Another world - Un Autre Monde

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The frontispiece

Another world (original title: Un Autre Monde ) is a book with drawings by the French caricaturist and illustrator Grandville (birth name: Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard) and is considered one of his main works. The first French edition was published by H. Fournier in Paris in 1843/44, and the first German edition was published in Leipzig in 1847. The illustrations, which are often difficult to interpret, gave rise to different interpretations shortly after the book was published and throughout the history of its reception.

The author

Grandville (1803-1847) had during the first relatively liberal July monarchy of so-called citizen king I. Louis-Philippe mainly as a political cartoonist for the magazine "La Caricature" and " Le Charivari " worked. After the press censorship was tightened in 1835, he mainly devoted himself to the illustration of literary texts, for example by Victor Hugo , Jean de La Fontaine and Daniel Defoe . In addition, there were works with special, self-selected thematic focuses, in which he z. B. imaginatively and satirically known proverbs ( Les cent proverbes ) or the symbolism of flowers ( Les fleurs animées ) interpreted.

The work

The secrets of the infinite (chap. XXI)
The masked ball (Chapter VI)
Illustration of the epilogue

“Another World” is a book that confused and fascinated even contemporaries with its more than 180 enigmatic pictures and rationally barely comprehensible comments in 34 chapters. It appeared in 36 weekly episodes in 1843 and in book form the following year. Grandville and his author send the three main characters (in the German version the new gods Puff , Schwadronarius and Krack von Krackenheim ) on walks through space and time, making the most incredible observations. In the last chapter the three meet again on earth, deliver a devastating inventory of the existing world and build a Noah's Ark with steam drive to colonize a new world. They themselves have no access there, but have to die, "according to the will of heaven and the authors of this book who do not know where to stay with us".

Grandville's illustrations were wood engravings made by professional wood engravers from his original drawings. The draftsman's distinctive means of expression are the anthropomorphic figures with whom Grandville often worked in his caricatures; He assembled parts of all imaginable living beings and objects into bizarre mixed figures, which he considered suitable to make his respective ideas clear.

The overly long subtitle of the French edition, which has been omitted in the German version, programmatically and provocatively strings together eighteen more or less meaningful or completely obscure but consistently scientific-sounding terms ( "Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions, Locomotions, Explorations, Perégrinations [.. .] et autre Choses par Grandville ” ). Before the book was published, Grandville felt compelled to change the publisher. He felt betrayed by his longtime publisher and friend Pierre-Jules Hetzel . He accused him of realizing his book idea with the help of other authors and of having published it under the title "Voyage où il vous plaira" (meaning: The journey to where you will like it ). Grandville could only avoid an impending duel through an apology.

Frontispiece and epilogue

The aim of the book is illustrated in a full-page frontispiece . The main character of the picture is an exuberantly laughing man with a foolish headgear and drawing device, identified as a caricaturist by the inscription La charge on his hat (only in the French edition), arm in arm with the lady's imagination . With his foot he presses the old world into the ground, which breaks up in the process; his companion has apparently touched another world with her wand , which is just rising from the ground. The statement: with the help of imagination, the draftsman will introduce a new, different world in his book.

The epilogue reveals something about the respective shares of the draftsman and the writer in this work. The accompanying illustration shows a decoration that consists of the large-format initials Grandville, in which the tools of the main participants act - at the bottom left and right the engraver and knife, at the top the illustrator's chalk pencil and on the horizontal line of the "G" the pen, the the obscure name of the author reveals a little: T. Delord . The writer and journalist Taxile Delord (1815–1877) had worked with Grandville as editor-in-chief of “Le Charivari” for many years , was friends with him and later also wrote texts for his book “Les fleurs animées” .

The text of the epilogue deals with the question of the priority of drawing or text in an allegorical debate between a chalk pen and a quill. The pen regrets that in the book the fundamental laws of literature have been overturned; “The public demands novels; is your book a novel? Without mercy you have shortened my descriptions, suppressed my character portrayals. [...] Now look at the result. Are you still satisfied with it? ”The pen emphasizes:“ I invented a world. [...] Now and then you helped me with my discoveries, I admit. But I hope you will not dispute the fame of being the actual author of this work. "

The illustrator is named on the title page of “Un Autre Monde” , but not the author. This reversal of common practice is also a clear indication of the primacy of the drawing over the text. The prevailing view is that Grandville had been preparing drawings for this book for a long time, for which he then needed text. He was the initiator, Delord wrote explanatory texts for the pictures. The thesis that is sometimes put forward that the draftsman also wrote the text himself is not tenable. His contract with the publishing house H. Fournier of December 19, 1842 provided that a writer would write the book according to Grandville's specifications.

German first edition

The first edition in German appeared in Leipzig in 1847 at the Carl Berendt Lorck publishing house . The title Another World illustrated by Pliny the Youngest by JJ Grandville indirectly refers to the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (approx. 23–79 AD) and his Naturalis historia , a comprehensive scientific representation of the real world known at the time. The fictional author Pliny the Youngest of the title describes in the book not the actual, but another world . The author was not named in the German version either. His name was Oskar Ludwig Bernhard Wolff (1799-1851), was a writer, translator and temporarily Goethe's private secretary. Wolff provided a translation that was correct in terms of content, but relatively free to make it easier for German readers to understand the extremely unusual text.

gallery

  • The best form of government (Chapter XXXII)

  • In the zoological garden (Chapter XVIII)

  • The Steam Concert (Chapter II)

  • JJ Grandville, 1840

reception

Grandville was forgotten soon after his death in 1847. The rediscovery of the artist began in the 20th century with “Un autre monde” . His drawings were now viewed as anticipating surrealist image inventions. The wood engraving collages by the Dadaist and surrealist Max Ernst in particular suggest a comparison with Grandville's work. For a facsimile edition of “Another World” , Ernst created his lithograph in 1963 with the title A New World is Born - Praise Be Grandville!

In one chapter of his passage work, the philosopher and translator Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) examined early French capitalism and especially the development of the commodity into the new fetish of human society. In Grandville's drawings, especially Another World , he saw a glorification of this development: "The enthronement of goods and the surrounding splendor of distraction is the secret theme of Grandville's art". He wrote about the artist: "If the goods are a fetish, Grandville is their magical priest".

But the often ambiguous illustrations for “Another World” were also viewed as a sarcastic utopia , a warning of a future dominated by machines and capital. Charles Baudelaire , who had little regard for Grandville as a draftsman, wrote in 1857: “This man has spent his life with superhuman courage trying to improve creation. He took it in his hands, turned it around, wrestled with it, laid it out, and nature turned into an apocalypse ”. The German art historian Thomas W. Gaehtgens gave an essay from 2007 the title Absurd Imagery and Social Criticism in JJ Grandville's “Un autre monde” . The Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, on the other hand, described Grandville as a “ schizophrenic petty bourgeois” whose ridicule only produced “utopian nonsense”.

Modern popular culture

The British rock band Queen used some of the graphics for the 1991 album Innuendo , as well as the singles from it. It was the last album released during the lifetime of front man and lead singer Freddie Mercury .

literature

  • Literary survey. Another world . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 8 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig August 19, 1843, p. 122-123 ( books.google.de ).
  • Another World of Pliny the Youngest Illustrated by JJ Grandville . Diogenes Verlag Zurich, 1979. ISBN 3-257-26002-4 .
  • JJ Grandville. Caricature and drawing. A visionary of French romanticism. Pp. 55-59. Hatje Cantz Verlag Ostfildern, 2000. ISBN 3-7757-0987-8 .

Web links

Commons : Another World - Un Autre Monde  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up ↑ Another World of Pliny the Youngest Illustrated by JJ Grandville . S. 303. Diogenes Verlag Zurich, 1979. ISBN 3-257-26002-4 .
  2. ↑ Thomas W. Gaehtgens: “Absurd imagery and social criticism in JJ Grandville's 'Un autre monde'” p. 2.
  3. ↑ Thomas W. Gaehtgens: “Absurd imagery and social criticism in JJ Grandville's 'Un autre monde'” p. 1.
  4. Jump up ↑ Another World of Pliny the Youngest Illustrated by JJ Grandville . P. 305. Diogenes Verlag Zurich, 1979. ISBN 3-257-26002-4 .
  5. ↑ Thomas W. Gaehtgens: “Absurd imagery and social criticism in JJ Grandville's 'Un autre monde'” p. 2.
  6. ^ Walter Benjamin: Das Passagenwerk , Gesammelte Schriften V, p. 249
  7. Jump up ↑ Another World of Pliny the Youngest Illustrated by JJ Grandville . Epilogue. Diogenes Verlag Zurich, 1979. ISBN 3-257-26002-4
  8. ↑ Thomas W. Gaehtgens: "Absurd imagery and social criticism in JJ Grandville's 'Un autre monde'"
  9. ^ JJ Grandville. Caricature and drawing. Exhibition catalog, p. 51. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-7757-0987-8 (book trade edition)
  10. ↑ rocktimes.at: Review of November 29, 2010: Queen / The Singles Collection Vol 4. (accessed May 10, 2013)