Tuesday, May 14, 2013

moribund

BraluKapi MoribundHorseMan
A regular reader here could not be blamed if he or she thought that I'd lost interest in this blog, but though I have often wondered why I do this, I haven't actually become bored with this odd little project at all. Rather, it's been a busy spring, moving out of my home and then back in again, taking a class on line, entering a screenplay contest, and, oh yeah, working when I have to. The last few days, I've really wanted to take the time for this, but I knew if I sat down to do it, I wouldn't get up again fast to do something less agreeable, like sort through all the questionable stuff I've managed to accumulate over time.

But this afternoon I feel like I've done enough to justify sitting down for awhile, and the word moribund seems like it might be simple enough to explore without a lot of delving. It's come up a few times lately, I think mainly via writer Adrian McKinty, who has recently bemoaned the moribund nature of both American literature and Australian television.

It's a good word, and I think I know generally what it means, though not precisely. I think it means dead, stagnant, without vitality, caught in the doldrums--something like that. I'm guessing the "mor-"
at the beginning must have to do with mort, or death--the rest I'm not so sure. I think that when I hear it, I get a kind of 'bound in death' kind of sound going through my head.

Let's see.

***

Well, it's not so much dead as approaching death, or in danger of becoming obsolete. And yes, stagnant, or without force or vitality is a valid definition. It comes from the Latin moribundus, dying or at the point of death.

Pretty simple, right? Probably one of the most straightforward words I've looked into, actually. But that doesn't mean that it isn't tied up with a little mystery when you dig a bit deeper. It turns out that a common variant or really, misspelling/mispronunciation is 'moribound'. As an interesting comment on an Egghorn forum has it, there are very few words in English that keep that Latin -ibundus ending, so moribund lends itself fairly naturally to mutation. People hear 'moribund' and they think 'bound for death', as in headed for death or tied up for death. Hence, moribound. Nice.

The original commenter on that thread said that moribund was a "Latin adjectival gerundive form" which we would translate as dying". But a later commenter said, strictly speaking, it is isn't that at all. The second commenter says that -bundus is really a trick the Romans had for turning verbs into adjectives, and cited a few more examples of English words that had the -bund ending: cogitabund, errabund, ludibund. And one that has passed out of usage if the commenter is right (as if these last three haven't): lascivibund. He or she seemed to think it meant 'playing', but the Latin lascivibundus means about what you'd think--wanton or full of petulance. I actually am unable to find any other reference to it.

Finally, it was a little hard for me to believe that Jacques Brel's "Le Moribond" (yes, yet another spelling variant) is the same song that Rod McKuen translated into "Seasons in the Sun". Ah, the French...they  just have that certain je ne sais quoi, don't they?

 



The photograph which starts this out is of the Moribund Horseman in the Brāļu Kapi  or Brothers' Cemetary, in Riga. It was taken by someone named Exxu and was graciously uploaded on to Wikimedia Commons.

14 comments:

  1. I'd like to see a moribund wizard named Bundimore.

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  2. And I'd like to see Bundimore use his magic to bring himself back from the brink.

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  3. Glad to see you're back! And Kathleen, would that be Bundimore from Wartzhog?

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  4. Jaybird is me, Julie. This somehow locked into my Antioch account...

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  5. Jaybird, I never would have guessed it was you! I thought maybe you were someone on the lam, perhaps moribund, who for some reason took a moment to comment on this blog.

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  7. Was it Rod McKuen who perpetrated "Seasons in the Sun"? In the Canada of my youth, a singer named Terry Jacks had a big hit with it, and the song makes me wince to this day.

    I did not know it began life as a Jacques Brel song until I heard a album of his music about ten years ago by a Belgian duo or group called Miche en Scene. The song had a much more biting edge than Terry Jacks' wince-makingly wussy rendition.

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  8. Yes, Terry Jacks was the culprit here in the U.S. too. It's not only the lyrics that sound different in the Brel version, it's that even the music sounds different, because of the way he sings it.

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  9. I now understand why Rod McKuen's name is a byword for bad taste.

    You'll recall that "Le Moribond" devotes each verse to a different character from the narrator's life. What distinguished Jacques Brel's real version of the song, at least as performed by Miche en Scene, is that one of the verses is dedicated to a person the narrator did not like. That's what gives the song its edge.

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  10. The singer for Miche en Scene, Micheline something or other, brings a special bite to the verse about the character the narrator did not like. So, yes, the way the song is sung makes a difference.

    I once read a theory that sick, anti-humanistic, misanthropic humor in the 1960s and afterward was a reaction to sickly sentimentality in popular culture. "Seasons in the Sun" is a fine example of the latter.

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  11. Although on the other hand, Seasons in the Sun does sound like a lot of the other side of the French pop I've heard.

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  12. Well, the French are better at a lot of things than they are at pop music, "La Poupee Qui Fait Non" excepted.

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  13. I actually like French pop music pretty much, but that's because I can't really understand a word they're saying. It's cheerful.

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  14. Yes, some of it is oddly cheerful. I associate French pop music with clear, cheerful, female voices utterly free of vibrato.

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