Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Fiction successfully uses the techniques and means that originated in the depths of other types of art: music, painting, architecture.
What is grotesque and the history of this term
The grotesque is a means of artistic expression that combines simple and complex, high and low, comic and tragic in bizarre, amazing images. The basis of the grotesque is contrast.
Curious forms and representations give rise to several opposite principles, such as, for example, images of talking dolls or little freaks, like Little Tsakhes in the fairy tales of E. T. Hoffmann.
There is nothing traditionally puppet about these characters. They do not touch, do not cause a desire to take care of themselves, but, on the contrary, inspire horror, disgust or bewilderment, only after a while giving way to warmer feelings.
The word "grotesque" comes from the French "grotesque" (" bizarre, funny"). According to the etymological dictionary of M. Fasmer, it is based on the Italian "grotta" ("cave").
In the 15th century, there was a definition of "grotto", referring to painting and architecture with bizarre elements of animal and floral ornament. Similar decorative fragments have been found in Roman catacombs. It is assumed that by the time of creation they belong to the era of the reign of Emperor Nero.
The amazing painting of underground caves gave rise to a fashion for a combination of strange characters and figures in the decoration of dwellings, furniture, dishes, and jewelry. A dragon holding a vine in its teeth, a griffin with an apple in its paw, a two-headed lion entwined with ivy are typical images of grotesque art.
Grotesque in literature- this is a comic technique necessary to emphasize the absurdity of what is happening, to draw the reader's attention to something important, hiding behind a ridiculous, at first glance, phenomenon.
Unlike, which is also prone to exaggeration, the grotesque takes the situation to the extreme, making the plot absurd. In this absurdity lies the key to understanding the image.
Literature differs from other art forms in that its content cannot be seen or touched, but can be imagined. Therefore, the grotesque scenes of literary works always "work" to ensure that awaken the imagination reader.
Examples of the grotesque in literature
Analyzing experiences from the time of Aristophanes to the present day, we can conclude that the grotesque is a social evil reflected in literature, concluded in a shell of laughter.
In the comedy "The Frogs", owned by the great Greek playwright, serious things are ridiculed: the fate of the soul after death, politics, versification, social mores. The characters enter the realm of the dead, where they observe a dispute between the great Athenian tragedians: Sophocles and the recently deceased Euripides.
Poets scold each other, criticizing the old and the new way of composing poetry, and at the same time the vices of their contemporaries. Instead of the classic antique choir that usually accompanied the characters' lines, Aristophanes has a choir of frogs whose croaking sounds like laughter.
A striking example of the grotesque - story by N. V. Gogol "The Nose". The olfactory organ separates from its owner and begins an independent life: it goes to work, to the cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospekt.
The most interesting thing is that the Nose is perceived by others as a very serious gentleman, but Major Kovalev, abandoned by him, cannot leave the house. It turns out that it is not a person that is important to society, but his attributes: rank, status, appearance. Grotesque image of a swollen nose
Satirical stories are built on the grotesque. fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. For example, the hero of the work of the same name Karas-idealist personifies a philosophizing intellectual, cut off from real life. Crucian preaches universal love and equality, while predatory fish continue to swallow small fish.
Thinking to dissuade the pike from eating his own kind, the idealist perishes. His attempt to go against the laws of nature is comical, but behind it lies a deep sadness from the realization of this truth.
However, not all researchers consider the grotesque to be an exclusively comic device. In works M. A. Bulgakova such powerful and fantastic images collide that it would hardly occur to anyone to laugh at them.
« Fatal eggs" and " dog's heart are dedicated to human experiments on nature. Are we allowed to interfere in everything? What are the consequences of scientific experiments? These questions are increasingly relevant in the era of cloning and Creonics. Bulgakov's grotesques frighten, warn, with their ominous authenticity reminiscent of Goya's engravings.
Grotesque in foreign literature
In addition to the already mentioned Aristophanes and Hoffmann, F. Rabelais, S. Brandt, J. Swift used the method of high and low collision among foreign writers. In the twentieth century, a German-speaking writer became an unsurpassed master of the grotesque F. Kafka.
The hero of the novel transformation» Gregor Samsa wakes up and finds that he has become a huge insect. Having tried to roll over to the other side, he realizes that he can no longer do this.
A loving son and brother, Gregor made money for the whole family, and now he is no longer needed. Relatives treat the giant centipede with disgust. They don't go into Gregor's room, only his sister occasionally brings him food.
Gradually, disgust for a strange creature increases. No one guesses how "it" suffers, hearing how mother and father discuss the problems that have arisen in the evenings. One evening, the sister invites the new tenants to play the piano. Attracted by the sounds of music from the living room, the hero crawls out of his hiding place. The merry company is shocked, a scandal comes out.
Tormented by hunger, wounds and loneliness, Gregor slowly dies. The family, relieved, throws the dried body of the insect out of the room. Parents notice that, despite all the hardships, the sister is getting prettier.
Kafka's phantasmagorical invention continues Gogol's idea of how little a person means when he loses his social functions, how little love remains even in the closest people.
Talking about the grotesque leads to the cherished depths of artistic imagery. This technique is successful only for those artists whose creations are generated by long years of deliberation. That is why the grotesque in a literary work invariably amazes and remains in memory for a lifetime.
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, Lucian, F. Rabelais, L. Stern, E. T. A. Hoffmann, N. V. Gogol, M. Twain, F. Kafka, M. A. Bulgakov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin).
"Mother nature" surrounded grotesque on a fresco in the Villa d'Este.
Use of the word in conversation grotesque usually means strange, fantastic, eccentric, or ugly, and thus is often used to describe strange or distorted forms, such as Halloween masks or gargoyles in cathedrals. Incidentally, as regards the visible grotesque forms in Gothic buildings, when not used as drainpipes, they should be called grotesques or chimeras, not gargoyles.
Etymology
Word grotesque came to Russian from French. The Primary Meaning of French grotesgue- literally grotto, pertaining to the grotto or in the grotto, from grotte - grotto(that is, a small cave or depression), goes back to the Latin crypto - hidden, underground, dungeon. The expression appeared after the discovery of ancient Roman decorations in caves and burial sites in the 15th century. These "caves" were actually the rooms and corridors of Nero's Golden House, an unfinished palace complex founded by Nero after a great fire in 64 AD. e.
In architecture
see also
- Rigoletto, Giuseppe Verdi, opera in three acts.
Notes
Music
Grotesque is one of the songs by the fictional death metal band Detroit Metal City.
Literature
- Sheinberg Esti Irony, satire, parody and the grotesque in the music of Shostakovich (in English)). - UK: Ashgate. - P. 378. - ISBN ISBN 0-7546-0226-5
- Kayser, Wolfgang (1957) The grotesque in Art and Literature, New York, Columbia University Press
- Lee Byron Jennings (1963) The ludicrous demon: aspects of the grotesque in German post-Romantic prose, Berkeley, University of California Press
- Bakhtin Mikhail Rabelais and his world. - Bloomington
the image is found in the songs of the group Klimbatika: Indiana University Press, 1941.
- Selected bibliography by Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, Methuen Critical Idiom Series, 1972.
- Dacos, N. La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance(London) 1969.
- Kort Pamela Comic Grotesque: Wit And Mockery In German Art, 1870-1940. - PRESTEL. - P. 208. - ISBN ISBN 9783791331959
- FS Connelly "Modern art and the grotesque" 2003 assets.cambridge.org
- Video tour of the most vivid examples of medieval Parisian stone carving - the grotesques of Notre Dame
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .
Synonyms:See what "Grotesque" is in other dictionaries:
ORIGIN OF THE TERM. The term G. is borrowed from painting. This was the name of the ancient wall painting, which was found in the “grottoes” (grotte) of the cellars of Titus. Raphael used it as a model for decorating the lodges of the Vatican, and his students for painting ... ... Literary Encyclopedia
grotesque- a, m. grotesque, German. Grotesk it. grotesca. 1. claim. An image featuring a whimsical, fantastical combination of motifs and details. Sl. 18. Painting, a picturesque thing of many colors and thin figures. DX 1 2 63. The decoration of the rooms is… … Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language
- (French grotesque, from Italian grotta cave). 1) originally meant the wall painting of the Romans, which consisted of a fantastic combination of people, animals, plants, buildings, etc.; similar paintings were found in the buried buildings of antiquity, under the arches ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
Grotesque- GROTESQUE (Italian grottesca) in its basic sense means arabesques like those found in ancient buildings buried underground. Usually the word is used to denote a funny, strange or exceptional phenomenon ... Dictionary of literary terms
- (French grotesque, Italian grottesco bizarre, from grotta grotto), 1) a type of ornament that includes pictorial and decorative motifs in bizarre, fantastic combinations (plant and animal forms, human figures, masks, ... ... Art Encyclopedia
Caricature, caricature, parody Dictionary of Russian synonyms. grotesque see caricature Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical guide. M.: Russian language. Z. E. Alexandrova. 2011 ... Synonym dictionary
- (French grotesque letters. bizarre; comical), 1) an ornament in which decorative and pictorial motifs (plants, animals, human forms, masks) are bizarrely, fantastically combined. 2) A type of artistic imagery that generalizes and ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
GROTESQUE, grotesque, male. (Italian grottesco). 1. A work of art executed in a bizarrely fantastic, ugly comic style (claim; originally the name of wall painting in Roman grottoes). 2. in value unchangeable adj. The same as grotesque ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov
- (French grotesque, literally bizarre; comical), 1) an ornament in which decorative and pictorial motifs (plants, animals, human forms, masks) are bizarrely, fantastically combined. 2) Type of artistic imagery, ... ... Modern Encyclopedia
GROTESQUE(from French - bizarre, intricate; funny, comic, from Italian - grotto) - the image of people, objects, details in the visual arts, theater and literature in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly comic form; a peculiar style in art and literature, which emphasizes the distortion of generally accepted norms and at the same time the compatibility of real and fantastic, tragic and comic, sarcasm and harmless soft humor. The grotesque necessarily violates the boundaries of plausibility, gives the image a certain convention and takes the artistic image beyond the limits of the probable, consciously deforming it. The grotesque style got its name in connection with the ornaments discovered at the end of the 15th century by Raphael and his students during excavations in Rome of ancient underground buildings, grottoes.
These images, strange in their bizarre unnaturalness, freely connected various pictorial elements: human forms turned into animals and plants, human figures grew out of flower cups, plant shoots intertwined with unusual structures. Therefore, at first, distorted images began to be called grotesque, the ugliness of which was explained by the tightness of the square itself, which did not allow making a correct drawing. Later on, 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 methods 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 when creating bright and unusual artistic images of N.V. Gogol ("The Nose", "Notes of a Madman"), M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (“History of a City”, “Wild Landowner” and other tales), F.M. Dostoevsky ("Double. The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin"), F. Sologub ("Small Demon"), M.A. Bulgakov ("Fatal Eggs", "Heart of a Dog"), A. Bely ("Petersburg", "Masks"), V.V. Mayakovsky (“Mystery-buff”, “Bedbug”, “Bath”, “Seated”), A.T. Tvardovsky (“Terkin in the next world”), A.A. Voznesensky ("Oza"), E.L. Schwartz ("Dragon", "Naked King").
Along with the satirical, the grotesque can be humorous, when with the help of a fantastic beginning and in the fantastic forms of the appearance and behavior of the characters, qualities are embodied that cause the reader's ironic attitude, as well as tragic (in works of tragic content that tell about the attempts and fate of the spiritual definition of personality.
GROTESQUE
- (from Italian grottesco - bizarre) - a kind of comic: an image of people, objects or phenomena that violates the boundaries of plausibility in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly comic form. G. is based on the combination of the real and the unreal, the terrible and the ridiculous, the tragic and the comic, the ugly and the beautiful. G. is close to a farce. It differs from other varieties of the comic (humor, irony, satire, etc. (see irony, satire)) in that the funny in it is not separated from the terrible, which allows the author in a particular picture to show the contradictions of life and create an acutely satirical image. Examples of works in which G. is widely used to create a satirical image are N.V. Gogol, "The History of a City", "How one man fed two generals" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, "Seated", "Bath," Bedbug "by V. Mayakovsky.
Dictionary of literary terms. 2012
See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what is GROTESQUE in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:
- GROTESQUE in the Dictionary of Fine Art Terms:
- (from the Italian grottesco - bizarre) 1. A type of ornament that includes pictorial and pictorial motifs (vegetative and ...) in bizarre, fantastic combinations. - GROTESQUE in the Literary Encyclopedia:
ORIGIN OF THE TERM. — The term G. is borrowed from painting. This was the name of the ancient wall painting, which was found in the "grottoes" (grotte) ... - GROTESQUE in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
an outdated name for the fonts of some typefaces (ancient, poster, chopped, etc.), characterized by the absence of serifs at the ends of the strokes and almost the same thickness ... - GROTESQUE in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
(French grotesque, Italian grottesco - whimsical, from grotta - grotto), 1) an ornament that includes pictorial and decorative in bizarre, fantastic combinations ... - GROTESQUE in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron:
- ornamental motifs in painting and plastic, representing a bizarre combination of forms of the plant kingdom with figures or parts of human figures ... - GROTESQUE in the Modern Encyclopedic Dictionary:
- GROTESQUE
(French grotesque, literally - bizarre comic), 1) an ornament in which decorative and pictorial motifs are bizarrely, fantastically combined (plants, animals, human ... - GROTESQUE in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
, a, pl. no, m. 1. In art: depiction of something in a fantastic, ugly comic way. Grotesque, grotesque - characterized by the grotesque. 2. … - GROTESQUE in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
[te], -a, m. In art: an image of something. in a fantastic, ugly comic way, based on sharp contrasts and exaggerations. II adj. grotesque... - GROTESQUE
GROTESQUE, outdated. the name of the fonts of some typefaces (ancient, poster, chopped, etc.), characterized by the absence of serifs at the ends of the strokes and almost the same ... - GROTESQUE in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
GROTESK (French grotesque, lit. - whimsical, comical), an ornament, in which the decor is fancifully, fantastically combined. and fig. motives (district, female, human forms, ... - GROTESQUE in the Full accentuated paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
grotto "sk, grotto" ski, grotto "ska, grotto" skov, grotto "sku, grotto" skam, grotto "sk, grotto" ski, grotto "skom, grotto" skami, grotto "ske, ... - GROTESQUE in the Popular Explanatory-Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Russian Language:
[t "e], -a, only singular, m. In art and literature: an artistic device based on a contrasting combination of real and fantastic, tragic ... - GROTESQUE in the Dictionary for solving and compiling scanwords.
- GROTESQUE in the New Dictionary of Foreign Words:
(fr. grotesque whimsical, intricate; funny, comic it. grotta grotto) 1) an ornament in the form of intertwining images of animals, plants, etc., ... - GROTESQUE in the Dictionary of Foreign Expressions:
[ 1. an ornament in the form of intertwining images of animals, plants, etc., the most ancient examples of which were found in the ruins of ancient Roman ... - GROTESQUE in the dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian language.
- GROTESQUE in the New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language Efremova:
1. m. 1) a) An artistic technique in art based on excessive exaggeration, violation of the boundaries of likelihood, a combination of sharp, unexpected contrasts. b) ... - GROTESQUE in the Dictionary of the Russian Language Lopatin:
grotto'esk, ... - GROTESQUE in the Complete Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language:
grotesque... - GROTESQUE in the Spelling Dictionary:
grotto'esk, ... - GROTESQUE in the Dictionary of the Russian Language Ozhegov:
In art: depicting something in a fantastic, ugly comic way, based on sharp contrasts and ... - GROTESQUE in the Dahl Dictionary:
husband. picturesque decoration, modeled on those found in Roman dungeons, from a motley mixture of people, animals, plants, etc. In arabesques and ...
GROTESQUE - (from fr.- whimsical, intricate; funny, comic, from Italian. - grotto) - the image of people, objects, details in the visual arts, theater and literature in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly comic form; a peculiar style in art and literature, which emphasizes the distortion of generally accepted norms and at the same time the compatibility of real and fantastic, tragic and comic, sarcasm and harmless soft humor. The grotesque necessarily violates the boundaries of plausibility, gives the image a certain convention and takes the artistic image beyond the limits of the probable, consciously deforming it. The grotesque style got its name in connection with the ornaments discovered at the end of the 15th century by Raphael and his students during excavations in Rome of ancient underground buildings, grottoes.
These images, strange in their bizarre unnaturalness, freely connected various pictorial elements: human forms turned into animals and plants, human figures grew out of flower cups, plant shoots intertwined with unusual structures. Therefore, at first, distorted images began to be called grotesque, the ugliness of which was explained by the tightness of the square itself, which did not allow making a correct drawing. Later on, 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 methods 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 when creating bright and unusual artistic images of N.V. Gogol ("The Nose", "Notes of a Madman"), M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin ("The History of a City", "The Wild Landowner" and other tales), F.M. Dostoevsky ("Double. The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin"), F. Sologub ("Small Demon"), M.A. Bulgakov ("Fatal Eggs", "Heart of a Dog"), A. Bely ("Petersburg", "Masks"), V.V. Mayakovsky ("Mystery-buff", "Bedbug", "Bath", "Seated"), A.T. Tvardovsky ("Terkin in the next world"), A.A. Voznesensky ("Oza"), E.L. Schwartz ("Dragon", "Naked King").
Along with the satirical, the grotesque can be humorous, when with the help of a fantastic beginning and in the fantastic forms of the appearance and behavior of the characters, qualities are embodied that cause the reader's ironic attitude, as well as tragic (in works of tragic content that tell about the attempts and fate of the spiritual definition of personality.
