I don’t know if this is a common experience, but I find that whenever I’m at the top of some prodigious height, I feel an impulse to jump. All of us, I think, respond to bigness of landscape – this is why people go to mountains. But I find that a sublime experience commands a sublime response, and what could be more sublime than leaping like Empedocles (or Salvador Rosa, for the artists) from a great height? I know, I’m a romantic.
The impulse is not a strong one, of course, but it is persistent. It’s like the desire one has to touch whenever a beautiful person walks by, or the temptation to reach over a patio fence and snatch a fruity cocktail on a hot day. Being Canadian, one never does these things, nor should one.
But the fact remains, a precipice is inviting. Children, this one at least, found it thrilling to edge close to cliff-tops. I think I was aware, when I was lying on my belly in the grass above Beachy Head, that this was the fastest way out of the world in which one lived, but to which one did not belong.
As is (too) often the case, Saint Augustine said it best, some 1500 years ago: "What makes the heart of a Christian heavy? That he is a pilgrim and far from his country."
Not Tarragon's first painting of this title.
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