ONE OF THE MOST beloved folk songs vividly depicts the swift journey of the kiss, the red kiss, from the lips that meet in the realm that hosts the lovers and celebrates with them: I kissed the red lip and it stained mine, / and into the handkerchief I drew it and it stained the handkerchief, / and into the river I washed it and it stained the river, / and the edge of the shore was stained and the middle of the sea. / The eagle descended to drink water and stained its wings, / and the half sun was stained and the whole moon.

The six lines, preserved in various versions, have a long literary, folklore, and literary history, involving great names of scholarship and poetry. Among them are Korais, Fauriel, N. G. Politis, Krystallus, Psycharis, Apostolakis, Seferis, Chatsos, Photios Politis, and Vrettakos.

At the center of the dialogue were issues that concern us today: the uniqueness of folk poetry, the assessment of its value with purely literary measures, and the right of poetry in general, both anonymous and personal, to express its feelings and ideas while opening paths that distance it from the safety of "logical" convention.

The naturalness with which the folk creator embraced exaggeration, exemplified by the song of the relentless red kiss, produced songs that might have fascinated surrealists, both Greek and foreign, had they known them comprehensively in due time. Some other category of folk songs, also mentioned in this volume, could provoke the particular interest of the pioneers of psychoanalysis, if – once again – they had known them in due time.

Suddenly, Sigmund Freud, who knew Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, might have thought that the term "Oedipus complex" does not fully and clearly capture his thoughts. Oedipus and Jocasta were not acquainted. In contrast, throughout the cycle of folk songs, the "Oedipus" is unconscious, manifesting such aggression from the maternal side that the sacred, the heavens, and the sea tremble.

Revealing of the weight that folk thought assigns to the "Oedipus" sin are the variations where the realization of the mother-son relationship ends in a triple death (no other purification is foreseen), as well as the traditions in which Oedipus, consciously, is Judas.

The I kissed the red lip is the third book in the series Essays on Folk Song, following I Love (2016, State Prize for Essay and Criticism 2017) and The Blood of Love (2017).

COVER PHOTO ANDREAS EMPEIRIKOS Corfu, 1955 from the volume Photofragment – The photographs of Andreas Empeirikos, Agra Editions, 2001.