Form: a quarterly of the arts (1.1916/1917)

Edmund J

hate and fear. Another similar way of putting it might be
to state intrinsic Beauty as the Principle of Good made
manifest; and the intrinsically Grotesque as conversely the
principle of Evil displayed.

SHOULD this be accepted (and I only put it forward as
my personal view,and in no sense definitive) it will be
seen that while Beauty and the Grotesque occupy be-
tween them the entire gamut of expression, there is a sort of
neutral country—the “included middle” between the two
extremes —a debatable frontier, a “limbo” as it were, where
caricatureandprettinessmeet. Caricaturetoucheshandswith
the grotesque—and evil communications sometimes affect
itsgoodmanners. Prettiness touches hands with caricature;
being one might say, a reversed caricature of Beauty, an
ansmic edition of it, by subtraction of character, whereas
caricature works by addition and may, in opposition to
anasmic prettiness, be appropriately called “sanguinary
caricature.” I speak as one grotesque. It might be called
the feminine of caricature—which above all is masculine.
Prettiness, carried to extremes, may also with caricature,
partake of the grotesque, even in the sinister meaning which
I give to the word. Here I am not labouring a paradox.

It is only necessary to examine a few modern fashion plates
to appreciate this truth. “To paint the lily, to rouge the
rose” is the way of corruption. That they are the work for
the most partof quite virtuous young ladies does not weaken
me. We may have unconscious vice, very vicious, just as
unconscious humour, is thefunniest. The viceof thefashion
plate is its vapidity.

ALSO in this limboorborderland,lies the absurd—to
me not necessarily grotesque, though of ten so called.
While the absurd may also be grotesque, the gro-
tesque in its essence is never absurd. The grotesque is cynical
andcruelandmay cause cynical,bitter or hystericallaughter:
but full throated deep lunged laughter that brings aching
sides and tears totheeyes,never. TheMacabre—orlbelieve
more accurately “Macabre'” presumably from the name
of the painter who first worked this vein, lies nearer to the
indisputable grotesque, even if we do not include it entirely.

THE Grim with the Macabre I place balanced as on a
razor-edge between the sublime and the ridiculous;
a touch would send it over either way; its feat is
to remain so balanced; so keeping us with our breath held,
admiring its skill, while perhaps hoping for the added thrill
of a fall to ruin.

WITHOUT being a Puritan,far from it, you will
say, the merely pornographic I put aside, with
all simply suggestive, nudging impurities and
sniggering immoralities masquerading as high Art, as also
the equally prurient opposition to the Nude.

Ipropose, since the subject is really enormous, to limit my
paper fairly closely, by excluding the grotesque as an
affair of human intellect and its creation, and to glance
more particularly at the grotesque as we see it ready made
to our hand by the Creator of us all. And this may, by going
back, help us still further forward, and prove suggestive to
invention, though I only touch the fringe of its skirts.

IN nature itself the borderland of the “funny” and absurd
exists. TheCreator has condemnedcertain ofhisbeings
to a lifelong absurdity, making of some of them mere

. Sullivan

“figures of fun” even when he has not damned them to a
lifetime of hatred and fear. Jove, Jupiter, Jahveh, Jehovah,
callhim what you will—must have been at his most Jovial
when he created the Dodo; particularly when hestuckfor
still greater finish to the absurdity, the little fantastic bunch
of feathers upon the comic rump. It is a sadder world for its
extinction. Our forefathers were too stupid to accept the
joke and killed it. The penguin with his pompous alder-
manic shirtfront where one is almost disappointed to find no
“Gold Albert” the strange darkbilled echidna, thetoucans
and hornbills, the giraffe, the daddy-long-legs, even the
waddling goose, are all masterpieces from the workshop
of the absurd. The jests of the Creator though subtle are
obvious—so obvious that even a Scot can see them, unless as
sometimes happens, he is blinded by theology, andthinks to
accuse the Gods of a sense of humour irreverent. Do you
remember Rossetti’s Limerick on Val Prinsep?—

“There was a Creator called God
Who created some things very odd—

He made a man Val, and maintain it I shall
He’s a serious reflection on God.”

Burns attributed the creation of Andrew Turner, whoever
he may have been, to the Devil:—

“In se’enteen hunder ’n forty nine
The deil gat stuff to mak a swine
And coost it in a corner;

But wilily he changed his plan
An’ shaped it something like a man
An’ ca’d ’it Andrew Turner.”

SO that Satan, on the good authority of Burns, was at
work creating man so recently as to be well within a
hundred years of living memory.

ONE might well agree that the Devils shared in the
Creation when we consider some of thefinishedpro-
ducts of the grotesque; such for instance as some
of the apes and baboons exhibit, for the Creator seems
to have conceived and carried them to completion in
loathing, hatred, and contempt of his own idea from

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