#kayser

Sandra Hilton photographed by William Helburn, 1966

“Essentially the grotesque in literature is a method of investigating certain metaphysical problems through fictive constructions. In other words the grotesque projects a world vision that is framed by distinct techniques: in the best grotesque art, vision and technique must function congruently. The vision itself presents existence as deprived of meaning. All traces of natural order are willfully subverted so as to produce an alienated world, a world in which man, sensing the radical discontinuity of things, is estranged from his environment. This division between man and his environment is what actually produces the grotesque, or the absurd, wherein man discovers that in a universe which is disjointed and senseless, which is contradictory in every aspect, he is something less than what he should be. Camus correctly calls this division between man and his world, a "divorce," underscoring the concept by remarking that "the feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but it . . . bursts from the comparison of a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it."

To the extent that both words refer to the alienated world, we can say that the grotesque and the absurd are synonymous. Woltgang Kayser, whose definition still remains the best in modern criticism, states that the grotesque is predicated upon this alienated vision, upon what he terms

THE ESTRANGED WORLD . . . . Suddenness and surprise are essential elements . . . . We are so strongly affected and terrified because it is our world which ceases to be reliable, and we feel that we would be unable to live in this changed world. The grotesque instills the fear of life rather than the tear of death. Structurally, it presupposes that the categories which apply to our world view become inapplicable. We have observed the progressive dissolution . . . the fusion of realms which we know to be separated, the abolition of the law of statics, the loss of identity, the distortion of "natural" size and shape, the suspension of the category of objects, the destruction of the personality, and the fragmentation of the historical order . . . . THE GROTESQUE IS A PLAY WITH THE ABSURD . . . . AN ATTEMPT TO INVOKE AND SUBDUE THE DEMONIC ASPECTS OF THE WORLD.

Kayser's analysis suggests that the grotesque is a literature of extreme situation, and indeed mayhem, chaos, and violence seem to predominate in the genre, causing characters to be projected in curious ways. As the world disintegrates and categories merge, these characters frequently become burlesque figures whose actions mime the grotesque world which they inhabit.

Black Nylon Lace Girdle, ca. 1955, English.

By Kayser.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Boys  😎

I still think most of them look similar (? my bad and they look like a Kpop band XD

Do you recognize any of these bad boys? 😏 most of them were kids in the past story :3