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terio y a las emociones in- tensas y escalofriantes, ex- plorando territorios propios del terror humano hacia lo desconocido, así como sus inclinaciones más sádicas y grotescas. De Londres a París, pasan- do por Madrid y Dresde, pintores, grabadores y escultores, desarrollaron hábiles ma- labarismos con las más diferentes soluciones plásticas con el fin de sumergir a los espectadores en el vértigo de lo terrible y lo grotesco, rivalizando con los poetas, los dramaturgos y los novelistas: Goya y Géricault nos enfrentan a las atroci- dades absurdas de las gue- rras y las supersticiones de su época; Füssli y Delacroix muestran su apasionada in- terpretación de las lecturas de Dante, Milton, Shakespeare y Goethe, dando cuerpo a los espectros, brujas y demonios que habitan sus relatos, mientras que C.D. Friedrich y Carl Blechen proyectan al espectador hacia escenarios y paisajes of enlightened reason. Dark Gothic novels first ap- peared in England at the end of the 18th century and were instantly a great success. Although set in the contemporary world, they were mainly concerned with mystery and heightened emotions that could make the reader shiver with fear as well as pleasure, and ex- plored not only the terror we all have of the unknown, but also our fascination with the sadistic and the gro- tesque. Painters, engravers and sculptors from all over Eu- rope, London and Paris, Madrid and Dresden, striving to compete with poets, playwrights and novelists, expressed this dark side visually in a multitude of ways, plunging the viewer into a dizzying spectacle of the horrific and the grotesque: Goya and Géricault presented us with the senseless atrocities of war and the superstitions of their time, Fuseli and Delacroix produced their passionate interpretations of the works of Dante, Milton, Shakespeare and Goethe by giv- ing substance to the ghosts, witches and devils in them, whereas C.D. Friedrich and Carl Blechen cast the viewer into enigmatic, gloomy landscapes. It was from these incredibly diverse and fertile Euro- pean sources that the more sombre offshoots of Sym- bolism first appeared in the 1880s. Seeing the vanity and ambiguity that lay behind the belief in progress, many artists turned to the occult, reviving myths and exploiting the new ideas about dreams. After the horror stories of Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier and Villiers de L’Isle- Adam, they deliberately asked difficult questions in order to bring Man face to face with his age-old fears and contradictions: the savagery and depravity hid- den in every human being, the risk of mass degenera- tion, the harrowing strangeness behind the deceptive reassurance of daily life. While artists like Khnopff, Spilliaert and Klinger used silence to blur the boundary between dream and reality, the work of Ensor, Stuck and Rops, right in the middle of the second industrial revolution, presented fantastical, clamorous hordes of witches, sniggering skeletons, shapeless devils, lech- erous Satans, Medusas and Sphinxes, which, far from signifying a deliberately obscure withdrawal into the past, expressed a clear, defiant, carnivalesque disil- lusionment with the present and affirmed the desire for creative freedom in the face of the rigid constraints of bourgeois society. Dark Romanticism regained its momentum when Eu- rope finally emerged from the nightmare of the First World War. Long familiar with the malevolent fairies and creatures of Goya, German Romanticism and Symbolism, the Surrealists took the driving forces of Sumergirse hasta lo más hondo del abismo, ya sea del cielo o del infierno, ¿qué más da? Baudelaire Whether you come from heaven or from hell, who cares, O Beauty! Baudelaire Félicien Rops. La esfinge/ The Sphinx , 1879. Frontispicio para Las diabólicas , de Barbey d’Aurevilly/ Frontispiece for The Diabolics , by Barbey d’Aurevilly. Donación/ Donation Charles Hayem, 1899. © Museo de Orsay, Paris. Gaston Redon. Monumento funerario rodeado de montañas/ Funerary monument surrounded by mountains , sin datar/ not dated . © Museo de Orsay, Paris. Dist. RMN/ Patrice Schmidt 22