There is a power here, like its history, layered, multi-hued. It is the Mistral wind that howls mournfully through the echoed recesses of this forgotten House of God, the mad clatter of pigeon wings a somber accompaniment. There are no soaring arches here, no Gothic thrust up towards Heaven, but rather a looming bulk of stone, as though cut from the bones of the Earth herself. Gargoyles leer cruelly over doorways, twisted and frozen forever, the vagaries of Grace and Damnation lost on the doves that shit now upon them. The way is lined with stone sarcophagi, empty now of the corruption they were once built to house. Cypress and plane trees shake as the Mistral thrashes them; long has their watch been.
It is the quality of the light, much remarked upon, having drawn painters and poets from before then until beyond now. Age pitted stained glass casts soft yellow beams across broad stone pillars. Beyond these, through the open doorway, blue skies loom impossibly close, clouds shyly scuttling across this azure canvas. To paint, to write, to try and capture this essence of light, this purity, is futile. One who has seen it, will know; one who has not, cannot. It is that first clean breath after a life spent in smog shrouds. How best to convey this? The sun does not brighten this landscape; it bathes it in soft hues, flavouring olive and grape, infusing a warmth of character into all that is here. It is at once crystalline, yet lethargic and dense, as juxtaposed to itself as the blood that has fed this soil in such a gentle-hued land.
Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Celt, Cathar, Catholic, the litany of those peoples who bled their lives into this ground is long. This land of soft light and mournful wind has been saturated in human tragedy. Standing in this now hollow House of the Lord, it behooves one to bear that in mind.
To exit this lonely church, filled as it is with its echo of memory, and the forlorn clap of pigeons in flight, to walk along a promenade lined with the dead, under winter planes skeletal and naked in the blue light, wind whispering of ancient cruelty, is to feel the power of this place. But these are limestone reflections, and Mistral musings, and this is Provence in March. Such melancholy turns of mind require wine, and olives, and a great deal of warm light.
Sit with me, drink, and talk of things that once were, and things that are yet to come again.
