It's grotesque a type of conventional fantastic imagery that demonstratively violates the principles of verisimilitude, in which figurative plans and images that are incompatible in reality are combined in a bizarre and illogical manner artistic details. The ornaments were called grotesque, discovered at the end of the 15th century. Raphael during the excavations of the ancient Roman baths of Titus. A distinctive feature of these images is the free combination of pictorial elements: human forms turned into animals and plants, human figures grew from the cups of flowers, plant shoots intertwined with chimeras and bizarre structures. These ornaments are mentioned in his book by B. Cellini (“The Life of Benvenuto Cellini,” 1558-65); I. V. Goethe writes about their features, calling them arabesques. The transfer of the term to the field of literature and the real flowering of this type of imagery occurs in the era of romanticism. F. Schlegel in his “Letter on the Novel” (1800) considers the grotesque as an expression of the spirit of the time, its only, along with “personal confessions,” romantic creation. The grotesque, as a characteristic feature of romantic literature, in contrast to the “dead form” - classical literature, is pointed out in the “Preface to the drama “Cromwell” (1827) by V. Hugh, which became the manifesto of French romanticism. Charles Baudelaire addressed the problem of the grotesque in his article “On the nature of laughter and the comic in the plastic arts,” contrasting laughter as “simply comic” with grotesque as “absolutely comic.” The term grotesque became especially popular in the 20th century, initially in connection with innovative phenomena in theater arts(V.E. Meyerhold), subsequently in connection with the dissemination of ideas expressed in M.M. Bakhtin’s book about F. Rabelais (1965).
Grotesque could arise in those genres of literature where the implausibility of fiction was obvious to both the author and the reader (listener). These are the comic genres of antiquity (the comedies of Aristophanes, “The Golden Ass” (2nd century), Apuleius, humorous and satirical works Renaissance, tales of folklore. Since the 18th century, the grotesque has been built mainly on the violation of the accepted system of reproducing reality, with which fantasy comes into a kind of conflict (grotesque stories by N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, “The History of a City,” 1869-70, M.E. .Saltykov-Shchedrin). Grotesque can be humorous when, with the help of fiction, the discrepancy between what is present and what should be is emphasized, or when qualities that evoke an ironic attitude are literally embodied in fantastic forms of the appearance and behavior of characters. However, it is in satire, mainly aimed at ridiculing social vices, where fantastic images appear in the most generalized form, that some of the meaningful possibilities of the grotesque, in particular, its allegorical nature, are more fully revealed. Grotesque can also be tragic - in works with tragic situations, when fate and spiritual confusion of the individual are placed at the center. This may be a depiction of the suppression of personality by the instincts of biological existence (The Metamorphosis, 1916, F. Kafka), the motive of a collision with a doll mistaken for a person (The Sandman).
The word grotesque comes from French grotesque, Italian grottesco, which means fancy from grotta - grotto.
Unusual styles in art attract the attention of the same unusual people. And also eccentric grotesquery attracts special people. But what is the essence of this genre and how is the grotesque reflected in literature? Let's figure it out. Grotesque is an ugly comic image of something or someone based on contrast and exaggeration. In everyday life, many perceive the grotesque as something ugly and eccentric. Nowadays, it is widely used in carnival images at various holidays.
A little history
The grotesque has quite ancient origins. Its roots go back to ancient Rome during the time of Nero. Once an emperor with incredible imagination and artistic taste, wished that the walls of his palace would be decorated with views and images that do not exist in nature.
But fate was not too favorable and the palace was subsequently destroyed by Emperor Troyan. Time passed and soon, ruins and underground structures were accidentally discovered during the Renaissance.
The underground ruins found were called grottoes, which translates from Italian as grotto or dungeon. The painting that decorated these ruins later came to be called grotesque.
Literature
In an effort to immerse the reader in a world full of fantasy and incredible phenomena, the author uses many techniques and styles. One of them is the grotesque. It combines seemingly incompatible things - the terrible and the funny, the sublime and the disgusting.
Grotesque in Wikipedia means a combination of reality and fantasy, as a combination of truth and caricature, as a plexus of hyperbole and alogism. Grotesque from French fancy. In contrast to the same irony, in that in this style funny and humorous images that are both horrific and frightening. These are like two sides of the same coin.
In literature, grotesque and satire go hand in hand.. But it's not the same thing. Under the mask of improbability and fantasticness lies the artist’s unique generalized view of the world and important events in it.
Plays, decor and costumes are created based on this whimsical style. It fights routine and allows authors and artists to discover the unlimited possibilities of their talent. Style will help expand the internal boundaries of a person’s worldview.
Grotesque examples of using the style
- A striking example of its application is fairy tales. If you remember, the image of Koshchei the Immortal pops up. When created, this figure combined human nature and unknown forces, mystical capabilities, making him practically invincible. In fairy tales, reality and fantasy are often intertwined, but still the boundaries remain obvious. Grotesque images at first glance appear as absurd, devoid of any meaning. The intensifier of this image is a combination of everyday phenomena.
- The story "The Nose" by Gogol is also considered a shining example use of style in the plot. The main character's nose acquires independent life and separates from the owner.
In painting
In the Middle Ages it was typical for folk culture, expressing an original way of thinking. The style reached the peak of its popularity during the Renaissance. He imbues the works of the great artists of the time with drama and contradiction.
Don't miss: artistic technique in literature and Russian language.
Satire
This is a manifestation of the comic style in art in its sharpest sense. With the help of irony, grotesque, and a bit of hyperbole, she reveals humiliating and terrible phenomena, giving her own poetic form. Many poets use this artistic style to ridicule certain phenomena.
A characteristic feature of satire will be a negative attitude towards the subject of ridicule.
Hyperbola
An element used by many authors and poets for exaggeration. An artistic figure helps to enhance the eloquence of thoughts. This technique can be successfully combined with other stylistic expressions . Exaggeration combined with and comparison, giving them an unusual color. Hyperbole can be found in different artistic styles, such as oratorical, romantic and many others to enhance sensory perception.
Irony
A technique that is used to contrast the hidden meaning with the explicit one. When using this artistic figure, one gets the feeling that the subject of irony is not what it really seems.
Forms of irony
- Straight. Used to belittle and enhance negative traits subject of discussion;
- Anti-irony. Used to show that an object is undervalued;
- Self-irony. One's own person is ridiculed;
- Ironic worldview. Taking social values and stereotypes to heart;
- Socratic irony. The subject of discussion itself must come to hidden meaning utterances, reflecting on all the information said by the subject.
The word "grotesque" comes from a French term meaning "comic", "funny", "intricate", "bizarre". This is the oldest technique in literature, which, like hyperbole, is based on exaggeration, sharpening the qualities of people, as well as the properties of natural phenomena, objects, and facts of social life. But in the grotesque, exaggeration has a special character: it is fantastic, in which the depicted is completely taken not only beyond the limits of the so-called life-like, but also acceptable, probable from the standpoint of plausibility. in which the grotesque arises (we will present examples to you later) is a fantastic deformation of existing reality.
Origin of the term
The term itself appeared in the 15th century to designate a type artistic imagery, very unusual. In one of the grottoes Ancient Rome During the excavations, an interesting and original ornament was discovered, in which fantastically different human, animal and plant forms were intertwined.
Where is grotesque used?
Along with hyperbole, the grotesque is widely used in fairy tales, legends and myths. Examples of it in these genres are very numerous. One of the most striking in the fairy tale is the image
Writers, when creating characters based on the grotesque, use both artistic convention exaggeration. Moreover, it can be realistically substantiated (for example, in Khlestakov’s description of St. Petersburg life, which is the result of this hero’s passion for lying). In Lermontov's works this technique is used to romantically depict events and heroes. It is based on the possible, but the exceptional. The boundaries between the real and the fantastic are blurred, but they do not disappear.
The basis of the grotesque
The impossible, the unthinkable, but necessary for the author to achieve some artistic effect forms the basis of the grotesque. This is, therefore, a fantastic hyperbole, since ordinary exaggeration is closer to reality, while the grotesque is closer to a nightmare, where fantastic visions that excite the imagination defy logical explanation and can become a terrifying “reality” for people. The emergence of grotesque imagery is associated with the most complex mechanisms that the human psyche has. The unconscious and the conscious interact in it. It is not without reason that the images based on exaggeration that so impress us in the works created by Russian writers often appear in the dreams of the characters. The grotesque is used very often here. Examples from literature can be given as follows: these are the dreams of Tatyana Larina and Raskolnikov.
Fantastic elements of Larina and Raskolnikov's dreams
Tatyana Larina's dream (work "Eugene Onegin", fifth chapter) is filled with images of monsters that are grotesque. With horror, this heroine notices in a wretched hut a fantastic dance, the depiction of which uses the grotesque. Examples: “a skull on a goose neck”, “a crayfish riding a spider”, “a mill dancing in a crouch”.
Also fantastic, the image of a laughing old woman is created, which can also be classified as grotesque. The psychological equivalent of truth is the delusional visions of the hero: his battle with evil, which was embodied in the image of a “evil old woman,” ultimately turned out to be just an absurd struggle, similar to the one carried out with Don Quixote. Only evil laughs wildly at Raskolnikov. The more furiously he desires to kill him, the more he grows closer to him.
Connection with realistic images, situations, events
Created by various authors based on the grotesque, they seem to us absolutely absurd, implausible from the standpoint of common sense. Their emotionally expressive, striking effect is often enhanced by the fact that such imagery interacts with realistic, quite ordinary, plausible events and situations.
Realistic elements in the dreams of Larina and Raskolnikov
Elements of reality in both of these works are grotesque, and not only in them: examples from literature presented by the work of other authors also prove the presence of two elements in it (fantastic and realistic). For example, in Tatyana’s nightmare, the characters turn out to be, along with terrible monsters, the easily recognizable Lensky and Onegin.
In the dream of the hero Raskolnikov, the motivation for the grotesque image and situation from the episode in which the laughing old woman is depicted is quite real. This is just a dream-memory of the main character about the murder he committed. There is nothing fantastic about the ax and the criminal himself.
The use of the grotesque by satirical writers
The combination of ordinary social and everyday situations with grotesque imagery is widely used by various satirical writers. Thus, the images of the mayors of the city of Foolov, one of whom has an “organ” instead of brains, and the other has a stuffed head on his shoulders, were created in “The History of a City” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
This story is also filled with some grotesque, incredible situations (wars against those who refused to use mustard; “wars for enlightenment,” etc.). All of them are brought to the point of absurdity by the author, but for Russia they depict quite ordinary conflicts and contradictions between the people and the tyrant government.
We talked briefly about Examples from fiction others can be cited. They are quite numerous. Thus, a very popular phenomenon is the grotesque. Examples in the Russian language can be supplemented with works by foreign authors, since this language is used very actively in their works.
a type of imagery based on a contrasting, bizarre combination of fantasy and reality, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic. The sphere of the grotesque in art includes polysemantic images created by the artist’s imagination, in which life receives a complex and contradictory refraction. Grotesque images do not allow either their literal interpretation or their unambiguous decoding, retaining the features of mystery and incomprehensibility. The element of the grotesque received its brightest embodiment in the art of the Middle Ages (animal style ornamentation, cathedral chimeras, drawings in the margins of manuscripts). The Renaissance masters, who retained the medieval predilection for the grotesque (Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Durer), made the grotesque a means of expressing moral and social views of its turning point. Jacques Collot, Francisco Goya, Honore Damier in the 17th–19th centuries. used the grotesque as a means of dramatic embodiment ominous symbols modern social forces. Wars, revolutions and political cataclysms of the 20th century. called new wave grotesque satire in denunciation " scary world"(for example, Kukryniksy in the USSR). Source: Apollo. Fine and decorative arts. Architecture: Thematic Dictionary. M., 1997.
Great definition
GROTESQUE
French grotesque, from Italian. grottesco) is an aesthetic term denoting the combination in art of the comic and tragic, funny and terrible in the fantastic. and hyperbolic. form. Originally the term "G." was used to designate a special type of ornament, discovered at the end of the 14th - beginning. 15th centuries during excavations of underground premises - grottoes in Rome (hence the name) and representing a fantastic. a pattern of intricate weaves of ribbons, masks, caricatures of people and animals. During the Renaissance, glass was widely used for decoration architectural ensembles: Pinturicchio's paintings in the Borgia Palace in the Vatican (1492–1495), Raphael's Vatican loggias (1515–19), etc. Subsequently, the term "G." began to be used as a special aesthetic. categories along with the categories of the beautiful, tragic, and comic. Special significance G. received in aesthetic. theory and arts. practice of the romantics. The aesthetics of romanticism, developing the dialectic of the comic and tragic as the basis of romanticism. irony, gave a deep characteristic of the grotesque. Schelling in his lectures on the philosophy of art (1803), F. Schlegel in “Conversations on Poetry” (1800), and A. Schlegel in “Readings on Dramatic Art and Literature” (1809–11) considered art as an expression of the necessary inner. the connection between the comic and the tragic and the transition from low to high, considering it a sign of artistic genius. works (see F. W. Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst, Werke, Bd. 3,1907, 359–60). The most significant works in the history of art, according to romantics, are the works of Aristophanes and Shakespeare, in which a synthesis of tragedy and comedy, great and low, is carried out. In France, V. Hugo promoted G.'s propaganda. In the "Preface to Cromwell" he considered G. as the center. the concept of all post-antique art, considering G. aesthetically more expressive than beauty (V. Hugo, Collected works, vol. 14, M., 1956). In the 2nd half. 19 – beginning 20th centuries an extensive formalistic approach appeared. literature about G., which took its external formal features as the definition of G.: sharpening of the image, exaggeration, fantasy, etc. So F. T. Vischer (?sthetik, oder Wissenschaft des Sch?nen, TI 1, 1854, S. 400-09), K. Flegel (K. Fl?gel, Geschichte des Grotesk-komischen, 1788), etc., considering G. only from the side of its form, in essence They identified it with hyperbole, caricature, and buffoonery. Aesthetics Russian roar democrats widely explored the sphere of the birth of G. - the dialectic of the tragic and comic (see N. G. Chernyshevsky, Sublime and Comic, 1854), discovering realism. ways in art to depict the transitions of high and low, terrible and funny, tragic and comic, evil and humane. “Evil,” wrote Chernyshevsky, “is always so terrible that it ceases to be funny, despite all its ugliness” (Izbr. filos. soch., vol. 1, 1950, p. 288). In G., the comic and the tragic interpenetrate each other, organically link into a single whole, so that one turns into the other. In G., the terrible and sinister reveals funny and insignificant features (for example, in Bruegel’s painting), and the funny and insignificant - terrible and inhuman. essence (for example, in the stories of E. T. A. Hoffman, Gogol, Shchedrin). What at first glance is perceived only as funny and amusing reveals in G. its real, deeply tragic nature. and dramatic meaning. The tragic is G. only insofar as it accepts the ironic. or comic form. Modern bourgeois aesthetics identifies G. with the ugly, considers him characteristic feature art of the 20th century along with eroticism and psychopathology (“Revue d’esthetique”, P., 1954, v. 7, No. 2, p. 211–13). Burzh. aesthetics and art affirm anti-humanism. G., portraying him as an eternal disgrace and tragic. the absurdity of the world. In Sov. art-ve realistic. G. is widely used in works of poetry (Mayakovsky), cinema (Eisenstein) and music (Prokofiev, Shostakovich) as a means of satire. criticism of the ugly in society. life and affirmation will be put. aesthetic ideals. Lit.: Zundelovich J., Poetics of the grotesque, in collection. – Problems of poetics, ed. V. Ya. Bryusova, M.–L., 1925; Efimova Z. S., The problem of the grotesque in the works of Dostoevsky, "Scientific journal of the department of history European culture", [Kharkov], 1927, [issue] 2, pp. 145–70; Adeline, Les sculptures grotesques et symboliques, Rouen – Aug?, 1878; Heilbrunner P. M., Grotesque art, “Apollo”, L.–N. Y., 1938, v. 28, No. 167, November; M?ser J., Harlequin, oder Vertheidigung des Groteske-Komischen, in his book: S?mtliche Werke, Tl 9, V., 1843; und Groteske in der Kunst, 11 Aufl., M?ncth, 1911; Kayser W., Das Groteske. V. Shestakov. Moscow.
GROTESK - (from fr.- whimsical, intricate; funny, comic, from Italian. - grotto) - an image of people, objects, details in fine arts, theater and literature in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly-comic form; a unique style in art and literature, which emphasizes the distortion of generally accepted norms and at the same time the compatibility of the real and the fantastic, the tragic and the comic, sarcasm and harmless gentle humor. The grotesque necessarily violates the boundaries of plausibility, gives the image a certain conventionality and takes the artistic image beyond the limits of the probable, deliberately deforming it. The grotesque style received its name in connection with the ornaments discovered at the end of the 15th century by Raphael and his students during excavations of ancient underground buildings and grottoes in Rome.
These images, strange in their bizarre unnaturalness, freely combined various pictorial elements: human forms turned into animals and plants, human figures grew from flower cups, plant shoots intertwined with unusual structures. Therefore, at first they began to call distorted images the ugliness of which was explained by the cramped space itself, which did not allow making a correct drawing. Subsequently, the grotesque style was based on a complex composition of unexpected contrasts and inconsistencies. The transfer of the term to the field of literature and the true flowering of this type of imagery occurs in the era of romanticism, although the appeal to the techniques of satirical grotesque occurs in Western literature much earlier. Eloquent examples of this are the books of F. Rabelais “Gargantua and Pantagruel” and J. Swift “Gulliver’s Travels”. In Russian literature, the grotesque was widely used to create bright and unusual artistic images N.V. Gogol (“The Nose”, “Notes of a Madman”), M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin ("The History of a City", " Wild landowner" and other fairy tales), F. M. Dostoevsky ("The Double. The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin"), F. Sologub ("The Little Demon"), M.A. Bulgakov ("Fatal Eggs", " Heart of a Dog"), A. Bely ("Petersburg", "Masks"), V.V. Mayakovsky ("Mystery-bouffe", "Bedbug", "Bathhouse", "Sessed"), A.T. Tvardovsky ("Terkin on the next world"), A.A. Voznesensky ("Oza"), E.L. Schwartz ("Dragon", "The Naked King").
Along with the satirical, the grotesque can be humorous, when, with the help of a fantastic beginning and in fantastic forms of appearance and behavior of characters, qualities are embodied that evoke an ironic attitude from the reader, and also tragic (in works of tragic content, telling about the attempts and fate of spiritual definition personality.