Macabre is a term derived from the French macabre . It is an adjective that refers to the horror of death and the rejection it causes.
The macabre, therefore, is linked to the most repulsive issues of deaths. For example : “The agency offers a macabre tour of places where the cruelest murders were committed,” “The young man devised a macabre plan to get rid of his wife and children,” “Macabre discovery: they found four human skulls inside a bag" .
The idea of macabre is usually used with reference to that which is dark or gloomy . Generally the concept is associated with the imagery surrounding death, with multiple symbols and rituals.
In the field of fiction , the macabre is an essential component of the horror or horror genre. Numerous books and movies rely on macabre details to move the recipient.
Among the many writers recognized for the macabre elements of their books we can mention Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, John Webster, Mervyn Peake, Robert Louis Stevenson, Cyril Tourneur and Charles Dickens. In the seventh art, John Carpenter and Wes Craven are among the directors who achieved fame for their macabre films.
If we go back to the most ancient authors of the Latin and Greek languages, on the other hand, it is not easy to find macabre elements. In any case, we can find some equivalent features in the satirical novel titled The Satyricon and in part of the work of Lucius Apuleius , the most prominent Roman author of the 2nd century.
The importance of the word "macabre" grew considerably thanks to its use in the French expression la danse macabre , which translates as "macabre dance " or "of death", and refers to an artistic genre that focuses on universality and the omnipresence of death.
Generally, this allegory is adopted in sculptures or paintings through the presence of Death in the form of corpses or skeletons that lead living beings to dance to a grave. Several of these macabre individuals may appear in the same work; Regarding the people who follow them, they do not usually appear alarmed, but rather in a state of apparent hypnotism, as if they were not fighting to get away from them.
Unfortunately, not many paintings or sculptures of this type are preserved in the cloisters of European churches of medieval origin, and engravings have had an even worse fate. For example, only illustrations remain of the renowned series of forty-one Basel engravings made by Hans Holbein , since, despite having been moved and restored in the mid-16th century, in 1805 a collapse completely destroyed it.
In the church of Saint Mary in Lübeck, in northern Germany, a painting of the danse macabre is preserved in one of its chapels. It dates back to the 15th century and shows many couples made up of nobles, saints and skeletons dancing in front of the tomb. In Dresden, on the other hand, we can see a series of sculptures that were rescued from a fire in the 18th century.
In this context, it is worth noting that Macabro is the name of an international horror film festival that takes place in Mexico . In 2018 , the event had its seventeenth edition.
It is important to mention that the macabre is part of the essence of some subcultures, in addition to some artistic genres or subgenres. The Gothic subculture, to mention one case, is based on the macabre, appealing to skulls and a particular use of makeup to imitate cadaverous pallor.