(Melville 1851:434). David Malouf describes the mechanics of such a process, of
how the soul through the body:
... expands to become the whole landscape, as if space itself were
its dimensions; filling the whole land from horizon to horizon and
the whole arch of the sky (Malouf, 1978:142).
Malouf’s Ovid elaborates on this theme of participation mystique when, in a
sudden realisation that between his body and the place where he finds himself,
where an annunciation or epiphany has taken place, there is “ ... some corridor
along which our common being flowed” (Malouf, 1978:147). I n this utterance we
find affirmation that the boundaries of our personalities or psyches have some
analogous relationship with the physical boundaries we inhabit. This also implies a
reciprocity between inner and outer; an exchange that occurs within particular
places.
(e) Place as Transition between External Stimuli and I nternal Self.
Place sometimes seems to act as a conduit for an energetic transition to
occur, whereby we feel overwhelmed by unrecognisable stimuli embedded in an
environment or where, conversely, the environment appears to reflect our mood or
affect. I t is really at such times that we also experience something of the
participation mystique as personal psychic content seems to become reflected or
embedded in place. Cowan’s Fra Mauro describes the process thus:
I know that the boundary between myself and Nature sometimes
wavers and melts away, so that I can no longer be sure whether
what I see with my own eyes springs from outward or inner
impressions. An experience such as this is one sure way of
discovering how creative we are, and how deeply our soil
participates in the perpetual creation of the world. The same
invisible divinity is at work in us as it is in Nature (Cowan,
1996:28).
The first colonial free settlers to Australia, and no doubt their convict
predecessors, perceived the open pristine country before them as one reflecting an
absence of history and of previous lives, or as Ellen in Malouf’s Remembering
Babylon perceived it:
... it was easy here to lose yourself in the immensity of the land,
under a sky that opened too far in the direction of infinity ... into a
world where nothing, not a flat iron, not the names of your
children on your lips, could hold you against the vast upward
expansion of your breath ... I t was the fearful loneliness of the