Arthur Machen’s The White People
Nov. 20th, 2005 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joysilence posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
Arthur Machen’s The White People deals with the idea of other realities that intersect what we think of as our everyday reality. The worlds of pagan antiquity, the realms of faerie, still exist but not everyone can perceive them. These are disturbing worlds, sensual worlds, and for those who come in contact with them the results are not always happy. The story also deals with the notion of Sin as having nothing to do with ordinary concepts of right and wrong; rather it is a striving for things that are not meant for mere humans, in some ways it’s a striving to be godlike, or to possess knowledge and powers and experiences that are forbidden. In the story a man I given a journal to read, a journal kept by a young girl. It describes her experiences with these other realities, and these forbidden things.
Machen was interesting in being very much a decadent writer at a time when decadent writing had passed out of fashion, and was considered somewhat dangerous in the wake of the Oscar Wilde trials. The White People dates from 1899. Machen was a very considerable influence on the writers of weird fiction of the 1920s an 1930s, writers like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. I just can’t recommend Machen’s work highly enough – a truly wonderful writer.
dfordoom)Arthur Machen’s The White People deals with the idea of other realities that intersect what we think of as our everyday reality. The worlds of pagan antiquity, the realms of faerie, still exist but not everyone can perceive them. These are disturbing worlds, sensual worlds, and for those who come in contact with them the results are not always happy. The story also deals with the notion of Sin as having nothing to do with ordinary concepts of right and wrong; rather it is a striving for things that are not meant for mere humans, in some ways it’s a striving to be godlike, or to possess knowledge and powers and experiences that are forbidden. In the story a man I given a journal to read, a journal kept by a young girl. It describes her experiences with these other realities, and these forbidden things.
Machen was interesting in being very much a decadent writer at a time when decadent writing had passed out of fashion, and was considered somewhat dangerous in the wake of the Oscar Wilde trials. The White People dates from 1899. Machen was a very considerable influence on the writers of weird fiction of the 1920s an 1930s, writers like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. I just can’t recommend Machen’s work highly enough – a truly wonderful writer.
