COMMENTARY : Strongest Subliminal Message Comes From Within : Pop music: If harm comes to us from experiencing art, the fault lies not in our pop stars, but in ourselves.

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 Osbourne’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.” 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 derive 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 Sorrows 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.

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 sardonically portrays 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 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 plaintiffs’ 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.

If Osbourne 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 No. 1 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.

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. 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.