Grimace

“ The word Grim, in French theatrical language, is probably derived from grimace, and the expression of Rôles à manteau arises from the personages which they represent being old men, who generally appear on the stage with a cloak. ”

“ The wrinkles of the body in general proceed from this cause; but those of the face seem to proceed from another, namely, from that variety of positions into which it is put by the speech, the food, or the passions. Every grimace, every passion, and every gratification of appetite, puts the visage into different forms. These are visible enough in young persons ”

“ The author fixes a hard eye on some small spot of human life, usually some ugly, dreary, shabby, sordid one, takes up the particle, and squeezes it either till it grimaces or till it bleeds. Sometimes the grimace is very droll, sometimes the wound is very horrible ”

“ You see smiles, desires, terror, come and go like lightning; every time the face seems different. The muscles of the face are undoubtedly more mobile than our own. On the other hand the eyes are almost expressionless. Such must be the sort of signs they use at an age when their only needs are those of the body. Grimaces are the sign of sensation, the glance expresses sentiment.
As man's first state is one of want and weakness, his first sounds are cries and tears. ”

“ “It’s beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.”
“For sheer terror?” I remember asking.
He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. “For dreadful—dreadfulness!”
“Oh, how delicious!” cried one of the women. ”

“ The sudden jerk of a limb followed by an odd grimace, the quick protrusion of the tongue, and the rolling of the eyes or snapping of the lids give a characteristic picture which can hardly be mistaken. ”

“ I heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful face rushing upon me,—not human, not animal, but hellish, brown, seamed with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes ablaze. ”

“ And then I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. The stress grew and grew. I seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. For one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. ”

“ That grime of ages "lends a sort of warmth, and suggests flesh and blood," so that the suffering is not a cold and frosty incrustation, with which we have nothing to do, but a real tragedy going on before our eyes, by which our sympathies are most deeply moved. ”

“ An accident always caused a feeling of sullenness in the works; this was now intensified by the gloom of the weather and the increased discomfort of the conditions; the thick and acrid smoke that would not rise, the floating particles of grime that clogged one's breathing-passages, the chill dampness, worse than wind, worse than rain, that greeted the man who went sweating from his furnace to draw a breath of air. ”

“ On touching a nerve of the eyelid at the same time with the heel, the muscles of the face contracted, "rage, horror, despair, anguish, and fearful grins, combined in hideous expressions on the dead man's face." ”

“ Let his nose and ears be cut off! Let him be flayed alive, or burnt at a slow fire and his ashes scattered to the winds! Oh, I shall die of shame and despair!’
Her women ran at the sound of her screams, and tried to wrench off the horns, but it was of no use, and they only gave her a violent headache. ”

“ Tears of perspiration collect in beads at the apertures of the pores; tears glide down the surface, and fall from all the salient points of our frame, from our elbows, from our finger-ends; a sweet languor creeps over us, and we feel as though, like a heathen god of old, we were dissolving into a liquid stream. ”

“ Paler than the dead who lay so still in their quiet rest in the churchyard; colder than the very touch of death itself; rigid as the body when the breath has gone forever; there he stood, the epitome of awful fear. With eyeballs starting from their sockets, open mouth, dilated nostrils, he seemed the very personification of incredulous horror. ”

“ It is only a dirge for the dead.
—How your flesh creeps, as the fearfully solemn tones fall on your ears. How icy cold is the blood in your veins—and yet the beaded drops of perspiration stand upon your temples, and in your palms! How stoutly you struggle to feel that you still have your senses; and yet, in your strong agony, you fiercely bite your lip through and through, and know it not. ”

“ There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through the tree fiercer and fiercer. ”

“ In the outer darkness shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There the eyes shall weep in the hellish flame, which now libidinously roll about with unallowed desires; and the teeth, which now rejoice in gluttony, shall there grate in the unspeakable torments, which are prepared for the adversaries of God. Verily the eyes will smart with the powerful smoke, and the teeth quake with the great chill; for the reprobates shall suffer intolerable heat, and unspeakable chill. ”

“ A ring of frightened faces would form round the dead, and a cry would sound from the crowd. A man with one of his hands to his chest and the other to his body would writhe like an epileptic, fall to the ground, roll on the pavement, turn blue and expire. ”

“ Then suddenly, with a sharp exclamation that is almost a shriek, the hand drops to his side; he recoils, he bounds to his feet; then, turning his face to the rocks, he lets the darkness hide the look of unutterable horror that for a moment overspread it, changing at length to an expression of sternness and fixed resolve. ”

“ As is well known, these fits occur instantaneously. The face, especially the eyes, become terribly disfigured, convulsions seize the limbs, a terrible cry breaks from the sufferer, a wail from which everything human seems to be blotted out, so that it is impossible to believe that the man who has just fallen is the same who emitted the dreadful cry. ”

“ Such are the signs that for the first days foreshadow the end; but as the sickness begins to advance and gather violence, then indeed their eyes burn and their breath is fetched deep, heavy with broken moans, their flanks below heave with long-drawn sobs, black blood oozes from their nostrils, and their throat is blocked by their rough and swollen tongue. ”

“ Some perhaps will say that it is useless to stop to criticise the delineation of a few furrows when such an intense and majestic pain is written on the face, when one seems to hear the sigh of superhuman agony from his lips, and sees the lines of beauty and of pain so wonderfully blended. ”

“ That of their care thou hast no stronger proof?
Perhaps they do not like to hear or see
Thy last deep groan, thy dying agony!
The grass upspurn’d,
Thine eye upturn’d,
Bespeak its weight to heedless passers by!
That hoarse deep sigh, the sad effect of sin,
Proclaims the depth of agony within!
On man and beast,
Greatest and least,
Grim Death doth feed, and glad his victim win! ”

“ The face is distorted, and there are yells, oaths, animal snorts and grunts, cries, and then exultant laughter at pain, and each is bruised, dirty, disheveled and panting with exhaustion. For coarser natures, the spectacle of such conflicts has an intense attraction, while some morbid souls are scarred by a distinct phobia for everything suggestive of even lower degrees of opposition. ”

“ The wounds which seem like real wounds, the color of the skin, the contraction of the face, the attitude, the expression,—each thing is terribly real. If you touched the body, you would expect to feel the tremor of the limbs and the warmth of the blood. ”

“ There seemed a tension in the air—as if something was going to snap. Doubtless you have often felt it—a sensation as though pins and needles were pricking you all over. As though you wanted to scream—to cry out—against an uncertain sensation that gripped you. ”

“ The sight of a pale ribbon, flirting in the wind, throws you in a panic. The faintest smile from ruby lips, makes you fairly go mad. The sudden glance of a twinkling dark eye, only intoxicates you. How the hot blood rushes up to the eyes—and then slowly ebbs back upon the heart again! ”

“ Sitting there in the dark and the cold, he grew barely conscious of his own pain. This is Nature’s mercy. When the wound is beyond bearing she draws away the sufferer’s consciousness, and an extremity of agony brings its own relief, if only for a little while. ”

“ For you do not know—that night—that night in which I saw her so beautiful—that night is always present to my thoughts—that picture of voluptuousness is there, there—always there—before my eyes. Let them be open or shut, in feverish weakness or burning watchfulness, I see her black eyes and inflaming glances, which boil the marrow of my bones. I feel her breath upon my face—I hear her voice."
"But these are frightful torments!" ”

“ The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly. The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. ”

“ No cry escaped her, nor sound except a moan, half of mental pain, half of the deadly sickness, the actual nausea, which every one who has ever sustained a severe shock of pain or fear knows is its invariable accompaniment. ”

“ Death seemed reaching out its bony hands to clutch me by the throat. The next instant my blood froze with terror, for out of the night there came to me, lying there in the inky blackness of my room, a long drawn animal-like cry. ”

“ Ever the winds sigh and drop into those sun-swept silences. Ever the gorge lies motionless, unmoved, until I fear. It is a grim thing, unholy, terrible! It is human—some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown. ”

“ The well-known, how-often fondly-contemplated features tell the whole story in the photograph taken, as you say, a few days before the crisis. Madness is plainly lurking in that lurid eye, stamps indelibly the arch of the nostril and the curve of the lip, and in ambush along the soft curve of the cheek it lies ready to burst forth in consuming fire. ”

“ A grim, shuddering waste, made grimmer and more terrible by strange, stray specks of humanity, that, seen in the falling sunlight seemed rather distorted creations of fancy than actual human beings; from stone to stone they pace, stepping with a peculiar, halting, laborious gait, and looking sullenly earthward as if their eyes were chained to the hateful, barren shore and the looking upward were death. ”

“ The little pinched look about the face, the drawing up of the legs, the jerking of the head, arms, or legs, associated with a strong, sharp, unceasing or intermittent cry, demands immediate attention Our first work should be to go about quietly, painstakingly, and systematically to locate the cause of this "cry of pain." ”

“ Suddenly arises a yell—a wild, unearthly cry, which almost makes one's blood run cold even in that atmosphere. A tremor seizes us as a female form appears at an upper window, framed in flame, curtained with smoke and noxious fumes. ”

“ It has the right to grin. It may be but a grim smile over the consciousness that it has sounded the last sorrow and that henceforth no greater evils are in store; it may be a mocking, sardonic grin at the thought of our discomfiture over its unwelcome presence and the knowledge that we cannot drive it out. ”

“ Her head, of the pure classical mould, is bent forward, as if weighed down by the shock, and there is a heavy drooping in the mouth and eyelids, that denotes a sudden and sickening agony. It is not a violent, passionate grief, but a deep and almost paralyzing emotion—a shock from which the soul will finally rebound, strengthened to make the sacrifice. ”

“ The wretches like to see a pitying face, to relate their sufferings, and to hear words of charity and sympathy. Passing down the middle between the beds, you look for the face which is the least rigid, the least contracted by pain, and on finding it decide to go near and put a question. ”

“ Another regular consequence of the bloodlessness of the skin is a feeling of cold, and shivering. A constant symptom of grief is sensitiveness to cold, and difficulty in keeping warm. In grief, the inner organs are unquestionably anæmic as well as the skin. This is of course not obvious to the eye, but many phenomena prove it. ”

“ But there is another cry that suddenly resounds through the stillness, a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name—one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. ”

“ And spurns the balm which constitutes her sleep;
Her plaintive murmurs float upon the gale,
And almost make the stubborn rocks bewail.
O what is like the awful breach of death,
Whose fatal stroke invades the creature's breath!
It bids the voice of desolation roll,
And strikes the deepest awe within the bravest soul. ”