This book is something opposite to guidebooks and impressionistic essays: descriptions of landscapes are not borrowed by the author from gazetteers, and pictures of the past are not borrowed from history textbooks. She is the fruit of not only brilliant erudition, but also imagination; travel observations are fused in it with existential experience. For the author, Provence is a special magnifying glass, thanks to which it is better to see where we are from and where we are going. Adam Wodnicki (b. 1930) - artist, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow; translator of French literature; honorary citizen of Arles.