Unstable Reactions Our Fault, Not Artist’s : The ways that one is affected by art depend on the individual. Rock musicians like Ozzy Osbourne are no more responsible than Goethe or Shakespeare for ‘encouraging’ suicides.

The artist was obsessed with hell, death and Satan. One of the works that made him famous inspired suicides. Clergy condemned it; local governments banned it.

And all of this happened more than 200 years before Ozzy Osbourne ever chomped on a bat.

These days Ozzy’s darker preoccupations are being picked apart in a Georgia court, where he is accused in a civil suit of causing the deaths of two teen-agers who did themselves in after listening to his song, “Suicide Solution” (see story on F1). Osbourne’s heavy metal colleagues and fellow Britons, Judas Priest, recently mounted a successful defense against a similar suit in Nevada.

Perhaps these rockers can take some comfort, or at least some bitter satisfaction, in knowing that much the same thing happened to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German Romantic poet whose spot on Western civilization’s all-time hit parade is quite secure.

In 1774, Goethe published “The Sufferings of Young Werther.” The novel’s hero is a sensitive, extravagantly emotional aspiring artist who loses the love of his life to a rival, then shoots himself to end his torment. In its day, according to Goethe biographers, the book touched off an entertainment sensation that sounds a bit like the hysteria that today attends the likes of Madonna, Michael Jackson and New Kids on the Block. Much to Goethe’s own disgust, “Werther” became a pop phenomenon and a marketable commodity.

Young men throughout Germany began wearing the blue waistcoat in which Goethe had garbed his unfortunate hero. Scenes and characters from the novel turned up as decorations for knickknacks, souvenirs and household items. Other writers began churning out their own versions of the “Werther” story. And there were copycat suicides, like the one recounted by Goethe biographer Richard Friedenthal, in which a Werther fan opened the book to the death scene, invited others to watch, then dispatched himself with a pistol.

If he were writing in contemporary America, Goethe probably would be defending himself in court for an episode like that. Or is it just heavy metal singers, among all other artists, who must answer for the way in which unstable people react to their songs?

From Goethe to Ozzy Osbourne--admittedly quite a qualitative leap--art gravitates toward extremes of feeling and experience because that is where human behavior becomes most vivid and interesting. Those extremes also carry the greatest emotional impact. But at the point of impact, it’s no longer the artist, but the beholder, who becomes the active agent: How we’re affected by a song depends on how we imagine, interpret and respond to it. If harm comes to us from that interaction, the fault lies not in our pop stars, but in ourselves.

Prosecuting Osbourne for “Suicide Solution” seems particularly unjust. Far from advocating suicide, the song is a sardonic portrayal of a booze-addled protagonist for whom the bottle becomes an instrument of self-destruction (“solution,” in the song, means a liquid--namely whiskey, as well as a way to end a problem). It’s hard for a rational listener to miss the sarcasm as Osbourne sings lines like “Where to hide? Suicide is the only way out.” It’s a description of a pathetic state of mind, not an endorsement of that mind’s tormented logic.

The Osbourne case, like the Judas Priest trial, rests on a claim that the victims fell under the spell of subliminal messages embedded in the song. If such messages are there, a few million listeners have been exposed without apparent ill effects. But what if the plaintiff’s lawyers are right, and suicidal themes in pop songs are indeed dangerous? Well, look out, world, because the music-loving masses have been battered quite often with these dark horrors. Maybe those who haven’t succumbed yet should count themselves lucky. Or maybe they should start pruning their music collections before their luck runs out.

If Ozzy is a threat, all you Clint Black fans may want to see a therapist, just as a preventive measure to ward off the not-so-subliminal message you’ve absorbed from Black’s Number One country hit, “Killin’ Time.” The song is a virtual replay of the “Suicide Solution” scenario: Troubled protagonist turns to alcohol as method of self-annihilation.

How about Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” which topped the pop charts for a month in the summer of 1967? Does that song stir in you an urge to follow the lead of Billie Joe McAllister, the song’s enigmatic suicide victim, and take a header from the Tallahatchie Bridge (or some handier local span)?

No rockers ever made death sound quite so alluring as Blue Oyster Cult did with “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” a 1976 hit that became one of the most played songs in the history of the album-rock radio format. The thrust of the lyric is that death is a liberating experience, to be embraced, even courted. Young Werther would have loved its dark romanticism:

Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity . . .

We can be like they are.

Don’t fear the reaper.

We’ll be able to fly.

Speaking of Romeo and Juliet, perhaps high schools and colleges that teach Shakespeare should start worrying about their legal liability, in case something tragic happens after English class. What ideas might that double suicide at the end of “Romeo and Juliet” put in tender noggins? If it’s the artist’s obligation not to cast shadows on the beholder’s presumably sunny state of mind--as the Osbourne and Judas Priest suits imply--the Bard is strictly bad news.

In fact, tragic art, if it is particularly believable and evocative, can be a cathartic vehicle that helps us accept life’s painful side without being overcome by it. Once or twice when I’ve found myself in a particularly bleak mood, I’ve deliberately thrown Lou Reed’s “Berlin” album on the turntable. Perhaps the most depressing rock album ever made, it tells the sordid story, ending with a suicidal razor stroke to the wrist, of a man and a woman destroying each other with their weaknesses and vices. After a good wallow in “Berlin,” the only way your mood can go is up.

It’s possible to imagine a lonely, unhappy listener taking comfort from Stephen Stills’ “4+20” or the Youngbloods’ “Darkness, Darkness,” two well-known folk-rock songs that portray yearning for a final release from worldly troubles. Instead of encouraging suicidal thinking, these songs serve as reminders that it isn’t shameful or abnormal to feel awful inside. Others have felt the same way, and from their trouble they have fashioned something rich with honest feeling.

That, rather than prompting suicides, was the artistic aim Goethe expressed in this brief note to his readers, which serves as a preamble to the tale of poor, doomed Werther:

And you, good soul, who are feeling the same anguish as (Werther) , draw consolation from his sufferings, and let this little book be your friend, if fate or your own fault prevent you from finding a closer one.