He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
Chapter 6 · Narrator
Context
This passage narrates the moment of Gatsby's first kiss with Daisy in Louisville five years before the novel's present action. Nick presents it as a moment of both creation and loss—Gatsby knowingly sacrifices his infinite inner vision by attaching it to a mortal woman.
Analysis
The theological metaphor of 'incarnation' frames the kiss as a divine mystery—the moment when Gatsby's infinite, God-like imagination takes flesh in a mortal being—while simultaneously marking it as a fall from omnipotence to limitation. The auditory metaphor of a 'tuning-fork struck upon a star' captures the cosmic resonance of the moment, but the juxtaposition of 'unutterable visions' with 'perishable breath' encodes the tragedy within the ecstasy: by fixing his boundless dream to a human being, Gatsby ensures its eventual decay, making the kiss both the consummation and the beginning of the end of his capacity for wonder.
How to Use in Essay
Among the most important passages in the novel for essays on the tension between ideal and real, or for arguing that Gatsby's tragedy is inherent in the structure of desire itself—that fulfillment necessarily diminishes the dream it consummates.