Where on Earth did the idea come from? Why a “hollow” behind a “hearthstone”? Why “behind”, and not “beneath”? Like a literary critic, coming to my work as if it was written by another (which is, in fact, the case), I have turned over the phrase, I have examined it. The place behind the hearth, the hole, the hollow, is a secret place. A place we might hide precious things (as is the case in the story: the implication is that he hid it himself, and comes back and finds it without really remembering hiding it). In old houses, it was perhaps a secure place. It would have often been protected by the fire burning on the hearth. But it’s more than that. The hearthstone is the “foyer”, the foundation stone not only of the house, but of the family. It is our “home-fire”; it is the life at the heart of our household, our home, our daily life. The word “hearthstone” is a metonymy for family life, for home, for safety, for the heart (contained in the word “hearth”) of all of these things. The fire we gather around. But behind it … there is a secret hollow. There is an empty, hidden space. A void. There is a dark heart. We hide things there. What does this mean? That family life, daily life, is hollow? Maybe. That there is a darkness at the heart of the ordinary and reassuring? Also. That there is a secret place within our homely practices, within our everyday lives, that is either empty (hollow), or may be used to hide things. Precious things. Magical things. Dangerous things. Or else that that ordinary life is hollow. Empty. Meaningless. Futile. But no. A hollow promise is meaningless. A hollow laugh is not amused. But a hidden hollow in the heart: that is mysterious. That is intriguing. That is useful.
The “Hollow Hills” are where the faeries retreated to, all those years ago. They are the burial mounds of the ancient dead. They are a gateway to the Otherworld. “The Hollow Men” are from TS Eliot’s poem of that title. They are all of us. The verb “to hollow”, means to dig. “To hallow” means to bless. Or to call. It is an emptiness, and it is an exploration, and it is a call. It is a void that longs to hold a secret, sacred thing. It is in all of us. It is not “out there”. It is here. In our home, our hearth, our heart. It is like Freud’s Uncanny, which in English means that we cannot know (or “ken”), or that which is not wise and knowing (“canny”). But in the original German, it is Unheimlich: “Unhomely”, that which is unfamiliar or strange; but also, because “Heimlich” means both “homely” and “secret”, the Unheimlich is the strange and the familiar at once, as one becomes the other. It is the hidden in the process of being revealed. The Hollow Behind the Hearthstone is Uncanny. It is frightening. It is a secret. But it is trying to get out.