Wild Drink is Raging!

‘Schadenfreude’ is one of those wonderful German words (or phrases) which sound to my ears like some sort of vaguely threatening expletives but which will, given the wilful nature of Germanic pronunciation, turn out to mean ‘candy floss’ or something equally innocuous.

The word sits comfortably with such English stealings as ‘Zeitgeist’, ‘Sturm und Drang’, ‘Gotterdammerung’ and ‘Angst’ as words heard, but rarely fully understood, when used in casual conversation. (Though what casual conversation would utilize that portentous vocabulary is difficult to envisage.)

They are words used for effect and as an attempt to arrest communication rather than facilitate it. Oh yes, I’ve just thought of another one, ‘Weltschmertz’ (roll it around the mouth!) – And I’ve also just thought: a casual conversation about Wagner would be able to justify (nay, would demand) the use of all those words with no effort whatsoever.

‘Schadenfreude’ however, was the one that rose unbidden to my mind today as I listened to a friend recount his drunken ‘conversation’ with a mutual acquaintance. He took, it appears, the opportunity to expatiate (at length) and enumerate (in detail) the failings of the stunned recipient of this tirade. A recipient, I might add, who had just provided him with dinner. It was a situation in which the onus of guilt fails squarely on one set of shoulders and one set of shoulders only. There is, at it were, one ‘baddie’ in this scenario, and one only. Black and white, pure and simple: J’accuse!

At this point, let the ex-teacher take over. ‘Schadenfreude’ is one of those German words made up of separate words, in this case, ‘schaden’ meaning ‘harm’ and ‘freude’ meaning ‘joy’. So, when you put them together ‘harmjoy’ they are a meaningless oxymoron. But the story does not end there: it does have a meaning and it is usually interpreted as meaning something like “deriving pleasure in the misfortunes of others.” Now it begins to fit together.

Our responses to wrong doing are complicated; the same fault can have very different responses when the circumstances are altered. Take, for example lying. Lying is always wrong, except when it isn’t. I will not insult my Reader (literal not figurative) by giving examples: think of today and just count up the ‘necessary’ lies you told, or like the great lie told at the end of Conrad’s ‘The Heart of Darkness’, the saving lie. Take instead, theft.

This seems to be clearer cut, though I remember in my first year of teaching, I presented by top set year 10(or form four and they were then called) with a moral problem. What would they do, I asked, if a local shop had been robbed and, when involved in a police chase, the robber had thrust the stolen money through the letter box in your house? Would you, I naively asked, expecting a 50/50 divide, keep the money or give it up to the police. Not only did no-one say that they would give up the money, they also had zero understanding with my position of wanting to give it back. Total incomprehension. My ‘open ended’ moral discussion became a sort of revivalist sermon putting a (no, MY) clear moral point forward in a more and more this-is-what-is-correct-and-you-are-all-wrong sort of way than the open ended (!) discussion that I intended. I had the same problems with lying to Insurance Companies and taking money to which you were not entitled; evading VAT in any way possible, and keeping things by finding them.

Now I do not want to give the impression that I have led a blameless life during which I have no deviated by a nano millimetre from the straight and narrow, so there is, understandably a sort of harmjoy or, one might say, a certain sense of Schadenfreude in watching the moral writhing of a friend as he tries to come to terms with the drunken outburst of the night before. Sympathy (for both sides) yes, but also that little gleam of happiness that mainly consists in knowing that someone else is at fault and, not only are you blameless (in this instance) but also you were not even there to share the blame of association or proximity.

The aftermath of such an exhibition is, of course, different. Just hearing about it implicates you. This is where character and human sympathy comes in.

And that, as they say, is quite another story.