Pod górami, pod lasami, czyli co kryje niesamowity świat Białego Ludu Arthura Machena

The aim of Piotr F. Piekutowski’s chapter entitled Under Hills, Under Forests, or What is Concealed by the Uncanny World of Arthur Machen’s “The White People” is to demonstrate a great significance of a Freudian term ‘uncanny’ in a short story written by Arthur Machen. The author analyses hidden elements of the storyworld: celtic beliefs, fantastic creatures, rites. Together with a profound analysis, Piekutowski draws a negative epistemology of esoterism, in which getting to know the uncanny otherworld has a destructive influence on human being. Initiation, erasing limits between the real world and the magical one, and discovering different realities involve terrifying consecuences. A possibility to read these uncanny elements in many ways makes them overwhelm us with fear even more.