Amiel* said that a landscape is a state of emotion, but the phrase is a flawed gem of a feeble dreamer. As soon as the landscape is a landscape, it ceases to be a state of emotion. To objectify is to create, and no one would say that a finished poem is a state of thinking about writing one. Seeing is perhaps a form of dreaming, but if we call it seeing instead of dreaming, it’s so we can distinguish between the two.

But what good are these speculations in linguistic psychology? Independently of me the grass grows, the rain falls on the grass that grows, and the sun shines on the patch of grass that grew or will grow; the hills have been there for ages, and the wind blows in the same way as when Homer heard it, even if he didn’t exist. It would be better to say that a state of emotion is a landscape, for the phrase would contain not the lie of a theory but the truth of a metaphor.

These incidental words were dictated to me by the panorama of the city as seen from the look-out of São Pedro de Alcântara, under the universal light of the sun. Every time I contemplate a wide panorama, forgetting the five feet six inches of height and the one hundred and thirty-five pounds in which I physically consist, I smile a supremely metaphysical smile for those who dream that dreaming is a dream, and I love the truth of the absolutely external with a noble purity of understanding. The Tagus in the background is a blue lake, and the hills of the far shore are a flattened Switzerland. A small ship – a black cargo steamer – departs from Poço do Bispo in the direction of the estuary, which I can’t see. May the Gods all preserve for me (until my present form ceases) this clear and sunlit view of external reality, the instinctive awareness of my unimportance, the cosiness of being small, and the solace of being able to imagine myself happy.