Fear

Abstract

The fantastic destroys our conception of reality and puts us into instability and therefore into total anxiety. But fear, anxiety, aroused by the fantastic is a very special experience: it is an impression, although usually manifested in the characters, it directly affects the receiver, since this occurs when our idea of reality is subverted. To clarify the relationship between the fantastic and fear, it will be useful to refer to the distinction between physical fear and metaphysical fear. The first of them is related to physical threats, death and the materially horrifying. The term metaphysical fear refers to an impression unique to the fantastic, which may be suffered by the characters but is aimed directly at the receiver as it takes hold when our convictions regarding the real cease to function.

Fear, real fear, the fear felt by primitive man when he stepped out of the light of his fire into the dark, when lightning flashed from the clouds, when the cries of antediluvian saurian re-echoed from the swamps, the primeval fear of a hostile environment felt by a lonely man—that is an experience unknown to modern man, who would be incapable of standing up to it. But the nerve capable of reviving is not dead, it does not stir and shows no sign of life, it may perhaps have been drugged for thousand years—but we carry about a terrifying sleeper in our brain.

Leo Perutz, Master of the Day of the Judgement (1923)