The discovery of the yawn
Description
Merlin Spie Cultural Indigestion II / Civil Prostration (2004)
The signifier opens onto a yawning chasm of never-ending possible readings.
Ron Silliman, 'Afterword: Who Speaks: Ventriloquism and the Self in the Poetry Reading', in Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word. (ed. Charles Bernstein), New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 366.
Description
José Ramón Moreno, It Yawns! (2007)
The yawn is not a trivial or banal behaviour, but on the contrary pregnant with meaning. This is because man himself is the Great Meaning-Giver. He gives meaning to everything and anything: in a few dots he sees a line, in an inkblot he sees faces, and in clouds, tea leaves and the stars he can even see the future. But it is also because of the yawn. The yawn is a clear mirror in which man can recognize himself. Or is the yawn a distorting mirror in which man can only think to recognize himself?
GAAP! p. 223.
Description
Joseph Ducreux Selfportrait, Yawning (1783)
In official art yawning persons are scarce. In the history of art most of all strange yawners are to be found. There is the remarkably contorted figure of Joseph Ducreux Selfportrait, Yawning. It seems that Ducreux only dared to depict his yawning in such a contorted way.
GAAP! p. 194.
Description
Then she yawned.
"Are you going with me, Mr. Berkley?"
"I'll—yes. I'll see you safe."
She yawned again, laid a small hand on his arm, and together they descended the stairs, opened the front door, and went out into Twenty-third Street.
Robert W. Chambers, Ailsa Paige. New York: Appleton, 1910, p. 166.
Description
William Hogarth, Marriage a la Mode (ca. 1743)
"What were the yawns of Lady Bertram?"
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977 [1814], p. 279.
Description
The rooting reflex ('breast seeking reflex') has been used since time immemorial by nursing mothers to make their infant open its mouth for the teat.
GAAP! p. 138.
Description
His face split in another mammoth yawn. He threw his heart into it, as if life held no other tasks for him. Only in alligators have I ever seen its equal.
P.G. Wodehouse, The Little Nugget. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1991 [1913].
Description
A rat's yawn may be a type of greeting.
Debbie Ducommun, Rats: Practical, Accurate Advice from the Expert. Irvine (CA): Bowtie Press, 2001, p. 9.
Description
Alfred Binet, La suggestibilité (1900)
[...] it is hard to be sure whether the mouths that open do so in enthusiasm or in a yawn.
Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities. (Translated by Eithne Wilkins & Ernst Kaiser), New York: Capricorn Books, 1965 [1931/32], vol. 1, p. 355.
Description
Furtado (1949, p. 988)
Furtado related a remarkable phenomenon: in a 17-year old boy, who suffered from acute poliomyelitis, the passive abduction of one of his arms provoked an authentic yawning reflex. Each provoked yawn was followed by a refractory period of 20 - 30 seconds. This transitional phenomenon was noticed after a partial recuperation from total paralysis.
Furtado, D. 1949. Consideraçóes sobre o bocejo (a propósito de um caso clínico). Gazeta Médica Portuguesa 2(4) [1(5)], pp. 983-89.
Description
Stephen Pell (2007)
She yawned hugely, her nose snubbing up, her eyes squeezed, one hand questing through her blouse to scratch her armpit.
Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince. London: Chatto & Windus, 1984 [1973], p. 255
Description
Honoré Daumier, 'Six mois de marriage', Moeurs conjugales No.7 (ca. 1839)
Dieser Liebe toller Fasching,
Dieser Taumel unsrer Herzen,
Geht zu Ende, und ernüchtert
Gähnen wir einander an!
Heinrich Heine: Neue Gedichte, Verschiedene - Angélique, IX
Description
"You're a nice boy, you are." She yawned. "There now, I love you."
E.M. Forster, Howards End. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000 [1910], p. 198.
Description
An Pierlé, yawning and stretching
Marieke jumped up and was glad immediately; she smilingly rubbed the sleepiness out of her eyes, yawned and for a short while and happily put her head back in Pallieter's neck.
Felix Timmermans, Pallieter. Amsterdam: Van Kampen, 1929 [1916], p. 95.
Description
Co Westerik, Man with Visible Breath (1977)
With a yawn
the spirit rises from the flesh
and the limbs and their lusts equel each other
symmetrically in the stretching figure
of man
Adriaan Roland Holst, 'Ontwaakt' (In memoriam Simon Vestdijk) in Maatstaf, 19(4/5), 1971, pp. 213-339.
Description
Robert Gernhardt, The Devil reads Faust II
It is however also remarkable to see, how devils understand the yawn.
J.W. Goethe, Faust II, Fourth Act
Description
And Nymphalin, who had been disappointed in love, and was still unmarried, had for the last five or six months been exceedingly tired even of giving balls. She yawned very frequently, and consequently yawning became a fashion.
Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Pilgrims of the Rhine. Charleston (SC): BiblioBazaar, 2006 [1834], p. 29.
Description
The upper part of Miss Verhoef had appeared from the rubble of the bed and leaning sideways on her right arm she rubbed her eyes with her left hand, yawning stretchingly. Next to her the blanket was lifted above the skinny knees of her man who lay close to the wall and he raised his long meager arms, and with a thud stretched besides the pillow against the railing.
- Jees... is it already over! he yawned.
Frans Coenen, Zondagsrust. Amsterdam: L.J. Veen, 1902 [1899], p. 5.
Description
How I got rid of him I cannot remember exactly. I think that I started to yawn and I felt like an awful prig. And I didn't understand what came over me. Because what I did was very stupid: dismissing such a perfect partner.
Mischa de Vreede, Eindelijk mezelf. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1978, p. 160.
Description
They could see the gape of his tiny beak as he yawned in a bored sort of way, looked round, and then settled his head into his back again, while the ruffled feathers gradually subsided into perfect stillness.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows. Mineola (NY): Dover Publications 2002 [1908], p. 80.
Description
John Baldwin - The baby yawns after the teat (2007)
There my little sheep. Gape.
Make haste, gape;
or the breast will close.
Mattheus Gansneb Tengnagel, Klucht van Frik in't Veur-Huys (1642)
Description
Francis Burton, Yawning Horse (2007)
It is noteworthy that animals which do not sleep in a relaxed position, or which even sleep standing up, as do many ungulates, do not stretch or yawn.
Frederic Wood Jones, The Principles of Anatomy as seen in the Hand. London: J. & A. Churchill, 1920, p. 121.
Description
Henri Arnold and Bob Lee ('Jumble', International Herald Tribune, February 18th, 1987)
As an exercise the next illustrations: now try to explain the cartoon using the First Law of Chasmology.
Description
Cover of Alain Teulié, La bâilleuse (2000)
Jimmy was about to address her, he had finally found a sentence not too banal to initiate the conversation when the unknown girl, after straining herself while closing her eyes, began to yawn by opening her mouth so widely that Jimmy discovered at once all the inside of a cave whose entrance was bound by a slender thread of saliva which broke soon, a chasm of flesh moist and dark, bordered at the end by a stalactite like a finger tip. Her tongue was plied in two like a pancake on which we are going to spread honey and her lips were opened showing the gums in which the roots of the teeth were causing pinkish dunes. She had terribly changed, he thought. Her wrinkled cheeks, her upturned nose, her distorted forehead, her stretched neck, had given birth to a terrifying double of the original young girl. Jimmy really had the impression that she had become a kind of monster, for the time of a yawn.
Alain Teulié, La bâilleuse. Paris: Médium - L'école des loisirs, 2000, p. 12.
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