“Landscape … is a great … mystery … because in fact … it takes shape … in the eyes … of the beholder,” he struggled to say.

He added that it was a sort of projection of the spectator’s inner state, and that we should wonder whether what we are seeing might look entirely different in reality.

Wojnicz replied that as a child he had been bothered by the question of whether, for example, everyone saw the color green similarly, or was “green” just an agreed term for something that each person might perceive in their own way. If so, then our inner representations of the world might be dramatically different. Only language and social norms would be keeping some kind of order.

“But in fact colors are particular wavelengths, objective measures,” he concluded.

“Except that they can act on the human eye in all sorts of ways. How do you see green?” asked Thilo.

Wojnicz could not answer. Green like a leaf—that was all that occurred to him. He could only talk about it through comparison, through analogy with something else.

— The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (Page 89)