Of course, the smile is more than a chemical reaction, a series of muscular contractions or a mechanism.
It is a highly sophisticated concept, an expression of emotions, a mode of communication, a beacon of desire, a ritual-an occasion, in other words, of intense psychological, anthropological and social
interest, the product of acute observation, cognition and interpretation.
In the West, the smile is also embedded in the Romantic tradition of poetry.
There, it is constantly deployed as an expression of love and celebrated for its capacity
to radiate beauty from the face of the wearer.
The poets thus endowed it with the power to attract and fascinate, to stimulate desire.
Indeed, most adults would have some idea of what Wordsworth meant when he described the smile of his beloved as shining ‘through his very heart’ as, indeed, they would know something of the distress of having the same familiar smile of love withheld or cut off.