Solomon Grundy
Solomon Grundy is an English nursery rhyme ( nursery rhyme ), which in 1842 by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps was published.
To this day, it is often learned by heart by toddlers, especially in American kindergartens and preschools, and in the USA it has roughly the same status in American folklore as the children's song Hänschen klein has in Germany.
Original text
| Short version: English | Short version: German |
|---|---|
| Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday. That was the end Of Solomon Grundy. |
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday Baptized on Tuesday Married on wednesday, Got sick on Thursday Worse on friday Died on Saturday Buried on sunday That was the end, By Solomon Grundy. |
| Long version: English | Long version: German |
| Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday,
Christened on a stark and stormy Tuesday, Married on a gray and grisly Wednesday, Took ill on a mild and mellow Thursday, Grew worse on a bright and breezy Friday, Died on a gay and glorious Saturday, Buried on a baking, blistering Sunday. That was the end of Solomon Grundy. |
Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday,
Baptized on a strong and stormy Tuesday Married on a gray and gruesome Wednesday Sick on a mild and gentle Thursday Got worse on a bright and breezy Friday Died on a happy and glorious Saturday Buried on a burning, scorching Sunday. That was the end of Solomon Grundy. |
content
The poem describes the life of a man named Solomon Grundy, which is retold in a single eight-line (or in a simplified alternate version in a ten-line) stanza.
The person Solomon Grundy himself remains strangely impersonal in this description of the individual stages of his life: the poem reports nothing about him as a person, about his thoughts and feelings. Instead, Grundy experiences a more passive characterization by describing the weather influences that prevailed on the most important days of his life. The poem makes use of two linguistic tricks that playfully give the children who memorize and recite an impression of the possibilities of language as a medium.
On the one hand, the poem applies the phenomenon of the simultaneity of the simultaneity by giving the impression that Grundy's entire life, with all stages from birth, through marriage, to death, was completed in just one week: this happens by years apart Events are seamlessly enumerated, although the correct sequence of the event sequence is retained, but the time interval between these events is always concealed. At the same time, each of the events listed is always preceded by the day of the week on which the previous event took place (birth takes place on Monday, baptism on Tuesday, marriage on Wednesday, etc.), without mentioning that this is is the next day of the week in a later year.
On the one hand, Grundy's life is drastically compressed, at the same time the actually very short section of a week experiences a tremendous stretch, so that opposing movements collide and thus leave an impression of the bizarre.
The second trick that is used is that of paradoxical counter-rotation: Grundy's life begins happily and gradually develops into sadness, while at the same time the development of the weather influences, against the background of which Grundy's decline takes place, stands in stark contrast to his own decline: while Grundy's initial life situation is good and is getting worse and worse, the weather at his birth is bad, which gradually gets better: the worse Grundy is, the more pleasant are the (climatic) conditions in the environment against the background of which his misfortune is taking place. As his personal inner world continues to deteriorate in its state, the state of the external world improves.
etymology
Some suspect that the name Solomon Grundy derives from the name of the English dish Salmagundi (a type of salad consisting of boiled meat, cabbage, anchovies, various spices and eggs), which in turn was adopted from French cuisine in English. The name of the dish may have been corrupted phonetically to Solomon Grundy in the United States in the 18th century.
Influence on American pop culture
Solomon Grundy is often used as a "reference object" in American pop culture because of the poem's extremely high profile in the United States .
literature
Writer Jasper Fforde named a character after Grundy in his book The Big Over Easy .
Solomon Grundy as a cartoon character
In numerous horror and adventure stories by the US publisher DC Comics , Solomon Grundy appears as a gigantic, deathly pale zombie ( "The Monster from the Slaughter Swamps" ) and is a main character in numerous comics. Since DC belongs to the "Time Warner" group and the character is ultimately the property of the parent company, Grundy also appears in numerous other products that other Time Warner subsidiaries make, such as cartoons and films. DC's Grundy is now one of the most well-known characters from horror comics. This is reflected, among other things, in the fact that he became the protagonist of the song "Superman's Song" by the rock band Crash Test Dummies .
The character Grundy has appeared in DC comic books since 1944, since his first appearance in the comic book All-American Comics # 61 from 1944 (author: Alfred Bester, illustrator: Paul Reinman). DC uses the zombie Grundy, a dumb colossus with chalky white skin and chalky white hair, primarily as a main character in the horror comic series Swamp Thing. In addition, Grundy is an occasional opponent of the title characters of superhero comics such as Batman , Superman or Green Lantern , as well as the heroes of "group" series such as the Justice League or the Justice Society .
Alternative versions to Solomon Grundy were presented in various stories that are located outside the regular DC continuity. He was once portrayed as the aristocratic Sir Solomon Grundy, a blasé giant who emerged from the white chalk cliffs of Dover in an explosion and is a stereotypical English nobleman of the 19th century with appropriate demeanor and attire. Visually, this looks like the old Grundy, only that it is supplemented with goatee and mustache. In Grant Morrison's "Seven Soldiers" miniseries, some Grundy-based beings appear: the dead who are resuscitated to be exploited as zombie laborers.
Cartoons and TV films in which the "Grundy" character appeared included the cartoon series "Super Friends" from the 1970s (US dubbing voice: Jimmy Weldon ), the TV film "Legends of the Superheores" (played by Mickey Morton ) and the animated series "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited" (US dubbing voice: Mark Hamill ) and "The Batman" (US dubbing voice: Kevin Grevioux ). There he acts, among other things, as a henchman of Superman's archenemy Lex Luthor , as a refined member of a team of heroes, which also includes Hawkgirl and Aquaman , and (in the Batman series) as a cover for the villain Clayface .
A modified version of Solomon Grundys appears in the live-action series Arrow .
In the fourth season of the Gotham television series , Butch Gilzean, who previously fell into a coma after being shot in the head, returns from the Slaughter Swamps as Solomon Grundy after six months.
Movie
In the US thriller The Accountant , the autistic accountant Christian Wolff ( Ben Affleck ) recites the “Solomon Grundy” rhyme to calm himself down in stressful situations.