What is satirical grotesque in literature definition. What is grotesque in literature and examples of its use

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. No less interesting are his " dog's heart", "Fatal Eggs".

"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.

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.

Excellent definition

Incomplete 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 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, is carried out. In France, V. Hugo advocated it. “In the Preface to “Cromwell”” he considered G. as the central concept of all post-ancient art, considering G. aesthetically more expressive than the beautiful (V. Hugo, Collected works, vol. 14, M., 1956). In the 2nd half of the 19th – early 20th centuries, extensive formalistic literature about geometry appeared, which took its external formal features as the definition of creativity: sharpening of the image, exaggeration, fantasy, etc. So F 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; Michel W., Das Teuflische und Groteske in der Kunst, 11 Aufl., M?ncth, 1911; Kayser W., Das Groteske. Seine Gestaltung in Malerei und Dichtung, , 1957. V. Shestakov. Moscow.

Grotesque - bizarre, comical. The term is borrowed from painting. This was the name of the wall painting found in the “grottoes”. (From V. Dahl's dictionary)

In painting there is a complex ornament that intricately interweaves human and animal figures into plant and geometric motifs.
In cultural studies - imagery based on a contrasting, bizarre combination of the fantastic and the real, the beautiful and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, the ugly - comic in style. (From Ushakov’s dictionary).

...and she is funny, Rus', despite all the tragedy of her life.

M. Gorky

Grotesque - contrasting, violating the boundaries of plausibility, bizarrely comic. (Dictionary of foreign words).

Grotesque is a joke, a type of artistic imagery that generalizes and sharpens life relationships through a bizarre and contrasting combination of the real and the fantastic, verisimilitude and caricature. By sharply shifting the forms of life itself, it creates a special grotesque world that cannot be understood literally or deciphered unambiguously. (Encyclopedic Dictionary).

A joke is the darling of society and is carried on easily and naturally, but the truth is like an elephant in a china shop: wherever you turn, something flies everywhere. That's why she often appears accompanied by a joke. The joke goes ahead, showing the way to the elephant so that he does not destroy the entire shop, otherwise there will be nothing to talk about. Carefully! This is where you can step... But you can’t step here, this is where all the jokes end!

A grotesque tradition has been carried on from afar; centuries later it has reached our time.

Trouble is, if the shoemaker starts baking pies,
And the boots are made by the cake maker,
And things won't go well.
Yes, and it’s been noticed a hundred times,
Why does anyone like to take on someone else's craft?
He is always more stubborn and contentious than others:
He'd rather ruin everything
And I’m glad to soon become the laughing stock of the world,
What do honest and knowledgeable people
Ask or listen to reasonable advice.

Krylov. "Pike and cat"

In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, truth and joke exist, as it were, separately from each other: truth recedes into the background, into the subtext, and the joke remains a full-fledged mistress in the text. But she is not the owner. She only does what the truth tells her. And she covers up the truth so that it, the truth, can be better seen. To obscure it so as to see better - this is the technique of allegory, allegory. To hide, to stick out, to turn into a grotesque.

The story of how one man fed two generals

Saltykov-Shchedrin saw his task as educating the public. Therefore, fairy tales are simple and accessible, the content is understandable to “children and servants.”

Fairy tales are based on a grotesque situation, but real relationships are always guessed behind it; reality is shown under the guise of a fairy tale. Grotesque images hide the real types of Russia of that time.

One of Shchedrin’s main techniques is grotesque: the generals are wearing nightgowns with orders, the man himself wove a rope “from wild hemp” so that the generals would tie him up. Shchedrin's laughter is distinguished not so much by fun as by anger; it is satirical in nature. It was not for nothing that at the beginning of our conversation we recalled Krylov’s fables. Shchedrin includes morals in some tales, a typical fable device.

Dictionary

Parasite - a person who lives at someone else's expense, a slacker
Registration – office where papers are registered
The number is outdated.- number
Your Excellency - addressing a person who has a certain income

Theatrical production of an excerpt from a fairy tale

Once upon a time there were two generals, and since both were frivolous, soon, pike command, according to my desire, we found ourselves on a desert island.
Generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; they were born there, raised and grew old, and therefore did not understand anything.
The registry was abolished as unnecessary and the generals were released. Only suddenly they found themselves on a desert island. At first they didn’t understand anything and started talking as if nothing had happened.
(Generals in nightgowns with orders around their necks)
1: Strange, Your Excellency, I had a dream today, I see as if I was living on a desert island.
(both jump up)
2: God! Where are we?
(They started feeling each other, started crying, started looking at each other)
1: Now let's have a nice cup of coffee!
(Crying)
2: What are we going to do, though?
1: Here's what, your Excellency, go east, and I'll go west, and by evening we'll meet again at this place, maybe we'll find something.
(Looking for east and west)
1: That's it, Your Excellency, you go to the right, and I'll go to the left.
(One general went to the right, the other to the left, tries to get an apple from a tree, falls, catches a fish with his hands, falls again)
1: God! Some food!
(Crying)
2: Well, Your Excellency, have you thought of anything?
1: Yes, I found an old issue of Moskovskie Vedomosti.
2: Who would have thought, V.P., that human food in its original form flies, swims and grows on trees!
1: Yes, I must admit, I still thought that the rolls would be born in the same form as they were expected for coffee in the morning!
2: Therefore, if anyone wants to eat a partridge, he must first catch it, kill it, pluck it and fry it. But how to do all this? Now I think I could eat my own boot.
1: Gloves are also good when they are worn for a long time.
(The generals looked at each other angrily, growled, screamed, groaned, pieces of clothing flew, one bit off the order from the other and ate it)
Both: The power of the cross is with us! We'll eat each other like that! We need to distract ourselves by talking!
2: Why do you think the sun rises first and then sets, and not vice versa?
1: You are a strange person, V.P., do you get up first, go to the department, write there, and then go to bed?
(They stopped talking and started reading)
1: Yesterday the venerable chief of our ancient capital had a ceremonial dinner. The table was set for one hundred people with all the luxury. There was golden sterlet, pheasant, and strawberries, so rare in our north in February.
2: Ugh! Really, V.P., can’t you find another item?
1: They write from Tula: on the occasion of the capture of a sturgeon in the Upa River, there was a festival at the local club. The hero of the occasion was brought in on a huge platter, lined with cucumbers and holding a piece of greenery in his mouth.
(He tore out the newspaper, began to read it himself, hung his head, and suddenly screamed)
2: What if we could find a man? He would now serve us some buns, catch hazel grouse, fish! He's probably hidden somewhere, shirking work!
(They jumped up and rushed to look. The man is sleeping under a tree)
1: Sleep, couch potato!
(the man jumped up and gave them a scolding, but the generals grabbed him tightly)
A man climbed a tree, picked apples for the generals, and took one sour one for himself. He dug in the ground, got some potatoes, made a snare from his own hair and caught a hazel grouse. He lit a fire and prepared so much food that the generals came up with the thought: “Shouldn’t we give the parasite a piece?”
Man: Are you satisfied, Generals? Would you allow me to rest now?
1: Rest, my friend, but first remove the rope.
The man collected wild hemp, soaked it in water, and by evening the rope was ready. With this rope, the generals tied the man to a tree so that he would not run away, and they themselves went to bed. A day passed, then another. The man became so adept that he even began to cook soup in a handful. Our generals became cheerful, loose, and well-fed.
Whether it's long or short, the generals are bored. They began to remember the cooks they had left in St. Petersburg and quietly cry.
And the man began to play tricks on how to please his generals for the fact that they favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant work. And he built a ship - not a ship, but such a vessel that it was possible to sail across the ocean-sea all the way to Podyacheskaya.
Here, finally, is Mother Neva and Podyacheskaya Street. The cooks clasped their hands when they saw how well-fed, white and cheerful their generals were.
The generals did not forget about the peasant; They sent him a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man!

Grotesque, as Saltykov-Shchedrin's favorite means of satire, is expressed in the fact that animals exist as people.
This is mathematics: we write a joke, but the truth is in our minds. It’s difficult to understand, or maybe it’s not worth understanding? After all, according to Goncharov, “Russian people do not always
likes to understand what he reads.”

Russia has always given birth to talents, but has not allowed them to bear fruit.

“...on the goats, two whistling Cossacks with whips sat on both sides of the driver and watered him without mercy so that he would gallop. And if any Cossack dozes off, Platov himself will poke him from the stroller with his foot, and they will rush even angrier..."

To control a simple horse is a whole lot of control!

That’s why we’re in a hurry, we won’t catch up with ourselves! But most importantly! They tried to shoe the flea, but, as it turned out, this should not have been done. Because the savvy flea stopped dancing. Savvy is the highest class, but something doesn’t work out.

Lefty explained to the British: we are not advanced in science, but we are devoted to our fatherland.

About himself, of course, he was modest, but after all, the fate of science in Russia was decided by those who were not too deep in the sciences. Either they are not good at genetics, or they are not good at cybernetics, exalting themselves only because they are devoted to their fatherland.

A.S. Pushkin “On Dondukov - Korsakov”:

At the Academy of Sciences
Prince Dunduk is in session.
They say it's not appropriate
Dunduk is so honored;
Why is he sitting?
Because there is something to sit down!

And the fatherland favored them - much more than their talents. “They were transporting Lefty so uncovered, but when they began to transfer him from one cab to another, they would drop everything, and when they started picking him up, they would tear his ears...”

The fatherland is forgetful: it always forgets who to pardon, who to execute, who to curse, to whom to build a monument.

Porridge from an ax

One-man theater

The old soldier was going on leave. I'm tired from the journey and want to eat. He reached the village and knocked on the last hut.
– Let the dear man rest.
The old woman opened the door.
- Come in, servant.
- Do you, hostess, have anything to snack on?
The old woman had plenty of everything, but she was stingy with feeding the soldier and pretended to be an orphan.
- Oh, a kind person, I haven’t eaten anything myself today.
“Well, no, no,” the soldier says.
Then he noticed an ax without an ax under the bench.
“If there is nothing else, you can cook porridge with an ax.”
The hostess clasped her hands:
- How do you make porridge from an ax?
- Well, give me the boiler.
The old woman brought a cauldron. The soldier washed the ax, put it in the cauldron, poured water and put it on the fire. The old woman looks at the soldier, does not take her eyes off. The soldier took out a spoon and stirred the brew. I tried it.
- Well, how? - asks the old woman.
“It will be ready soon,” the soldier replies, “it’s a pity there’s no salt.”
- I have salt, salt it.
The soldier added salt and tried it again.
- If only I could get a handful of cereal here.
The old woman brought a bag of cereal from the closet.
- Here, fill it up properly.
The soldier cooked and cooked, stirred, then tried it.
The old woman looks at her and can’t look away.
“Oh, and the porridge is good,” the soldier praises, “I wish there was a little butter here - it would be completely filling!”
The old woman also found oil.
They flavored the kush.
- Take a spoon, mistress.
They began to eat the porridge and praise it.
“I didn’t think that you could cook such a good porridge from an ax,” the old woman marvels.
And there is a soldier and he chuckles.

Only good people can laugh, but they don’t always laugh kindly. This is how satire arises, thanks to the elegant weapon of the grotesque. Laughter is a weapon in the fight against evil.

The phrase was born a long time ago: Good must come with fists. But the weapon of good is not fists. His laughter rings like a weapon. Laughter is the only weapon of good. In the most serious situation, laughter will suddenly slip in its malicious question: “Why?” Why shoe a flea - is it really just to rub the British in the face? Why did the man try for the generals on the island, and even allow himself to be tied up?

That courage again! There is no way to do satire without it. It should be bold - a joke that hides behind itself and at the same time reveals to readers the truth.

The truth must be bold and poignant. Arkady Averchenko began his literary career with “Bayonet” and “Sword” - these were the names of the magazines that he edited, or rather, wrote, developing the style of the future famous humorist. He sharpened a bayonet and a sword for the main work of his life. He created a magazine in himself and himself in the magazine. And he gave him the name: “Satyricon”.

Chapter from "Satyricon"(Rus) – literary reading

Laughter is immortal. And the more immortal, the more difficult and deadly the times, the more unfavorable they are for laughter. And they were very unfavorable. Because part of the joke is part of the truth. And they forbade laughter, and persecuted, and persecuted. Like the truth. And they sent me into exile and imprisoned me in a fortress, like the truth.

Times are like people: they love to laugh at other times, but do not tolerate laughter at themselves. The times of Shchedrin willingly laughed at the times of Gogol, the times of Chekhov - at the times of Shchedrin. And he even stated that he needed the Shchedrins, not the Chekhovs, not the Averchenkos, but the Shchedrins.

And it had them. Because Gogol, Chekhov, and Shchedrin laugh at the times to come. No matter what time comes, the satirists of the past laugh at them. That's why laughter is immortal.

From "Eugene Onegin":

Nicely cheeky epigram
Enrage a mistaken enemy;
It's nice to see how stubborn he is
Bowing my eager horns,
Involuntarily looks in the mirror
And he is ashamed to recognize himself;
It’s more pleasant if he, friends,
Howls foolishly: it’s me!

Ivan Andreevich Krylov was right when in his fable he said for all time:
There are many such examples in the world:
No one likes to recognize themselves in satire.

(Fable "The Mirror and the Monkey")

And here is a video from immortal tale Schwartz "An Ordinary Miracle".

Life is like a masquerade: vices walk around in the masks of virtues - so the truth has to put on the mask itself in order to debunk them...

Chekhov admired the courage of Shchedrin's fairy tales. Satire has always been valued for its boldness. Sometimes this merit alone was used to forgive a lack of talent and skill. Satire will always need courage - so as not to beat the downtrodden, but to criticize those who stand, and not just stand, but stand in power. Like Pushkin:

There is no grace for you,
With happiness you have a discord:
And you are beautiful inappropriately,
And you are smart beyond reason.

When the satirist Democritus was asked how he understood truth, he answered briefly:
- I am laughing.

Literature.

1. Fairy tale "Porridge from an axe."
2. Fairy tale “If you don’t like it, don’t listen.”
3. N. Leskov"Lefty."
4. A. Pushkin. Epigrams.
5. M. Saltykov-Shchedrin“The story of how one man fed two generals.”
6. A. Averchenko"Satyricon".

Unlike a life-like image, a conventional image either deforms the outlines of reality, violating its proportions, sharply colliding the real and the fantastic, or forms an image in such a way that what is depicted (be it a natural phenomenon, creatures of the animal kingdom, or attributes of material reality) implies an implied, second semantic image plan. In the first case we have a grotesque, in the second - an allegory and a symbol.

In a grotesque image, the real and the fantastic are not simply combined, because both can be dispersed across different figurative structures. In many works, real and fantastic characters coexist, but there is nothing grotesque here. The grotesque in literature arises when the real and the fantastic collide in uniform image(most often this is a grotesque character).

It is necessary that a “crack,” as it were, passes through the artistic fabric of the character, breaking it open real nature, and fiction poured into this gap. It is necessary that Gogol’s Major Kovalev’s nose suddenly disappear for some unknown reason, so that he puts on a general’s uniform and begins to walk along the avenue of “our northern capital.” Or so that the well-behaved obedient cat of Hoffmann’s musician Kreisler, as if partly parodying the actions of his owner, begins to go crazy in a love frenzy, exactly as the studious and burshi of Hoffmann’s times did, and even fill the waste paper sheets of Kreisler’s manuscript with samples of his “cat” prose.

On the other hand, the grotesque is conventional not only because it demonstratively destroys the life-like logic of reality. It is also conventional due to the special nature of its fiction. The fantastic, contained in the grotesque, should not seriously pretend to represent a different, transcendental “reality”. This is why the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch are not grotesque. The eschatological horror poured out on them no longer belongs to reality: it is from the world of apocalyptic prophecies. Likewise, they do not belong to the realm of the grotesque fantastic images medieval chivalric romance, his spirits, fairies, wizards and doubles (blond Isolde and dark-haired Isolde in Tristan and Isolde) - behind them is a naively living feeling of a “second” existence. Hoffmann’s completely prosaic archivist Lindgorst (“The Golden Pot”) in his fantastic incarnation may turn out to be an omnipotent wizard, but this second face of his is conditional exactly as much as the ironically dual nature of Hoffmann’s golden pot is conventional: either it is an attribute from the dreamland of “Djinnistan”, or or just a piquant detail of burgher life.

In a word, the grotesque opens up space for irony, extending to the “beyond.” The grotesque does not at all seek to pass itself off as a phenomenon of “other being.” In Hoffmann, however, he seems to oscillate between two worlds, but this oscillation is most often thoroughly ironic. Where Hoffmann actually has dips into the “other world” (“Majorat”), the din is no longer up to him for grotesque gaiety (even if inseparable from latent tragedy) - there (as, for example, in his “night” short stories) The romantically terrible reigns, and it is completely homogeneous, that is, it is precisely of an “exorbitant” nature.

Refusing life-like logic, the grotesque naturally refuses any externally life-like motivations. IN draft Gogol’s story “The Nose” we encounter the following explanation: “However, all this, no matter what is described here, was seen by the major in a dream.” Gogol removed this phrase in the final autograph, removed it, obeying an unmistakable sense of artistic truth. Had he left this explanation in the text of the story, its entire phantasmagoria would have been motivated in a completely life-like, psychologically natural, albeit illogical, “logic” of a dream. Meanwhile, it was important for Gogol to preserve the sense of the absurdity of the depicted reality, the absurdity that penetrates all its “cells” and constitutes the general background of life in which anything is possible. The fantastic convention of the grotesque here cannot be questioned by any psychological motivations: Gogol needs it in order to emphasize the essence, the law of reality, by virtue of which it is, so to speak, immanently insane.

The convention of the grotesque is always aimed precisely at the essence, in its name it explodes the logic of life-likeness. Kafka needed to turn his hero Gregor Samsa into a fantastic insect (the story “The Metamorphosis”) in order to further emphasize the absoluteness of alienation, the inescapability of which is all the more obvious because it extends to the family clan, seemingly designed to resist the disunity that is splitting the world. “Nothing separates people like everyday life,” Kafka wrote in his diary.

Grotesque presupposes a special, perhaps maximum, degree of artistic freedom in handling the material of reality. It seems that this freedom is already on the verge of self-will, and it seems that it could result in a cheerful feeling of complete dominance over a constraining and often tragically absurd reality. In fact, boldly colliding heterogeneous things, shaking the cause-and-effect relationships of existence and encroaching on the dominance of necessity, playing with chance, doesn’t the creator of the grotesque have the right to feel like a demiurge in this world of cheerful artistic “willfulness”, redrawing the map of the universe anew?

But given the seemingly obvious omnipotence, the freedom of the grotesque is not unlimited, and the “willfulness” of the artist is nothing more than a semblance. The daring of fantasy is combined in the grotesque with the tenacious vigilance of thought. After all, both are aimed here at exposing the law of life. Hoffmann's Little Tsakhes (“Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober”) is just a funny freak, endowed with the ability to transfer other people's virtues, talent and beauty through the efforts of the compassionate fairy Rosabelweide. His tricks are insidious, he brings grief and confusion into the world of lovers, in which dignity and goodness are still alive. But it’s as if the machinations of Hoffmann’s fantastic degenerate are not limitless, and at the will of the author he completes his tricks with the most in a comical way, drowning in a jar of milk. But isn’t this, it seems, a confirmation that the free spirit of grotesque fantasy, thickening the atmosphere of life’s absurdity, is always able to defuse it, for the spirits of evil it calls to life seem to be always in its power. If only... If not for the “composition” of the vital soil in which Hoffmann’s image is deeply rooted. This soil is the “iron age,” the “merchant age,” as Pushkin put it, and it cannot be abolished by a capricious impulse of imagination. The desire to devalue everything that is marked by the life of the spirit, replacing and compensating for the lack of one’s own spiritual powers with a leveling equivalent of wealth (“Zinnober’s golden hair” is a sign of this predatory and leveling force); the audacity and pressure of insignificance, sweeping away truth, goodness and beauty in its path - all this that would establish itself in the bourgeois attitude towards the world was captured by Hoffmann at the very origins of birth.

The ironic joy of the grotesque not only does not exclude tragedy, but even presupposes it. In this sense, the grotesque is located in aesthetic area seriously funny. The grotesque is full of surprises, quick transitions from funny to serious (and vice versa). The very line between the comic and the tragic is erased here, one imperceptibly flows into the other. “Laughter through tears” and tears through laughter. A comprehensive tragicomedy of existence. The triumph of soulless civilization over culture has created an inexhaustible breeding ground for the grotesque. The displacement from life of everything that owes the fullness of its flowering to the organic principles of existence, the multiplication of impersonal mechanical forms in everything, including in human psychology, the predominance of his herd instincts over individual ones, ethical relativism, blurring the boundary between good and evil - this is the reality , feeding the diversity of grotesque forms in the literature of the 20th century. Under these conditions, the grotesque increasingly takes on a tragic overtones. In Kafka's novel The Castle, the deadening bureaucratic automation of life, like a plague, spreads around the castle, this nest of absurdity, acquiring demonic strength and power over people. Power is all the more inevitable because, according to Kafka, “a subconscious desire to renounce freedom lives in man.” The grotesque of the 20th century is no longer able to triumph over the absurd through the purifying power of laughter alone.

The grotesque, put forward by the artist at the center of the work, creates a kind of “infecting” radiation, capturing almost all areas of the image and, above all, style. The grotesque style is often filled with ironic grimaces of words, demonstratively illogical “constructions,” and the author’s comic pretense. This is Gogol’s style in the story “The Nose,” a style over which the thick “shadow” of a grotesque character falls. Imitation of indescribable frivolity, naked inconsistency of judgments, comic delights over trifles - this all seems to come from the character. This psychological “field” of his is reflected in Gogol’s narrative, and the author’s very syllable turns into a mirror reflecting a grotesque object. Therefore, at Gogol’s will, the absurdity of the world and man penetrates into the style. The grotesque initiates a special fluidity of style: quick transitions from pathos to irony, the inclusion of the imitated voice and intonation of the character, and sometimes the reader, into the author’s speech fabric (the narrative passage that concludes the story “The Nose”).

The logic of the grotesque pushes the author to such plot moves that naturally follow from the “semi-fantastic” nature of the character. If one of the Shchedrin mayors (“The History of a City”) has a stuffed head exuding a seductive gastronomic aroma, then it is not surprising that one day they attack it with knives and forks and devour it. If Hoffmann's ugly Zinnober is a pitiful dwarf, then it is not incredible that he ends up in a jar and drowns in milk.

If you have met young girls on the street dressed excessively, provocatively and heavily plastered, then know that with their grotesque appearance they want to attract attention to themselves. What does Grotesque mean?? I recommend reading a few more interesting articles what does Taliban mean, how to understand the abbreviation pre-trial detention center, what is SBU? This term was borrowed from the French language" grot", which can be translated as " cave".
However, most of all the word Grotesque is used in literature, characterizing with it some contradictory, surreal, horror-comic and real mystical descriptions a strange, blood-stirring, painfully interesting reality. In literature, the grotesque is a type of artistic figurativeness that sharpens and generalizes the forms of existence with the help of a contrasting and bizarre combination of the fantastic and the real, caricatures and similarities.

Grotesque- this is a special type of artistic imagery, tragicomic or comical, highlighting and generalizing life manifestations with the help of alogism and hyperbole, fantastic and real

Hyperbole in painting- this is an ornament in which figurative and decorative motifs are mixed, in simple words, this is a heap various types and styles

Don’t forget Gogol’s work “The Nose”, in which this “honored” organ went for a walk around St. Petersburg. I recommend checking out the works Franz Kafka, whose books simply make some impressionable citizens go crazy.

Origin of the word Grotesque