The discovery of the yawn
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Anna Siano, Child – Yawning
- You don't mind to share a bed with me?
- Not at all! Why should I? I said as normally as I could and I yawned deeply.
Charles Ducal, 'Mannen' in De meesterknecht. Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas, 1992, p. 129.
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Max Beckmann, Die Gähnenden (1918)
You yawn at me – in your yawning discharges half-rotten salacity. [...]
Ernst Blaß, 'Kreuzberg 2' in Die Straßen komme ich entlang geweht - Sämtliche Gedichte. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1980 [1912].
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"I like to think of you as idle and artificial, an idle woman in a harem, a bored prostitute yawning as she waits for custom."
Iris Murdoch, The Good Apprentice. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001 [1985], p. 170.
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Derrick Greaves, Dog Yawning (1989)
A labrador retriever jumped with sandy paws against the snowwhite bathrobe, barked hoarsely at Roland and shook his shivering carcass against Daisy's buttocks: "Go away, please," Daisy said, but so softly that the dog could not hear it. She let him continue. Roland who had backed away, buried his toes in the loose sand, saw how the dog yawned while climaxing.
Hugo Claus, Schaamte. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1979 [1972], p. 68.
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Chris Roberts-Antieau, Human Yawn Phenomenon (2004)
Why is yawning so contagious?
Someone opposite you on the train yawns and before you know it you also start to yawn. Worse: half the compartment yawns. Why are we collectively 'autonomously in a forced manner opening the mouth while fetching breath deeply' if someone else does so?
In fact, despite many scientific investigations, this is still not completely clear. Finnish brain scans 'proved' in 2005 that we do it unconsciously. Also it seems that we only start to 'yawn after' after our first year of life: therefore it is learned behaviour.
The chances that you will 'yawn after' increases when you are tired and when you like the first yawner: if that is not the case you are less inclined to imitate the yawning. According to some yawning is for this reason a form of flirting. So if on the train your yawn is being answered by that delicious thing opposite you then that creates a link.
Niek Stolker, 'Triv knows it' ('Triv weet het'), Triv (Amsterdam), nr. 5, May 2007, p. 84.
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Delicious misses!
Your image is to the highest degree,
The most perfect ever made by nature;
However, as nothing is ever complete,
In your sweet image also
Somewhere a little hole kept gaping.
In this, how else could it be?
You feel a pain often
That make eye and face blush
O beauties! turn to us for solace
We know a special trick
To close the gaping hole.
Pieter Boddaert jr., 'To The Weaker Vessel' ('Aan de tedere kunne') in Poëtische en prosaïsche portefeuille, Amsterdam: Hendrik Moolenijzer, 1805.
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It is curious to observe, and it is certainly true, that the extremes of contrary passions are with very little variation expressed by the same action.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art. ed. R.R. Wark, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 221-22. (Discourse XII)
But then: are yawning and climaxing contrary passions?
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Mouth of Hell, Hours of Catherine of Cleves (ca. 1440)
Perhaps the most widespread medieval mouth image was the Hell-mouth, a 'yawning' yoni.
Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988, p. 320 'Mouth'.
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If he'd ever be allowed
To see her yawn
George would dream then
that he was lying with the chick.
Mattheus Gansneb Tengnagel, Grove - Roffel (1639)
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"When the ovule is bored..."
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"When the ovule is bored..."
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"When the ovule is bored..."
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"When the ovule is bored..."
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"When the ovule is bored..."
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"When the ovule is bored..."
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Advertising flower shop, Atelier Végétal (Paris)
Il est temps de réveiller votre amour.
It is time to waken your love.
Is the yawn an erotic or an anti-erotic phenomenon?
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Hélène de Fougerolles, yawning
"Nothing will make me stay awake for you." She yawned. "How naughty of me it is."
Graham Greene, The Man Within. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1994 [1925], p. 120.
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Julia suffers from yawning attacks (filmstill La vida es silbar, Cuba, 1998)
Sometimes compulsive yawning is indulged in with pleasure - orgastic pleasure.
Joost A.M. Meerloo, Archaic behavior and the communicative act: the meaning of stretching, yawning, rocking and other fetal behavior in therapy. Psychiatric Quarterly 29, 1955, pp. 60-73.
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