Grotesque character. What is grotesque? Use in satirical 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 grotesque received its brightest embodiment in the art of the Middle Ages (ornamentation animal style, chimeras of cathedrals, 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 the moral and social views of their turning point. Jacques Collot, Francisco Goya, Honore Damier in the 17th–19th centuries. used the grotesque as a means of dramatically embodying sinister symbols of 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.

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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 rooms - 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. G. received special significance in aesthetics. 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 lectures on the philosophy of art (1803), F. Schlegel in “Conversations on Poetry” (1800), A. Schlegel in “Readings on dramatic arts and literature" (1809–11) considered G. as an expression of the necessary internal connection between the comic and the tragic and the transition of the low to the high, considering it a sign of the genius of artistic works (see F. W. Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst, Werke, Bd. 3, 1907 , 359–60). The most significant in the history of art, according to the romantics, are the works of Aristophanes and Shakespeare, in which a synthesis of tragedy and comedy, great and low, was carried out. In France, V. Hugo advocated. “In the Preface to “Cromwell”” he considered G. as the center of the concept of all post-ancient art, considering G. aesthetically more expressive than beauty (V. Hugo, Sobr. soch., vol. 14, M., 1956). In the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, extensive formalistic literature appeared, which took its external formal features as the definition: sharpening of the image, exaggeration, fantasy, etc. T. Fischer (F. T. Vischer, ?sthetik, oder Wissenschaft des Sch?nen, TI 1, 1854, S. 400-09), K. Fl?gel, Geschichte des Grotesk-komischen, 1788 ) and others, considering g. only from the side of its form, essentially 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 area itself, which did not allow making a correct drawing. Subsequently, the grotesque style was based on complex composition 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", "dog's heart"), 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.

Grotesque (from Italian grottesco - whimsical from grotta -grotto) is a unique style in literature that emphasizes the distortion or confusion of the norms of reality and the compatibility of contrasts - comic and tragic, fantastic and real, etc. Whole literary trends they denied the grotesque, arguing that there is no fidelity to “nature” in exaggeration and distortion.

Why does the reader need to know that the baby Gargantua, who crawled out of the ear of Gargamel, who ate sixteen large barrels, two small ones and six pots of offal, shouts, as if inviting everyone to drink: “Drink, drink, drink.” And how can one believe that 17,913 cows were allocated to feed the baby, and 1,105 cubits of white woolen material were taken for his pants? And, of course, the prudent reader will not find a single gram of truth in the story about how, having decided to repay the Parisians for a bad reception, “...Gargantua unfastened his beautiful codpiece and poured it on them so abundantly that he drowned 260,418 people, not counting women and children."

The grotesque world is a world of exaggerations taken to extremes, often fantastic.

Parts of it grow menacingly human body, the scale of phenomena, the size of things and objects change. In this case, phenomena and objects go beyond their qualitative boundaries and cease to be themselves.

The type of grotesque imagery is also inherent in mythology and archaic art. The term itself appeared much later. During excavations in one of the photos Ancient Rome ornaments were found that represented strange, bizarre interweaving of plants, animals, and human faces.

The mixture of human and animal forms is oldest species grotesque. In the language, the word grotesque has been fixed in the meaning of strange, unnatural, bizarre, illogical, and this is a reflection of the most important aspect of the aesthetic phenomenon characteristic of all types of art.

The grotesque in literature can be not only a device, an element of style that colors a work in illogical tones, but also a method of typification. The pinnacles of his Renaissance art were “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais and “In Praise of Folly” by Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Aesthetically, the grotesque in literature is a reaction to the “principle of verisimilitude,” to the art of pedantic fidelity to “nature.” Romanticism became such a reaction to the art of classicism. At this time, awareness of the aesthetic essence of the grotesque comes.

After the appearance of the “Preface to Cromwell” (1827) by B. Hugo, the popularity of this term increased. Grotesque is often outwardly unpretentious. Pushkin called Gogol’s “Nose” a “joke” in which “there is so much unexpected, fantastic, funny, original.” Rabelais, in the introduction to the novel, appeals to readers, “good students and other idlers” with a request not to judge by external gaiety, without thinking properly, not to start laughing.

The grotesque image strives for extreme generalization, identifying the quintessence of time, history, phenomenon, human existence. In this, the grotesque image is akin to a symbol. Grotesque " Shagreen leather” was placed by Balzac above the “bottom layer” of his works - “Scenes of Manners”. Gogol’s “Overcoat” is not only and not so much a defense “ little man”, so much the quintessence of the insignificance of his existence. According to Saltykov-Shchedrin, “The History of a City” arose to absorb the very essence of “those characteristic features of Russian life that make it not entirely comfortable.”

The grotesque in literature is an artistic unity of contrasts: the top and bottom of the human body (in Rabelais), fairy-tale and real (in Hoffmann), fantasy and everyday life (in Gogol). “The grotesque image,” wrote M. Bakhtin, “characterizes a phenomenon in a state of change, an incomplete metamorphosis, in the stage of death and birth, growth and formation.” The scientist showed the ambivalence of the grotesque image folk culture the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in which he simultaneously ridicules and affirms, in contrast to the denying satire of modern times.

In the grotesque of the Renaissance, the contrast of the top and bottom of the human body, their mutual substitution, was of paramount importance. In the realistic grotesque, the contrast is social. In Dostoevsky's story "Bobok" the social top and bottom come together. “The lady” Avdotya Ignatievna is irritated by the close proximity of the shopkeeper. What is comical in the story is the memory of the grave “society” about the past real, “pre-grave” hierarchy. The grotesque contrast penetrates into the very fabric of the work, expressed in sharp interruptions between the author’s speech and the speech of the characters.

Realistic art brings a previously unprecedented “psychologization of the grotesque” (J. Mann). In the realistic grotesque, not only phenomena are split outside world, but also human consciousness itself, the theme of duality arises in literature, begun by Gogol’s “The Nose” (after all, the state councilor Nose is the double of the stupid, vulgar Major Kovalev). The theme is developed by Dostoevsky in the story “The Double” and in the scene of Ivan Karamazov’s “meeting” with the devil.

In a grotesque work, the writer in a variety of ways “convinces” the reader of the possibility of coexistence of the most incredible, fantastic with the real, familiar. The fantastic in it is the most acute reality. Hence the emphasized plastic authenticity in the description of the nose and the interweaving of the incredible with scenes of everyday vulgarity in Gogol’s story. In the story “Bobok”, His Excellency the late Major General Pervoedov plays preference with the late court councilor Lebezyatnikov. The fantastic fragments and enlarges reality, changes proportions. Science fiction is not an end in itself for the author. It is often “removed” by the writer: in Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” - with a precise, comically pedantic description of the place and time of action, scrupulously citing names and dates, in Dostoevsky’s “Double” - by denying the illusory, fantastic nature of what is happening, which each time accompanies the appearance of a double - Golyadkin -Jr. The fantastic is exposed by the writer as an artistic device, which in due time can be abandoned as no longer necessary. Often the realistic grotesque, examples of which we have given, is based entirely on the play of various image planes. Sometimes a grotesque work is a parody, such as “The History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The grotesque can be based not only on extreme magnification - hyperbole, but also on metaphor. The nature of the grotesque scenes in T. Shevchenko’s poem “The Dream” is metaphorical, during which, from the cry of the king, strictly maintaining the hierarchy - from the most “pot-bellied” to the “small”, his henchmen fall into the ground. The satirical grotesque of T. Shevchenko’s political poetry, dating back to folklore traditions, the traditions of Gogol, Mickiewicz, was an innovative phenomenon, it preceded satirical grotesque Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Art developed the traditions of romantic and realistic grotesque. Thus, under the influence of the traditions of Hoffman, Gogol, and Dostoevsky, the grotesque style of F. Kafka was born. Kafka is characterized by a combination in his work of fabulous, fantastic, nightmarish events with a plausible depiction of the details of everyday life and the “normal” behavior of people in unusual situations. The hero of Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis", a traveling salesman, wakes up and sees himself transformed into an insect.

In ordinary conversation, many perceive the grotesque as something strange, ugly, eccentric, fantastic. In modern times, the embodiment of this concept for many is represented as carnival masks that are used on Halloween, or images of gargoyles.

What grotesque really is and where it is used is to be found out in the article.

Meaning of the concept

There are two translations of the word “grotesque” - French and Italian, but they are similar to each other. WITH French the word is translated as “comical”, from Italian - “bizarre”, also “grotto”.

What is grotesque in general outline? The term means type artistic imagery. It is based on fantasy, contrast, laughter, which is intertwined with reality. In addition, the grotesque is characterized by caricature, alogisms, and hyperboles.

Etymology of the concept

The word, like its definition (grotesque), came into Russian from France, although its original translation is associated with Italy. It meant “grotto” and appeared after archaeological excavations in the 15th century. At this time, plant paintings with intricate patterns were discovered in underground rooms in Italy. These were at one time the rooms and corridors of Nero's house.

Are gargoyles grotesque?

Many people mistakenly attribute grotesqueness to gargoyles. They are really fancy, but the purpose of these carvings is to drain rainwater so that it does not fall on the walls of the building. Stone carving in the grotesque style does not have such purposes. It is worth noting that gargoyles are chimeras, not grotesques.

Literature and the grotesque

It's in the literature this concept presented most clearly, it is a type of comic device, combining in the form of fantasy the funny and the terrible, the sublime and the ugly. In the grotesque, the fictional is intertwined with the real, and the contradictions of reality are revealed.

The grotesque cannot be called simply comic. It contains humor and irony, but they are inseparably connected with something sinister and tragic. At the same time, behind everything implausible and fantastic lies a deep life meaning. Grotesque always implies deviation from the norm; it is widely used for satirical purposes.

Examples in the literature

In order to understand what the grotesque is, you need to consider its examples presented in the literature.

Examples of grotesque in the works of world writers:

Francois Rabelais, "Gargantua and Pantagruel". In the work, the main characters are enormous; they live with ordinary people. The scene in which one of those close to him falls into the mouth of his master looks grotesque. There he discovers villages and towns.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, "In Praise of Folly". The work was written in a comic form during the author's travels. The grotesque, examples of which are described above, is expressed from the very beginning, when Folly introduces himself to the audience, communicating the theme of his speech.

Nikolai Gogol, "The Nose".Here the disappearance of the Nose is intertwined with the everyday reality of St. Petersburg. The absurdity is that the nose, having disappeared from the face, became a 5th class official. Everyone treats him like he's an ordinary person. Even the hero of the incident, who lost his nose, is not concerned about what he will breathe, but how he will look in society with the ladies. A nose in the position of an official does not raise any unnecessary questions for anyone. The absurdity of the idea itself is grotesque.

Ernst Hoffmann, Little Tsakhes. Describes the life of an ugly dwarf, whom the good fairy bewitched and made different for everyone. Grotesqueness (this is in literature) is manifested in the very appearance of the hero. His real appearance is seen only by Balthasar, a student in love with the heroine Candida. In the end, Tsakhes, denounced by everyone, drowns in a chamber pot of sewage.

Franz Kafka, "Metamorphosis". It stuns from the very first line, from which it becomes clear what grotesque is. Main character woke up to insects. The implausibility of the situation is complemented by the feeling of disgust that most people experience towards insects. Relatives continue to live their lives ordinary life, despite the absurdity of the situation. In the end, the insect dies, and his family, as if nothing had happened, goes for a walk.

Mikhail Bulgakov, "The Master and Margarita". In the novel, the real and the fantastic collide. The characters find themselves in many grotesque situations that allow them to be exposed inner world. The grotesque includes the appearance of the human-sized cat Hippopotamus, Woland’s performance at the Variety Theater, the background “ bad apartment" The grotesque runs through not only this work of Mikhail Bulgakov. His “Heart of a Dog” and “Fatal Eggs” are no less interesting.

"The Story of a City" as a grotesque novel

The author was able to embody the concept of socio-political satire through the grotesque in “The History of a City.” The name of the fictional city says a lot. Foolov's story begins with the "Inventory of Mayors". The first mayor's name was Amadeus Manuilovich, who received this position “for his skillful preparation of pasta.” The whole horror of this grotesque is that for more than a hundred years the Foolovites chose their mayors for their knowledge of foreign chatter, an exotic surname, and the like.

The absurdity of many situations is intended to expose the deep immorality of the autocracy. Thus, one of the heroes was eaten by the leader of the nobility because he was wearing a real stuffed head on his shoulders.

Behind Foolov's comically absurd picture there are real pressing problems of autocratic and serf-owning Russia. The grotesque, examples of which are presented above, was able to expose the ugly realities of modern life for the authors.

GROTESQUE

- (from Italian grottesco - bizarre) - a type of comic: an image of people, objects or phenomena in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly-comic form that violates the boundaries of plausibility. G. is based on the combination of the real and the unreal, the terrible and the funny, the tragic and the comic, the ugly and the beautiful. G. is close to farce. It differs from other types of 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 specific picture to show the contradictions of life and create a sharply satirical image. Examples of works in which G. is widely used to create a satirical image are “The Nose” by N.V. Gogol, “The History of a City”, “How One Man Fed Two Generals” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “The Seated”, “Bathhouse”, “Bedbug” by V. Mayakovsky.

Dictionary of literary terms. 2012

Grotesque character. What is grotesque? Use in satirical works

GROTESQUE

Meaning of the concept

Etymology of the concept

Are gargoyles grotesque?

Literature and the grotesque

Examples in the literature

"The Story of a City" as a grotesque novel

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what GROTESK is in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books: