiss, Erik, whose own mother would not permit him to kiss her, is deeply touched, and releases her from her promise. He dies three weeks later.

Leroux's novel has been filmed several times, originally in 1925 with Lon Chaney as Erik. The scene in which Christine (played by Mary Philbin) removes his mask, revealing a ghastly, skull-like countenance ranks as one of the most horrifying scenes in any film. The musical version by Andrew Lloyd Webber premiered in 1989, is still running as of this writing (2006) and has been filmed.

Answer: Marc Chagall

"Birthday" (a.k.a. "The Birthday Kiss") was actually painted upon Chagall's birthday in July of 1915, and depicts the artist and his fiance Bella, whom he married the following year. In her autobiography, Bella describes her thoughts on first seeing this painting: "You drag me into the stream of colors. Suddenly you lift me from the ground and you push yourself off with one foot as though the small room has become too narrow for you. You take a leap, stretch to your full length, and fly up to the ceiling itself. Your head is turned and you turn mine as well."

Following the rise of Nazism in 1939, Chagall moved with his family to what he thought would be the safety of France, settling in the city of Gordes, near Avignon. The anti-Semitic laws adopted by the Vichy government in 1941 drove them to the United States, where Chagall had been offered asylum by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, along with Picasso, Rouault, and Ernst, among others. In 1948, he took up residence in Paris, which he considered his spiritual home. Sadly, his beloved Bella had died four years earlier.

Answer: Pytor Illyich Tchaikovsky

Based on a Hans Christian Anderson tale, "La Baiser de la Fee" was dedicated to Tchaikovsky and actually premiered around the thirty-fifth anniversary of the composer's death. In his dedication, Stravinsky said of Tchaikovsky: "It was his muse (like our fairy heroine) whose fatal kiss, imprinted at birth, made itself felt in all the work of that great artist, and eventually led him to immortality." Stravinsky uses the music of Tchaikovsky's famous song "None But the Lonely Heart" (the text is a translation of Goethe's "Nur Wenn die Sehnsucht Kennt" from "Wilhelm Meister", which had also been set to music by Schubert) in the ballet's third tableau.

The young man, engaged to marry a village girl, dances with a mysterious white-clad woman who is revealed to be the ice fairy who had kissed him as an infant.