The Grotesque and the Age of the Ugly

"Grotesque" is one of the words the meaning of which will vary, even significantly, with context.  In the world of art, it may be fanciful and absurd and not necessarily ugly and repulsive in an exaggerated sense.  It need not be disturbing, in other words; it may even be considered playful.  But in other contexts the grotesque is abnormal, monstrous and ugly, malformed.  Which I think is to say disturbing.

The word seems apt to our times and the state of our world when given its darker sense.  Of course we have more than our share of absurdity now, but the absurd is always with us as is war and the poor.  It's part of the nature of our beastliness.  There is nothing remarkable about it. What we also see, though, is ugliness.  This is an ugly time and place.  

The grotesqueness of the 20th century is typified by its monstrous nature.  It was a century of colossal monsters--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.  Mass murder by ideologues characterizes that era.  It's quite early yet, of course, but judging from what has taken place in the 21st century we won't have such monsters.  Instead, this century will be full of nasty, spiteful, self-righteous, bigoted, ignorant, loud and vulgur figures.  Ours is the Age of the Ugly.

Consider the picture appearing at the start of this post.  It's one of the grotesque figures appearing in the margins of the remarkable Luttrell Pslater, a version of the Book of Psalms prepared in the 14th century at the behest of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, lord of the manor in Irnham, England.  This document is considered of great significance for its portrayal of life in medieval times in that area, on parchment.  People are shown engaging in a variety of agricultural and rural pursuits.  Sir Geoffrey appears in full armour.  The delightfull pastime of bear-baiting is shown, chickens are fed, corn harvested; people dance, wrestle, play, work.

Amidst the psalms and the illustrations there appear abnormal, impossible creatures like whatever is shown above.  Perhaps I speak only for myself, but these creatures, made up as they are of the limbs and faces of different animals and peoples, and sometimes other things, may well be absurd and even amusing in a certain sense, but overall have a nightmarish quality to them.  They're creepy.

Illustrators and scribes of medieval times are known to have drawn odd and humorous figures on manuscripts of various kinds.  One can imagine that they would want to add some frivolity to what must have been very difficult work.   But I find it hard to characterize this particular drawing as comic.  I wonder what was the artist thinking, and I doubt he was trying to be funny.

It was a very religious time, a supernatural time, and the work being prepared was religious in nature.  Are such illustrations intended to contrast with the scenes of normal life depicted for the purpose of noting that the unnatural and demonic inhabited the same world and were among us, even though unseen?  Do they in some way mock the people shown, especially the high and the mighty?  Are they intended to reflect people as they in fact are and not as they appear--show normal people to be abnormal, twisted and repulsive if their true characteristics are known?

It's hard to say what kind of art will be created in this century.  I suppose there will be those who actually paint in addition to those who generate computer images of various kinds (at least, I hope there will be such artists).  How will the shoddy, craven, venal people, high and low, we see all about us be portrayed by our artists, if not engaged in gun fights and car chases and sex, all of which seem ubiquitous in our entertainments?  

Artists of the grotesque in this era won't create incredible, fanciful creatures or combinations of them, or even monsters, I think.  Instead I imagine them drawing misshapen, grubby, rat-like characters engaged in mean and petty acts, disgusting rather than disturbing, tiresome instead of fearful, farcical rather than absurd.

Compared to What

There are more than one versions of the jazz composition Compared to What.  My favorite is the live version performed by Les McCann, Eddie Harris and others at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival.  I wish I could say I was there for the performance, obviously because in that case I would have been there for the performance (I'm not sure how or why "wish I could say" came to be used in this manner).  It's a great performance of a great song.

Judging from the lyrics, the song is a social commentary of the kind popular in the late 1960s, which as far as jazz is concerned may have been unusual even then.  Jazz isn't commentary; at least not commentary in the form of comment.  The comments made expressly in the song are rather interesting though, at least to me.  "Tryin' to make it real compared to what?"  Compared to what, indeed.

Real, compared to what?  It may be a philosophical question, of the kind debated no doubt futilely over the years.  What is real?  What does it mean to be real?  The question "compared to what?" should be asked whenever such "questions" are raised, at least for the purpose of determining what is actually being asked--if anything.  It isn't clear to me anything is being asked if that question is asked in response to the question being asked.  Real compared to a dream?  Real compared to a hallucination?  To make a comparison one must be able to compare one thing with another.  We already know there is a difference, so it's foolish to act or think as if there is none.

Consider what Wild Bill James is saying in the quote appearing at the head of this post.  The use of the words "ought to be" is interesting to me.  Why does he assume we should be what he claims we have the ability to be?  Assume he's right, and we have these resources we fail to use.  Who's to say we can use them to their fullest extent?  If we can, who's to say that we should?  Perhaps we don't for a perfectly good reason.  Perhaps we wouldn't be recognizably human if we did.  

Such a quote (like the quote referring to truth's or an idea's "cash value") suggests that James may have been the American thinker some say he was (in the sense that Bertrand Russell thought the Pragmatists were typically American because they were concerned with what works, not with what is true).  James seems to be complaining that we aren't as productive as we could be.  Just think of what we could accomplish if we tried hard to do as much as we can!  Shoes for industry!  Shoes for the dead! (Does anyone remember the Firesign Theatre?)

Well, he may have meant something like that, but I would guess he refers more to the human condition than human potential.  James was more psychologist than philosopher--some would say, of course, that he was more a novelist than either a psychologist or philosopher.  He said that what we experienced in life was in the nature of a blooming, buzzing confusion, if memory serves.  Dewey made the same sort of point, though in a less felicitous way, when he wrote that we only think when we encounter problems, otherwise living almost automatically, by habit.

Perhaps Compared to What the song wonders just what it meant to say in 1969 that one was trying to make it real.  Real, compared to the president's war, to preachers preaching, to old ladies and their dogs, etc.?  Remeber when people said such things as "I'm trying to find the real me"?  As if they were not what they were.  The unfortunate fact is that all of it was real, just as all of it is real now.  Perhaps we can make it, ourselves, our lives better.  But we're real and other persons and things are real, not dreams or hallucinations, no matter that we are or they are good or bad.

Postcard From a Pandemic (With Apologies to Wallace Stevens)

Children visiting our bones
Will know that they were once
Nimble, motivated to movement

But in that fateful spring, fast with life
Had clustered in dull arrangement
Lessened to mere being, in place

And know that left with our bones
Was little more than what was
Felt and seen not by them, but by

Fractious, craven minions of an
Ignorance inaugurated in a world
Beyond our doors under beclouded skies

We knew full well the world that was
Once not merely known but grasped
By spirit and skin, but made an image

Empty of us, watched beyond barren walls
By shadows stretched by no sun
Spiritless and broken, left alone by all else


This is my creation, obviously derived from Postcard from a Volcano, a poem written by Wallace Stevens, that other lawyer who was a poet. Of course I'm being silly. I'm no poet though he certainly was a great one. But it seems adequate and to my purpose, which is to shamelessly borrow from him a theme, to the extent I can recognize it. His poem depicted the aftermath of what is ostensibly a natural disaster, presumably the eruption of a volcano, and children of the future viewing some of the remains of what had been destroyed; the bones of those disaster struck.

It's more than likely, of course, that Stevens wasn't writing about what seems to be written about. Perhaps he was inspired by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. or A.D. and the fascinating, uncovered, ruins of the cities it destroyed, Pompeii and Herculaneum. I found the ruins of Pompeii fascinating in a kind of macabre way when I visited them, even marred as they were by the placement of some huge, vaguely ancient looking sculpture and other objects created by some artist which were strewn, thoughtlessly I think, about the forum. Stevens may have had some cultural or societal disaster in mind, resulting from some cultural or societal deficiency.

Now we have our own disaster to cope with, and can if we wish use it as a metaphor, and I suppose I am in one way. But there's a sense of the unreal about it if the conduct of our fellows is any guide. We don't seem to take it all that seriously. Perhaps here in God's favorite country that's a result of the fact that we're presided over by a self-pitying, scapegoating narcissist. Perhaps we have the president we deserve, being for the most part self-pitying, scapegoating and self-involved ourselves.

Unreal, as well, as we're required to isolate ourselves from the real--that is to say, the rest of the world. But we now do that even in normal circumstances in the sense that we no longer experience it directly, or would rather not do so. No, I'm not referring to that peculiar philosophical doctrine that we never experience the rest of the world, only sense data, or the Kantian assumption that there is some unknowable "thing in itself" lurking behind every perceived rock and tree. Instead, I'm referring to the fact that most of the world is experienced by us in these times through some device like a smartphone, or PC or tablet, TV, etc.

In a way we do now in isolation what we would do in any case. Pestilence is pictured above as one of the infamous four horseman. The current pestilence is pictured by most of us as well, through various media. It won't become a part of our lives we take seriously until we or those we huddle with or think of while we huddle become its victims.

Doomed To Repeat It

I wonder whether the interesting mask and attire shown above would suffice to protect us in this time of COVID 19.  I suspect it would serve as well as, or perhaps slightly less well, than what we must  now resort to in our efforts to "flatten the curve."

This remarkable outfit was apparently invented by a French doctor sometime in the 17th century, to be worn by doctors who, as public servants, sought to treat victims of the plague(s) of that time.  Imagine if you can, my fellow Americans, doctors providing health services at public expense!  It's no wonder so many died back then, taking assistance from public health care providers whose very existence was, and is, an abomination in the eyes of our righteous, and insistently capitalistic, Lord.

If not sinful in the eyes of God, this outfit, complete with aromatic herbs and spices kept in the beak of the doctor-bird, was probably not all that useful one would think.  But given what's taking place now, just why would one think that?  In the past it was thought that epidemics were caused by "bad air" (miasma).  Now of course, we don't believe bad air is the culprit.  Instead we think that the air is bad or potentially bad because it is rife with bacteria or some microscopic things which are generated by a coughing or sneezing victim of the virus, or a victim who, curiously, does not cough or sneeze or display any symptoms associated with our modern plague.  Which, when you think of it, makes such air....bad.

I'm uncertain how porous the amusing bird masks were, but it occurs to me that such doctors, well-covered by the hat and long robe or coat and carrying a cane or stick by which they examined plague victims, were doing much the same as what we're doing now.  That is to say, covering themselves to prevent contact with bad air whether in the form of a miasma or as a conveyance of the invisible (to what we call "the naked eye") virus.  I am curious why a bird mask was used, however.  I think an elephant mask would have worked as well, and been even more charming.

Now we're told we should wear masks of a much less interesting sort, but we have much fewer than we need.  So, we do what that French doctor did, and dream up some substitutes for them, made of cloth, or use bandanas and scarves, while waiting for supplies of the appropriate mask to be made or while we accept the charity of other nations such as Russia or China to obtain them, or for which we pay them.

It's said our Glorious Republic is the most favored nation in the world, but we must go begging for masks we don't have from old, and probably current, enemies.  As they say:  "How the mighty have fallen."  Perhaps other nations will form something like the Peace Corps and help the poor, suffering people of the U.S.A.  Mothers will tell children they should eat well and be healthy, and cite the example of the poor children in America.

How different are we from those who faced epidemics centuries ago? Our religious leaders (those in the U.S.) declare that God will protect us, as long as we keep coming to church or prayer meetings despite warnings.  Our president keeps referring to miracle drugs of one kind or another and makes unsubstantiated predictions, flaunting his ignorance.  A train engineer in California drove his train off the tracks rather than have its cargo delivered to a hospital ship because he thought the ship somehow part of a conspiracy regarding the virus.  Gun sales have soared.  We're no more enlightened now than we were then.  In response to fear we become the desperate primitives we were.

Welcome to the past we're doomed to repeat.

Of Masks and Masques

Edgar Poe (I understand he preferred not to be called "Allan" as he and his foster or adopted father of that name didn't get along) wrote a story entitled The Masque of the Red Death.  It involved a Duke or Count I think, or some titled person, who held a great ball or entertainment while a deadly plague called as you might expect "The Red Death" raged.  It was held behind locked doors; precautions were taken to prevent any uninvited person from entering.  As the festivities continued, a red, spectral figure appeared and roamed about.  Eventually, all attending died.  The story was made into a film starring Vincent Price, who starred in several films sometimes very loosely based on a story by Poe.  He wore a red cloak and hood and, with his face painted red, he lurked or stalked about while those unlucky enough to be there feasted and danced and, in the end, died.

Et in Arcadia Ego is a theme of the story, I would think.  But it may not be the only, or even the primary theme.  Death is everywhere and everyplace, and even in a utopia, especially in a time of sickness or plague. But what is it to purposefully deny or disregard it while reveling in abandon, as Tom Petty would say, or at least said or sang?  A display of sangfroid, of despair, of perversity, or callousness--while those barred from the entertainment suffer?  Not a display of ignorance, as the risk and even the certainty of death is known by all in the story, but neither is it a display of acceptance, tranquil or regretful.

One thing is certain, and that is that Poe was not interested in expressing any sense of contentment or peaceful resignation in the face of death.  Being a writer in Romantic times and partial to grim or mysterious themes, despair would be more likely, or perhaps a rumination on the frivolousness and transience of human life.

A masque is a kind of entertainment.  A mask is used to conceal, deceive or frighten.  Perhaps the masque, the entertainment, in Poe's story was intended or hoped to be a way to deceive death, or at least the participants in the masque, for a time. The urge to forget.   Nepenthe being quaffed as in The Raven.

I can't help but wonder what writers and other artists will make of the great plague of our time, if it proves to be as impressively destructive as those of the past, or even as malaria, or "the pox" as it was called.  We've shut out the rest of the world too, but the virus is here and spreading.

 What is left, after the slew of shows and movies involving zombie apocalypses, nuclear holocausts and other catastrophes like asteroid impacts?  We've already developed "entertainments" about pandemics of several different kinds, or about outbreaks of some deadly bacterial strain or other.   We've created so many masques regarding the end of humanity that it's difficult to conceive of new or different such entertainments.  Perhaps we've become so accustomed to the idea that the world will end in some spectacular way that we'll lack any concern when and if it actually takes place.

There are of course those who firmly believe in the apocalypse and even eagerly await it.  It will be easy enough to construe any disaster as consistent with the Book of Revelation.  Those who believe  aren't known to be particular in this respect.  Pestilence is one of the Four Horsemen, so COVID 19 fits into it rather well, if it should turn out very bad.

Thus do the Four Horseman serve as masks of a kind.  They represent the consequences of humanity's ignorance, greed and avarice which are masked by the claim that it was all foretold, all a part of God's plan--inevitable, so why hope or try to avoid it?