In my sophomore year of high school I impressed fellow members of my Latin class with my knowledge of the English word derived from the Latin lugubris.
None present but I knew the English word lugubrious, and none but I knew that it meant “mournful” or “sad.”
I learned the word “lugubrious” at Sewanee Summer Music Center in Sewanee, Tennessee. The orchestra was preparing Rimsky-Korsakoff’s “Russian Easter Overture,” and I played the bells part. I don’t recall if I asked to play that part or if it was assigned, but pianists did not play in the orchestra that often so it was somewhat memorable for me on that count. I attended a few rehearsals and played the bells in the final performance of the festival, an experience I recall when I hear that overture on the radio.
During one rehearsal the conductor explained an indication in the score. I don’t have the score at hand, but it read something like “lugubrio” or “lugubria.” Rimsky-Korsakoff, the conductor explained, wanted the passage played “lugubriously.”
The conductor grinned a bit as he described lugubriousness. He used words like “maudlin” and “bathos,” summoning chuckles from the orchestra of high school and college age musicians. He moved his hands, cupped, fingers upward, in a circular movement as he described “lugubriousness.” He mock wept, holding his fists to his chest, imitating the over-the-top style of emotional catastrophe seen in silent films and in most of my relationships with women.
I remembered this incident in Latin class one day when the teacher asked if anyone knew what English word derived from lugubris, a word appearing on a Latin vocabulary list for the week.
I raised my hand and meekly said “lugubrious,” prompting mutterings of “what the … ” from the other students who had evidently never heard this word. Some of them looked my way with wrinkled brows and looks of bewilderment, asking aloud where the hell that came from.
Their surprise had as much to do with the relative obscurity of the word as with my virtual silence in that class up to that point. I never raised my hand or spoke up in that room, and it must have seemed strange to the others that I broke my silence with such a learned sounding word.
I recently encountered the word in an environment far different from a high school Latin classroom or an orchestra rehearsal.
I was on 43rd Street in Sunnyside, Queens, walking toward Calvary Cemetery.
43rd Street passes under the Long Island Expressway, merging with Laurel Hill Boulevard. The sidewalk ends, and to get to Laurel Hill by foot you walk over a circular pedestrian overpass.
The path to that pedestrian overpass, by the way, offers a pretty cool view to the Empire State Building, rising up like a rocket from Calvary’s skyline of the dead.
At the center point of the overpass I spotted a toppled wooden
chair. On the floor nearby I saw some burned candles and a couple of framed
prints of surrealist paintings. One of the prints was of Dalí’s The Lugubrious Game, the other
Magritte’s The False Mirror.
I recognized the Dalí as a Dalí, but would not know its name without help from a friend with whom I shared this story and these pictures.
Though not quite bizarre I did think the scene strange. Someone had set up a chair overlooking Calvary Cemetery with candles and surrealist paintings placed nearby. The chair, on its back when I found it, was a decent looking piece of furniture (fully intact), and not the sort of thing you’d necessarily expect to find dumped off the L.I.E.
Tired from walking, I set the chair upright and sat on it for several minutes, looking toward the cemetery and breathing.
I noticed activity underneath the overpass. I looked down and to the left to see a man hanging laundry on the branches of the leafless trees and bushes. He had a few pairs of shoes set out to dry (it had rained the night before) and a number of aluminum trays containing small amounts of food (and rain water) littered the ground around him.
I did not make much of the situation but I did feel that I might be sitting in the man’s chair. The arrangement of the chair and the paintings and the burned out candles was odd, but not so compelling that further interpretation of this place would reveal more than met the eye.
I stood up and walked the remaining length of the overpass, leaving the chair upright, and continuing my walk toward Calvary.
