Valle-Inclán's Esperpento: Features and Analysis

Features of the Esperpento

The Esperpento. The word "grotesque" was popularly used with meanings of "extravagance" and "ugliness." Valle-Inclán (VI) uses it to refer to his theater. The esperpento is defined given the situation of the characters, unable to reach the height of tragedy, and how ridiculous they are in their situation.

The theory about the new genre appears in scene XII. In it, the main character says, "Our tragedy is not a tragedy." Tragedy is a genre too noble for the surrounding landscape. And from the impossibility of tragedy comes the *esperpento*. The nature of this *aesthetic deformans* is illustrated with reference to the concave mirrors that decorated the facade of a shop on Cat Street in Madrid.

In an interview in 1928, VI said, "I see the world in three modes aesthetically: kneeling, standing, or raised in the air." When looking up, the characters are heroes, superior. If looking at the same level, characters are like our brothers, and if we look from above, they appear as dolls or puppets.

The main character dies three scenes before the end of the work, and the closing sentence is pronounced by a drunkard. We do not have a tragedy. Deformation is characterized by theme, mocking melodrama through parody. Critics say the grotesque degrades reality through satire.

Angel Lasanta on the Esperpento

Angel Lasanta, in *El Esperpento De Valle-Inclán* (1980), lists the procedures that characterize the genre:

• a) The grotesque as a form of expression, with features present in the fusion of human and animal forms.
• b) The systematic distortion of reality, which exaggerates prominent features and social context in an attempt to highlight the contradictions between the behavior of a determined society.
• c) Dual code.
• d) Violent contrasts that often lead to absurd nonsense.
• e) Presentation of the extraordinary and normal as probable: most grotesque characters are individuals outside of the ordinary, being authentic, although their human reality is identified with other humans.
• f) The presence of death as a fundamental character.
• g) Balancing prosopopoeia: an animalization process that extends to the physical and moral presence of individuals.
• i) Violent language and formal freedom.