A look at Macabre and Gothic roots.
Topic: Macabre|When someone says the word macabre, immediately most people think gruesome death. Artists, poets and writers have all sculpted our definitions and perseptions of the word and the underlying theme of darkness associated with it. Lets take a look at the meaning of the word…
The Encyclopedia Britannica has this under its write -up about macabre : danse macabre medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death, expressed in the drama, poetry, music, and visual arts of western Europe mainly in the late Middle Ages. Strictly speaking, it is a literary or pictorial representation of a procession or dance of both living and dead figures, the living arranged in order of their rank, from pope and emperor.
Here are a few more versions and originations:
ma·ca·bre
–adjective
1. gruesome and horrifying; ghastly; horrible.
2. of, pertaining to, dealing with, or representing death, esp. its grimmer or uglier aspect.
3. of or suggestive of the allegorical dance of death.
ma·ca·ber.
Origin: 1400–50; < F; cf. late ME Macabrees daunce < MF danse (de) Macabré, of uncert. orig.; perh. to be identified with ML choréa Machabae?rum a representation of the deaths of Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers, but evidence is lacking
macabre adjective shockingly repellent; inspiring horror; “ghastly wounds”; “the grim aftermath of the bombing”; “the grim task of burying the victims”; “a grisly murder”; “gruesome evidence of human sacrifice”; “macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages”; “macabre tortures conceived by madmen” [syn: ghastly]
macabre
c.1430, from O.Fr. (danse) Macabré “(dance) of Death” (1376), probably a translation of M.L. (Chorea) Machabæorum, lit. “dance of the Maccabees” (leaders of the Jewish revolt against Syro-Hellenes, see Maccabees). The association with the dance of death seems to be via vivid descriptions of the martyrdom of the Maccabees in the Apocryphal books. The abstracted sense of “gruesome” is first attested 1842 in Fr., 1889 in Eng.
Regardless of the words origination or original meaning, it has come to represent the grotesque and gruesome images associated with unnatural death, grisly murders and diabolical or “dark” under belly of humanity.
Most people, like myself, associate the word with a fetish for the darkside of things, death, gore and the like, the Maccabees really do not come to mind. Actually, anytime I hear the word… macabre, a picture of Elvira and her giant breasts pops into my head.
Death’s dancers sure do have some insane cleavage, well at least they do in modern pop culture. I guess in a culture that infuses sex into just about anything, hey, why not make the morbid look sexy too? Popular culture did just that with the Gothic trend.
Gothic is a nice spin off, It took the Gothic form of medieval architecture, threw in some macabre imagery and turned it into a modern trend, clothing line and all.
Fusing romanticism with the macabre, gothic writers made grotesque acts look sexy… think vampires.
Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and William Faulkner are all popular for gothic themes while Edgar Allen Poe is always a name that is closely associated with mystery and pure macabre.
As far as the topic of death and dying go, I would imagine it has both frightened and intrigued people since the beginning of the human race. The reasons seem obvious to most, the subject is at the root of our existance and fear of its end.