ABSTRACT
The pioneering work of Giselle de Nie, drawing inspiration from the writings of Gaston Bachelard and others, has for some years now been devoted to instating the image as a 'philosophically respectable thought form'. This chapter attempts to develop de Nie's insights in a sensory arena. Equally as important as the notion of a pattern of affective movement is the attempt to capture something 'that does not have an affinity for words'. The chapter encounters a putative disjuncture between words as signifiers and words as sounds. It proposes that the sound of the speaking voice may form a pattern which complements what in intelligible terms is being said; the aural patterning may respond to and enlarge upon the content of speech. The chapter describes Augustine's Confessions: that endlessly fertile source of reflection on language and meaning, but also a work profoundly concerned with words as such, how they are put together, and how they sound.
