That the word "grotesque" applies to three different realms—the creative process, the work of art itself, and its reception—is significant and appropriate as an indication that it has the makings of a basic esthetic category. This threefold aspect is characteristic of the work of art in general which, in direct contrast to all other forms of production, is literally "created." Its unique structure enables the work of art to preserve its identity however much of its "cause" it may have absorbed. It has the strength to rise above this "occasion." And finally, in contradistinction to other and different kinds of use, the work of art is "received." It can only be experienced in the act of reception, regardless of any modifications arising from it.

The modification and expansion of esthetic concepts in the eighteenth century was largely connected with the changes in the reception of the works of art. What was previously taken to be the designation of objectively verifiable tangible forms was now primarily regarded as an indication of mental responses, or at least as e cause of such responses. The history of the word "grotesque," which clearly illustrates this change, is in this respect characteristic of the far-reaching developments which took place in that period. The counterblow against this procedure favored by the Sturm und Drang was struck by Goethe during his Italian journey and by Karl Philipp Moritz. Both wanted to evolve clear-cut esthetic categories unrelated to reception and dealing primarily with the work of art itself, which was no longer to be gauged by its tangible and measurable forms but by its structure. Our contemporary esthetics and poetics follow in their footsteps, and I myself find it necessary to speak of the grotesque—if it is to gain currency as an esthetic category—as a comprehensive structural principle of works of art.

Nevertheless, it remains true that the grotesque is experienced only in the act of reception. Yet it is entirely possible that things are regarded as grotesque even though structurally there is no reason for calling them so. Those who are unfamiliar with the culture of the Incas will consider many of their sculptures to be grotesque, but perhaps that which we regard as nightmarish and ominously demonic, that is, the medium through which some horror, anguish, or fear of the incomprehensible is expressed, is a familiar form that belongs to a perfectly intelligible frame of reference. Only our ignorance justifies our use of the word "grotesque" in such a case, and analogous examples can easily be found in far less remote regions or periods. Art history is currently seeking to decipher Hieronymus Bosch's pictorial language. If it succeeds, we may have proof that Bosch did not mean his pictures to be grotesque in the proper sense of the word, and that the effect engendered by his oeuvre, probably unequaled in the Occidental history of the grotesque, is essentially based on a misunderstanding. On the other hand, it could also be shown, as we did in the case of Wilhelm Busch, that the grotesque elements to be found in certain works are not properly judged when interpreted in the comic or humorous sense. All these experiences teach us not to define the grotesque exclusively on the basis of its effect, although it is really impossible to avoid the vicious circle. Even in defining the structural properties of the grotesque we have to refer to its reception, with which we cannot dispense under any circumstances. It is certainly true, however, that a prolonged interest in the works of art themselves helps us to develop a greater ability to judge hem. Ultimately, it is this ability which lies at the root of personality and provides a refuge for all art. The way through scientific observation—which is the straight one when theoretical insights are concerned—is only a detour, albeit a useful one.)

An inadequate understanding of the grotesque is possible; the individual forms and detachable contents are ambiguous and suffused with the most diverse meanings. Modern stylistic research is accustomed to such conditions. Nevertheless, the are certain specific forms and motifs which are predisposed toward certain contents. We have had ample occasion to observe repetitions of subject matter, and there is good reason for listing some of the most important themes. Among them belong all "monsters." Even the ornamental grotesque employed the fabulous creatures enumerated by Walter Scott in his definition of the grotesque. If Benvenuto Cellini wanted to substitute "monstrosities" for "grotesques," this shows that he considered this trait as the dominant one. This trait traditionally prevailed from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in the "Temptation of St. Anthony," by which the artists of subsequent ages were inspired. Another pictorial source was provided by the biblical Apocalypse, since, like the demons around St. Anthony, the animals rising from the abyss obviously bear their own meaning. But real animals also frequently recur in the grotesques. Even in animals that are familiar to him, modern man may experience the strangeness of something totally different from himself and suggestive of abysmal ominousness. Certain animals are especially suitable to the grotesque—snakes, owls, toads, spiders—the nocturnal and creeping animals which inhabit realms apart from and inaccessible to man. Partly for the same reason (to which their uncertain origin is added) the same observation applies to vermin. It seems as if the original meaning of that word were still alive, although we are no longer aware of it. In Old High German, zebar means sacrificial animal. Vermin (Ungeziefer), accordingly, is everything that is unclean and unworthy of being sacrificed. It belongs not to God but to the evil powers:

Welcome, and hail to thee,
Patron, to-day! 
We're flying and humming,
We hear and obey.
Singly and silently
Us thou hast sown;
Hither, by thousands,
Father, we've flown.
The imp in the bosom
Is snugly concealed,
But lice in the fur-coat
Are sooner revealed. (translated by Bayard Taylor)

The grotesque animal incarnate, however, is the bat (Fledermous), the very name of which points to an unnatural fusion of organic realms concretized in this ghostly creature. And strange haits complement its strange appearance. An animal of the dusk, the bat flies noiselessly, has exceedingly subtle senses, and moves so rapidly that one could easily suspect it of sucking the blood of sleep: animals. It is strange even in the state of repose when its wings cover it like a coat and it hangs, head down, from a rafter, more like piece of dead matter than a living thing.

The plant world, too, furnishes numerous motifs, and not only for ornamental grotesques. The inextricable tangle of the jungle with its ominous vitality, in which nature itself seems to have erased the difference between plants and animals, is so grotesque that no exaggeration is needed. The enlarging microscope or a glance into otherwise hidden organic realms reveals grotesque sceneries as well. What Serenus Zeitblom and Adrian Leverkühn witness in the aquarium of Adrian's father, Alfred Kubin has experienced in reality. Paul Klee also once admitted that he was always haunted by impressions he gained in the Naples aquarium.

The characteristic motifs of the grotesque also include all the tooIs which unfold a dangerous life of their own. The pointed objects of Wilhelm Busch have more recently been supplanted by modern instruments of technology, especially the noisy motor vehicles. The fusion of organic and mechanical elements offers as easy target as disproportion did in the past. In modern pictures, airplanes appear in the form of giant dragonflies—or dragonflies in that of airplanes—and tanks move as if they were monstrous animals. This technical outlook is so familiar to modern man that he has no difficulties in devising a "technical" grotesque in which the instruments are demonically destructive and overpower their makers.

The mechanical object is alienated by being brought to life, the human being by being deprived of it. Among the most persistent motifs of the grotesque we find human bodies reduced to puppets, marionettes, and automata, and their faces frozen into masks. From interspersed masks of the ornamental grotesque to the present e the theme has been a popular one, although in the course of time it underwent characteristic changes. Even in Bonaventura's Nachtwachen the mask, instead of covering a living and breathing face, had taken over the role of the face Itself. If one were to tear the mask off, the grinning image of the bare skull would come to light. Ensor's and Paul Weber's figures are born with masks. Even the grinning skull and the moving skeleton are motifs the macabre content of which structurally aligns them with the grotesque. Again and again, I have mentioned the influence exerted by the Dance of Death, which had only to slough off its didactic skin to enrich the vocabulary of grotesque forms.

In the insane person, human nature itself seems to have taken on ominous overtones. Once more it is as if an impersonal force, an alien and inhuman spirit, had entered the soul. The encounter with madness is one of the basic experiences of the grotesque which life forces upon us. In their shaping of the grotesque, the Romanticists and the moderns have taken over this theme with notable frequency. But the phenomenon also leads us to the Schaffenspoetik [poetics concerned with the creative process]. From an early date, insanity, quasi-insanity, and dreams were used to define the source of creativity. Originally this was done by critics who made the work of art a criterion of the artist's state of mind and who regarded the world of the grotesque as a correlative of insanity. This has been a massive statement about the structure of the grotesque, and we have now reached the point where the actual definition has to be made.

The grotesque is a structure. Its nature could be summed up in a a phrase that has repeatedly suggested itself to us: THE GROTESQUE IS THE ESTRANGED WORLD. But some additional explanation is required. For viewed from the outside, the world of the fairy tale could also be regarded as strange and alien. Yet its world is not estranged, that is to say, the elements in it which are familiar and natural to us do not suddenly turn out to be strange and ominous. It is our world which has to be transformed. Suddenness and surprise are essential elements of the grotesque. In literature the grotesque appears in a scene or an animated tableau. Its representations in the plastic arts, too, do not refer to a state of repose but to an action, a "pregnant moment" (Ensor), or at least—in the case of Kafka—a situation that is filled with ominous tension. In this way the kind of strangeness we have in mind is somewhat more closely defined. 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 fear of life rather than fear of death. Structurally, it presupposes that the categories which apply to our world view become inapplicable. We have observed the progressive dissolution which has occurred since the ornamental art of the Renaissance: 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 personality, and the fragmentation of the historical order .

But who effects the estrangement of the world, who announces his presence in this overwhelming ominousness? Only now do we plumb the final depth of the horror that is inspired by the transformed world. These questions remain unanswered. Apocalyptic beasts emerge from the abyss; demons intrude upon us. If we were able to name these powers and relate them to the cosmic order, the grotesque would lose its essential quality. We have discussed such instances in connection with Bosch and E. T. A. Hoffmann. What intrudes remains incomprehensible, inexplicable, and impersonal. One could use another descriptive phrase and characterize the grotesque as the objectivation of the "It," the ghostly "It"—in contrast to the psychological "It" (es freut mich: it pleases me = I am glad) and the cosmic "It" (es regnet: it rains)—the "It" which Ammann defined as the third meaning of the impersonal pronoun.

We are unable to orient ourselves in the alienated world, because it is absurd. Here the difference between the grotesque and the tragic becomes apparent. Initially the tragic also harbored the absurd. We can see this in the tragic nuclei of Greek tragedy. It is absurd for a mother to kill her children, for a son to murder his father or a father his son, and for a man to eat the flesh of his sons. The Atrides myth is full of absurdities. But, first of all, these are individual deeds. Furthermore, they are deeds which endanger the principles of the moral order of the world. The grotesque is not concerned with individual actions or the destruction of the moral order (although both factors may be partly involved). It is primarily the expression of our failure to orient ourselves in the physical universe. Finally, the tragic does not remain within the sphere of incomprehensibility. As an artistic genre, tragedy opens precisely within the sphere of the meaningless and the absurd the possibility of a deeper meaning—in fate, which is ordained by the gods, and in the greatness of the tragic hero, which is only revealed through suffering. The creator of grotesques, however, must not and cannot suggest a meaning. Nor must he distract our attention from the absurd. If Keller in his Kammacher had described with compassion his protagonists' progress and their race toward destruction, the ensuing emotional perspective would have weakened the effect of the grotesque.

But of what nature is this perspective? And from what point of view is the alienated world represented? Both questions lead us back to the creative process. One answer was given again and again through the ages by artists as well as by critics: the estranged world appears in the vision of the dreamer or daydreamer or in the twilight of the transitional moments. What is so clearly attested in the autobiographical writings of the Romantics and Surrealists—namely, that this vision takes hold of "real" things and seeks to create enduring forms—could also be shown to be true of the artists of earlier ages. But quite as often we came upon confessions of a different order. According to these, the unity of perspective in the grotesque consists in an unimpassioned view of life on earth as an empty, meaningless puppet play or a caricatural marionette theatre. The divinity of poets and the shaping force of nature have altogether ceased to exist. If Kubin harks back to the ancient topos of the threatrum mundi: 'We, the creatures most mysterious to ourselves, are poets as well as directors of, and characters in, the play," the apparent answer only increases the mystification. For here, too, a real answer cannot be given. The two above-mentioned points of view may well correspond to the two basic types of the grotesque which our survey of the graphic arts has helped us to isolate: the "fantastic" grotesque with its oneiric worlds and the radically "satiric" grotesque with its play of masks.

And does the ridiculous still form part of the grotesque? With slight modifications we subscribed to Wieland's analysis of its reception. But in what structural element of the grotesque does its justification lie? The possibility of such a view is most easily grasped in connection with the grotesque that emerges from a satiric world view. Laughter originates on the comic and caricatural fringe of the grotesque. Filled with bitterness, it takes on characteristics of the mocking, cynical, and ultimately satanic laughter while turning into the grotesque. Wieland felt the urge to laugh even in the presence of the Hell Bruegel's "fantastic" grotesques. Did he mean the kind of laughter that is an involuntary response to situations which cannot be handled in any other way? The laughter which, in Minna von Barnhelm's opinion, sounds more horrible than the most terrible curses? Wieland's laughter is unlikely to have echoed Tellheim's despair, although it undoubtedly constituted a somewhat involuntary and forced attempt to shake off fear. The role of laughter within the complex of the grotesque poses the most difficult question that arises in conjunction with that phenomenon. A clear-cut answer is impossible, especially since the involuntary and abysmal laughter formed part of the action of certain works we have studied: the narrator of Bonaventura's Nachtwachen felt urgently compelled to laugh in churches, and E. T. A. Hoffmann's figures are often shaken with laughter when they do not feel at all in the mood for laughing. Perhaps still another aspect of laughter in the grotesque should now be added. I refer to Fischart's description of the dance of the giants, which began as a simple play with words but progressed to a point where language itself seemed to come to life and draw the author into its whirlpool: "ich schnauf' auch schier ." Fischart had begun a dangerous game, the same game which the graphic artists played in their capriccios. The works we have studied clearly testify that THE GROTESQUE IS A PLAY WITH THE ABSURD. It may begin in a gay and carefree manner—as Raphael wanted to play in his grotesques. But it may also carry the player away, deprive him of his freedom, and make him afraid of the ghosts which he so frivolously invoked. And now no helper comes to his rescue. The creators of grotesques have no advice that they can follow. They transgress the limits which the aged Goethe set to their art in a paralipomenon of his West-Östlicher Divan:

Solcher Bande darf sich niemand rühmen,
Als wer selbst van Banden frei sich fühlt,
Und wer heitet im Absurden spielt,
Den wird auch wohl das Absurde ziemen.

(Nobody may boast of such bonds 
Except those who feel free of bonds.
And to him who plays gaily with the absurd
The absurd is likely to be suited.)

Such attempts have been made throughout the ages. But our survey revealed a marked difference in their density and intensity. In concluding, we may state once again that there are three historical periods in particular in which the power of the "It" was strongly felt: the sixteenth century, the age which extends from the Sturm und Drang to Romanticism, and the twentieth century. In these periods the belief of the preceding ages in a perfect and protective natural order ceased to exist. Without being forced to construct a unified world view for the Middle Ages, one must admit that the sixteenth century had experiences unexplained by the Weltanschauung of the preceding centuries. Sturm und Drang and Romanticism were consciously opposed to the rationalistic world view developed during the Enlightenment; they even questioned the legitimacy of the rationale for such a world view. The modern age questions the validity of the anthropological and the relevance of the scientific concepts underlying the syntheses of the nineteenth century. The various forms of the grotesque are the most obvious and pronounced contradictions of any kind of rationalism and any systematic use of thought. It was absurd in itself when the Surrealists sought to make absurdity the basis of their system.

Our survey has also established the fact that the artists of subsequent ages consciously harked back to the earlier masters of the grotesque. In spite of the structural similarity of all grotesques, the styles of individual artists and ages were easily discernible. At the same time, two basic types of the grotesque emerged: the "fantastic" and the "satiric." Only by means of structural analyses can one define individual and historical idiosyncrasies, The number of such analyses could be continued and would always find new material. In this book I have sought to view the phenomenon for what it really is and to explore a few paths which seemed rich in promise.