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🦋 Landscape physiognomy

While I'm thinking of it, a lovely passage from Unamuno's Por las tierras de Portugal y de España (quoted by Antonio Garrosa Resina in his essay on The Rivers of the Douro Valley in Literature):

Un río es algo que tiene una fuerte y marcada personalidad, es algo con fisionomía y vida propias. Una de mis más vivos deseos es el de seguir el curso de nuestros grandes ríos, el Duero, el Miño, el Tajo, el Guadiana, el Guadalquivir, el Ebro. Se les siente vivir. Cogerlos desde su más tierna infancia, desde su cuna, desde la fuente de su más largo brazo, y seguirles por caídas y rompientes, por angosturas y hoces, por vegas y riberas. La vena de agua es para ellos algo así como la conciencia para nosotros, unas veces agitada y espumosa, otras alojada de cieno, turbia y opaca, otras cristalina y clara, rumorosa a trechos. El agua es, en efecto, la consciencia del paisaje.

A river is something which has a strong, marked personality, is something with a life and physiognomy of its own. One of my strongest desires is that of following the course of our great rivers, the Duero, the Miño, the Tagus, the Guadiana, the Guadalquivir, the Ebro. To experience them. To take them from their deepest infancy, from their cradle, from the well-spring of their long arms, and to follow them through their falls and rapids, through their narrows and pools, through fields and river-banks. The vein of water is for them something like the conscience for us, sometimes foaming and agitated, other times full of mud, turbid and opaque, other times crystalline and clear, whispering along. Water is in effect the self-awareness of the landscape.

posted evening of Monday, October 19th, 2009
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