The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome in the 15th century. The "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea, the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the great fire from AD 64, which had become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above.
In modern English, grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or bizarre, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. More specifically, the grotesque forms on Gothic buildings, when not used as drain-spouts, should not be called gargoyles, but rather referred to simply as grotesques, or chimeras.
in Wikipedia
"The grotesque emerges as a contradiction between attractive and repulsive elements, of comic and tragic aspects, of ludicrous and horrifying features. Emphasis can be placed on either its bright or its dark side. However, it does not seem to exist without a certain collision between playfulness and seriousnes, fun and dread, humor and horror, glee and gloom."
Deiter Meindl
"Vou suprimir a vida, porque a vida mete-me medo [...] Fui sempre ridículo, mas nem sempre me senti ridículo. A vida foi sempre atroz, mas nem sempre a senti atroz. Quando dei pelo que ela tem de reles e de grotesco, de trágico e de grotesco, veio-me um vómito de tristeza. [...] Pior, pior... Olhei para mim, olhei para dentro de mim mesmo e ao mesmo tempo encarei [...] com esta coisa prodigiosa que é a Vida, feia para a desgraça, para a dor, para o sonho - e que dura um minuto, um só minuto [...]"
O Doido e a Morte, Raul Brandão
Painting by Paula Rego
Clown In The Moon
My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.
Dylan Thomas
