Rules of Evidence

Farther back than Iago, or than those who slandered A’ishah (the Prophet’s denunciation of whom  constitutes the longest of the Ahâdîth), stands, or rather skulks, the figure of the Calumniator (al-wāšī, el calumniador):  impugning the reputation of a faithful lover, to break up a union.   The question of motive is something of a mystery.

A comparatively innocent instantiation was the 1960 song “Staying In”, sung with teenage angst but on a gently rocking rhythm

I punched my buddy in the nose after lunch.
Now I'm in trouble 'cause the dean saw the punch
He was tellin' things that were not true about her
So I let him have it in the:  cafeteri-a.

Now I'm stayin' in,   stayin' in
Now my baby's walkin' home with him.
They passed my window hand-in-hand just then
But what can I do? 'cause I'm stayin' in.

If she just knew what that son-of-a-gun said
I know she wouldn't   be caught    with him dead
She don't know what he has got up his sleeve
But she would find out if I could only leave

 

(Note, by the by, that here, by dint of syncopated ictus, the lyricist manages to make her rhyme with cafeteria.  No mean feat.)

By 1963, the tone was less Galahadean, and meaner: “My Boyfriend’s Back”.  A girl sneers with Schadenfreude at the thrashing her calumniator will soon receive:

You’ve been telling lies   that I was un-true-hoo.

Well look out now,  ‘cause he’s coming after you-hoo!

The rhythm here is relentless, four-on-four, like a sledgehammer, or a fist on a face.

Antedating these is a gem from that vintage year of 1959: "My Heart is an Open Book".

Some jealous so-and-so
wants us to  part

That’s why he’s telling you

that I’ve got -- a cheating heart.

Don’t  - be - lieve !
All   -  those - lies !

Dar-ling just be-  lieve your eyes, and

Look;

Look;

My heart is an  op-en book.

I:

love:

No-bod-y  but : You.

It is difficult to convey, in mere print (however much we fiddle with the formatting), the plain candor, the openness, conveyed by this song.   He does not argue the matter, but lets himself be read:  like Jesus in the oleographs, pointing to a glowing heart within his chest.

The music too reflects this simplicity, though in an antisymmetric way.   A chirpy girl-choir accompaniment  trips lightly up the scale, like cherubs on the stairway to heaven:  “Tootle-e-tootle-e-tootle-e-TOOT!”;  while on the key pleading, containing the whole of the singer’s epistemology, his voice descends, unhurriedly,

            Dar-

                ling

                   just
                       be-

                         lieve
                            your

                                eyes

like Plato descending the steps in the “School of Athens”.

~

To return:   For most crimes, whether pecuniary or violent, the payoff for the perpetrator is manifest.  But what could motivate the Calumniator? In the “Staying In” case, apparently bare rivalry: the calumniator wants the same girl (thou one suspects that a relationship cadged by such means  will be unstable).  But that is not the case with Iago, nor with the “so-and-so” here.   No self-interest is readily discernable;  the motivation appears to be actually Satanic.

Or, perhaps, there are unconscious motivations.   To expend your envy, you can do something as simple as keying the guy’s Jaguar.   But here, crucially, the goal is not so much to injure the Envied One in his person, as to deprive him of an amour:  thus incidentally (in fantasy) placing him back in play…  But such spelunking we leave to the Viennese alienist.