Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language; Oracle of Dodona; Dodoni

There is a rather splendid quotation in this London Review of Books article by T.J. Clark on the Henri Matisse Cut-Outs Exhibition at the Tate Modern:

"I imagine myself today something like the ancient Greek as Hegel describes him: he interrogated, Hegel says, passionately, uninterruptedly, the rustle of branches, of springs, of winds, in short, the shudder of Nature, in order to perceive in it the design of an intelligence. And I – it is the shudder of meaning I interrogate, listening to the rustle of language, that language which for me, modern man, is my Nature".

Roland Barthes

Text

I'm reminded of a few lines I wrote at Dodoni, listening to the rustle of the oak leaves in the precinct of the ancient oracle:


Dodona Oracle, Easter 2000 

The leaves are not rustling,

The pigeons don't fly -

But the wild flowers are saying

"You'll live till you die."