Just a spooky break from politics with a true story.
Posted on 10/10/2024 11:52:44 AM PDT by MeanWestTexan
When German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, he intended for readers to finish it, but not, you know, to end it. To Goethe's disbelief, his novel sparked a spate of suicides. The title character, whose obsessive love for a married woman was unrequited, ended up shooting himself, and soon the copycatting started. Young men of the era would dress just as the fictional Werther had—yellow trousers, blue jacket—and use a similar pistol. Often, a copy of the book was found at the scene. The number of deaths was unsettling enough that Italy and Denmark banned Goethe's novel. The German city of Leipzig even outlawed Werther-style clothes for a while. The phenomenon is now known as the Werther effect (footnote 1).
Because history, per Mark Twain, "doesn't repeat itself but often rhymes" (footnote 2), the pathway between glum art and self-harm exists in the world of music, too. Exhibit A has to be "Szomorú Vasárnap," or "Gloomy Sunday." Artists as diverse as Paul Robeson, Billie Holiday, Diamanda Galás, Bing Crosby, the Kronos Quartet, and Sinéad O'Connor have covered this somber song, written by Hungarians Rezsű Seress (music; pictured below) and László Jávor (lyrics) in the 1930s. Seress had a hard time getting his dirge-like composition out there, with one potential publisher demurring and telling him: "It's not that the song is sad, but there is a sort of terrible compelling despair about it. I don't think it would do anyone any good to hear it."
The man had a point. No two ways about it: "Gloomy Sunday" is a grim (and perhaps communicable) lament from someone whose lover has died and who is considering taking his or her own life. In the English translation by Sam M. Lewis:
Little white flowers will never awaken you; not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you. Angels have no thought of ever returning you. Would they be angry If I thought of joining you? Later interpretations sometimes added an extra verse that employs a particularly hoary literary device intended to avoid offense and further deaths:
Dreaming, I was only dreaming; I wake and I find you asleep. It's unclear whether the cop-out addition cut down on the sadness and depression that crept through the heart of many a "Gloomy Sunday" listener, or on self-inflicted death.
But honestly, much about the effect of the song is debatable. Its legacy is shrouded in urban myth. What we know for certain is that it became known as "that Hungarian suicide song"; that more than 200 cases of people killing themselves were attributed to it, rightly or wrongly (footnote 3); that in the late 1930s, the Hungarian authorities forbade the playing of the apparently deadly tune, to the chagrin of Rezsű Seress; and that the BBC banned it from the airwaves in the early 1940s because it was thought to undermine wartime morale. (The British ban lasted six decades, until about 2002.)
Some of the purported consequences of listening to "Gloomy Sunday" seem too bizarre to be true. For instance, the Dutch newspaper Argus reported that "In Germany, an 80-year-old man plunged to his death from the seventh floor while he played the song on his trumpet with his right hand; and in Rome, a 14-year-old gave all his money to a beggar who'd been humming 'Gloomy Sunday,' and threw himself in the river, where he drowned."
Also according to Argus, "In 1937, police in the US state of Indianapolis [sic] raided a bar where a man named Jerry Flanders had paid a pianist to play the suicide song, after which he imbibed a poisoned cocktail."
Good luck fact-checking that; I came up empty. It all carries at least a whiff of fantasy and fabrication, and there's a pretty good theory (footnote 4) that the self-harm imputed to the song is in fact based on the many Hungarian suicides that occurred in the 1930s and '40s. Realistically, war, poverty, and famine played a bigger part than the song did.
Less disputable is that "Gloomy Sunday" had a role in its creator's demise. Rezsű Seress's obituary in the New York Times noted that he "complained that the success of 'Gloomy Sunday' actually increased his unhappiness, because he knew he would never be able to write a second hit." It didn't help that Seress, who was a bit of an agoraphobe, lived on the cusp of poverty, mostly because he didn't want to leave his native Budapest—not even to pick up his royalty check from the United States, which had reportedly grown to $370,000. Even in the autumn of his life, he continued as a piano player in a local bar, living on subsistence wages.
At age 78, on January 12, 1968, Seress's often depressive state got the better of him. In Hungary's coldest month, when the sun often doesn't bother showing up, he jumped out a window ... and survived the fall. He finished the job in the hospital by strangling himself with a piece of wire. It wasn't a Sunday, but the gloom that always followed the composer was in plentiful supply that freezing Friday, too.
Footnote 1: See tinyurl.com/4fdx76m5. Footnote 2: The attribution is doubtful, as with so many of Twain's supposed bon mots.
Footnote 3: Some sources claim that lyricist Lászlo Jávor, who reportedly had an in with the Budapest police, persuaded an officer to place a copy of the lyrics at two local suicide scenes, thus kicking off the song's notoriety. See tinyurl.com/37hrzsta.
ping
When I passed a display of Werther’s candies a couple of days I ago I thought of my college class professor who assigned us The Sorrows of Young Werther. Had a thick German accent, I recall. Odd that a post here would reference it.
That semester another large class of mine was assigned the bright red book Suicide by Emile Durkheim. Reprinted from 1897. A professor born in France said: “I am a little concerned people seeing all of my students walking around carrying that red book Suicide are all about to do something drastic.”
I was really down after my dear wife died in 2022. But I fear being barred from heaven. I think of the champion basketball coach John Wooten starting to cry during a Tony Robbins interview. Said all he wants now is to be good enough to be granted by God to reunite with his wife who just died, in heaven.
Then there’s Stormy Monday.
Aside from getting oil out of the ground, my other passion is listening to music (of all kinds). Have an absurd listening room with delicately balanced sound treatments and a system where the turntable exceeds the costs of my first home.
Always been that way, but got way down the rabbit hole when I needed something to fill my time because my wife and I were getting fat drinking and needed to do something else.
I actually have the single in question. It is, indeed, gloomy. When down, I like to listen to gloomy music, and then gradually work my self up to something upbeat. Better than therepy.
And Groovy Tuesday
I might have made it through fifteen seconds of that masterpiece.
Mondays are always rough.
In Hungary’s coldest month, when the sun often doesn’t bother showing up, he jumped out a window ... and survived the fall. He finished the job in the hospital by strangling himself with a piece of wire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tyh1OakhUk
Gloomy Sunday
Mel Tormé - Topic
The quandary is the song is exceptionally beautiful.
Just horribly tragic, even if you don’t understand the words.
Going by your tagline, it may be one for you to miss.
The Billie Holiday version is superior, IMHO.
Sunday Bloody Sunday is the most depressing song I know. Because Yoko sings backing vocals on it.
On the dvd which goes with the book by former Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey: A Journey to Music’s Heart & Soul, he says do you notice whatever your mood is, after getting part way through a blues song it evens out your mood. If you’re really feeling down you get solace from it and feel a little hopeful, and if you’re in a good mood to settle back to understanding the feelings of the person who sang the song. You move to the middle ground.
I love the blues and have actually noticed that.
Like Elton John and Bernie Taupin co-wrote in Sad Songs Say So Much:
Guess there are times when we all need to share a little pain
And ironin’ out the rough spots
Is the hardest part when memories remain
And it’s times like these when we all need to hear the radio
‘Cause from the lips of some old singer
We can share the troubles we already know
Turn ‘em on, turn ‘em on
Turn on those sad songs
When all hope is gone (ah...)
Why don’t you tune in and turn them on?
They reach into your room, oh
Just feel their gentle touch (gentle touch)
When all hope is gone (ooh)
Sad songs say so much
If someone else is sufferin’ enough, oh, to write it down
When every single word makes sense
Then it’s easier to have those songs around
The kick inside is in the line that finally gets to you
And it feels so good to hurt so bad
And suffer just enough to sing the blues.
It’s OK fellow human being, I’ve been known to sip on a bit of Whistle Pig rye whiskey and ponder upon things.
But Tuesday’s just as bad.
Valid point.
As an aside, I opine that Harrison broke up the Beatles. He walked away the first time before Yoko got on the scene.
It was mainly because John/Paul were dicks to him. He wrote great, if not better songs, than they, but they refused to let more than a few get on records.
Had little to do with Yoko.
The Yoko theory does give people someone to hate besides John and Paul.
But all three said the same thing multiple times. John admitting later he was a dick, while it took George dying for Paul to admit it.)
(Ringo was also annoyed because the later albums have very little for him to do. But he’s apparently just such a nice guy that he was content to go along for the ride.)
LOL.
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