Wiki With Me #1: Mozart and Scatology

This is the beginning of an on-going series on this site. The world is a beautiful and mysterious place, and I know little of the gritty madness that exists in history. To rectify this, I intend to take tours through the depths of Wikipedia, and invite all of you to come along. After all, the day we stop learning, we start dying. Although I suppose the say we start living we start dying too... well, that's kind of a bummer.

The articles won't be copied here in their entirety, mostly just pulled quotes with running italicized commentary. The goal? To search for an answer to that eternal question: "Fuck off, did that really happen?"

So, without further delay, I present Wiki With Me #1:

Mozart and scatology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a strong interest in scatological humor.

There are few sentences in the English language that capture my imagination quite like this one. Words cannot express how much happiness this statement has brought into my life.

This interest is reflected in his letters and in a few recreational compositions. The scatological material has long been a puzzle for Mozart scholarship, and there have been two main responses. In one view, the scatology was the result of a condition from which Mozart is claimed to have suffered, particularly Tourette syndrome. The other view deals with the scatology by seeking an understanding of the role of scatological humor in Mozart's family, his society, and his times.

• We all do it, let's end the stigma and talk a about shitting guys. Here, I'll get the ball rolling and sing some songs about it. I'm a musician, maybe you've heard of me.

Translated: Mozart loved shit, deal with it.

Examples

Here is an example, from a letter of 5 November 1777 to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart. The German original is in rhymed verse.

Well, I wish you good night
But first shit into your bed and make it burst.
Sleep soundly, my love
Into your mouth your arse you'll shove.

The fuck did he just say to his cousin? Hey Mozart, slow the fuck down and think before you send some crazy letter to your cousin next time.

Letters

Benjamin Simkin (see below) estimates that 39 of Mozart's letters include scatological passages. Almost all of these are Mozart's own family, specifically his father Leopold, his mother Anna Maria, his sister Nannerl, and his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart. Leopold, Anna Maria, and Nannerl also included scatological humor in their own letters, though not with the same frequency as Wolfgang. Thus, Anna Maria wrote to her husband (26 September 1777; original is in rhyme):

Addio, ben mio. Keep well, my love.
Into your mouth your arse you'll shove.
I wish you good night, my dear,
But first shit in your bed and make it burst.

Whoa, Momma Mozart knew how to get the ball rolling. Good night? More like worst mental image in the history of love letters.

It can be seen that the words here are quite similar to what Mozart himself wrote several weeks later in the letter cited above. (The two were traveling together during the early part of Mozart's unsuccessful job-hunting expedition of 1777-1779.)

• Well Mum, bad luck finding a job today. Know what will cheer me up? Let's write letters about shitting the bed... No, let's make them sexy ones. You send yours to dad though, he likes that nasty talk.

Probably the most famous of Mozart's scatological letters were written to his cousin (and probable love interest) Maria Anna Thekla Mozart; these are often called the "Bäsle letters", after the German word Bäsle, a diminutive form meaning "little cousin".

... How the fuck does that kind of bombshell get dropped in the brackets? So not only is Mozart writing letters and smearing his shit on everything, he's trying to get with his cousin, and this is his attempt at romancing her?

• Heard about that new seduction technique? I call it fecal flirting. No for real, chicks dig it. Well, my cousin does...

Fuck, opium must have been a hell of a drug.

In these letters, written after Mozart had spent a pleasant two weeks with his cousin in her native Augsburg, the scatology is combined with extravagant word play and sexual references. The word play makes them a challenge to translate; here is Robert Spaethling's rendering of part of a letter Mozart sent from Mannheim November 5, 1777:

Deares cozz buzz!
I have received reprieved your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted thy my uncle garfuncle, my aunt slant, and you too, are all well mell. We, too thank god, are in good fettle kettle ... You write further, indeed you let it all out, you expose yourself, you let yourself be heard, you give me notice, you declare yourself, you indicate to me, you bring me the news, you announce unto me, you state in broad daylight, you demand, you desire, you wish, you want, you like, you command that I, too, should could send you my Portrait. Eh bien, I shall mail fail it for sure. Oui, by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin...

I like that some academic sat there for countless hours translating the original text just so I can know the joys of "I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin". Hows that degree treating you now Professor?

Reactions of family and friends

Both the letters and the music were written on repeated occasions, suggesting that the recipients probably were not offended by them. There appears to be nothing in the correspondence requesting Mozart to stop his scatologizing.

• Cousin Amadeus keeps writing these sexual letters to me, most of which involve shitting on or around my face... but I like it.

On the other hand, it seems to have been recognized that things said or sung within the family or among friends might be unsuitable for public consumption.

• Man, I love shitting in my cousin's bed while she shoves her face up her own ass. Why you looking at me like that? What, I can't talk like that on the bus? Stop being so judgmental dude, I'm just talking about fucking my cousin. It's how she gets off. Yeah, she likes the ol' poop on the chin. Next stop please.

In 1798, Constanze sent her late husband's Bäsle letters to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, who at the time were gathering material in hopes of preparing a Mozart biography. In the accompanying letter she wrote

"Although in dubious taste, the letters to his cousin are full of wit and deserve mentioning, although they cannot of course be published in their entirety."

Are you shitting me? Who wouldn't buy that?

• What's that you have there? A coffee table book full of Mozart's letters to his cousin? Full of sexual innuendo? Defecating on her what? I'll take ten.

The shit sells itself.

Scatology and the 18th century

While scatological humor obviously has not disappeared in our own time, Schroeder (1999) suggests that in the 18th century it was far more public and "mainstream".

Oh... back then it was cool to sexualize the idea of dumping ass-loads on your cousin.

• Stop being so repressed, shitting on each other is mainstream now. Seriously, everyone is doing it. Taking it to the streets, crapping out in the open! We're singing about it and everything. It's a wicked party dude, you should come. I know I did...

The German-language popular theater of Mozart's time was influenced by the Italian commedia dell' arte and emphasized the stock character of Hanswurst, a coarse and robust character who would entertain his audience by pretending to eat large and unlikely objects (for instance, a whole calf), then defecating them.

It's comforting that the spirit of this character lives on today, in the curiously clean-shaven homeless man who hangs out at the bus station downtown.

Scatology and German culture

The folklorist and cultural anthropologist Alan Dundes suggested that interest in or tolerance for scatalogical matters is a specific trait of German national culture, one which is retained to this day:

In German folklore, one finds an inordinate number of texts concerned with anality. Scheisse (shit), Dreck (dirt), Mist (manure), Arsch (ass), and other locutions are commonplace. Folksongs, folktales, proverbs, folk speech--all attest to the Germans' longstanding special interest in this area of human activity. I am not claiming that other peoples of the world do not express a healthy concern for this area, but rather that the Germans appear to be preoccupied with such themes. It is thus not so much a matter of difference as it is of degree.

• It's just German culture. Nothing weird about it. Germans have been talking about shitting on things since always. I'm not saying other people aren't interested in shit talk, but the Germans are the experts. Don't judge me just cause I love talking about shitting the bed and smearing it on my cousin's face. Not that cousin, the hot one I want to fuck. Just my culture dude.

Medical accounts

A variety of authors (see References below) have interpreted the documentary material as evidence that Mozart suffered from Tourette's syndrome. Among these the work of Simkin (1992) appears to be the most widely cited and discussed. Simkin catalogued the scatological letters and compared their frequencies with similar vulgarisms from other members of Mozart's family—they are far more frequent. The scatological materials were combined by Simkin with biographical accounts from Mozart's own time that suggested that Mozart suffered from the tics characteristic of Tourette's syndrome.

So among all the shit talk and relative lusting, Mozart was a victim of facial tics? "Look at me, I'm writing music at like four, I'm a genius", turns into some nervous twitchy guy who can't stop talking about fucking his relatives and shitting on them while they sleep? Must've put on one hell of a concert.

While often discussed, the Mozart/Tourette hypothesis has failed to sway mainstream opinion on this issue. Indeed, Kammer (2007) states that the work proposing the hypothesis has been "promptly and harshly" criticized. The critical commentary (see References below) asserts both medical misdiagnosis and errors of Mozart scholarship.

So he didn't have Tourette's? Just German? You sure about that?

• Man, what's wrong with this Mozart guy? He have a medical condition or something?

• No man, he's just German, it's their culture.

• You sure man? He's just twitching and licking the ground, talking about smearing shit on his cousin's face.
• Yeah, they have such a rich history.

***

And so closes the first installment of "Wiki With Me". If anyone knows of any interesting Wikipedia articles they'd like me to consider for future installments, feel free to send me an email at pertchronex@gmail.com, or send me a tweet at @CptnGorillaquy.