A View to Distant Hills: Essaying a Grievous Self

Abstract

This is a personal essay that attempts (essays) to understand my repeated contemplation of two landscape paintings in the wake of a bereavement. I have gathered together into a fragmented narrative thoughts and impressions provoked by the paintings and by readings of poetry (Czeslaw Milosz), fiction (Samuel Beckett) and psychoanalysis (Marion Milner and D.W. Winnicott). There is no closure or conclusion to the essay since grief is open and perennial.