Extract
[...] Giono turns to derision all the institutions of men, which have allowed them to establish an authority and to exercise it over one another. These institutions appear ridiculous, invented. ex nihilo, in a vain attempt to grasp something that surpasses man, pushing him to believe that he is legitimate and capable of becoming 'master and possessor of nature'. Beyond being anti-Cartesian again, this declaration carries an absurd, even nihilistic dimension. The primitive forces question everything that man has acquired. Thus, all his attempts to create meaning by investing in the polis, in faith, or in the studies of the 'real' fail. [...]
[...] Nature has the right to exist independently of man and his systems of beliefs, it is an ecocentric and intrinsic defense. Regarding this enterprise of defending the rights of nature, we can indeed evoke the movements carried by associations such as 'Wild Legal', in favor of the protection of ecosystems, which militate everywhere in the world to give rivers fundamental rights. [...]
[...] Moreover, we note an isotopy of will and freedom from the first sentences, around the expressions 'at its discretion', 'desire', 'is no longer solicited', in contrast to the slope and gravity that alienate. The notion of 'desire' is syntactically delayed by the modalizer 'it seems'. This is a process of emphasis. Also, this modalizer testifies to a narrator external to the action, who positions himself as a naive observer. He then draws up the list of the 'possessions' of water: 'It has its boulevards', 'It has its streets', 'It has its ponds'. [...]
[...] This excerpt can also be compared to the verse in the Bible "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided." All the elements of this verse are taken up in Giono's text: the wind sent by God, the opening of a new route, and water as an active power. However, Giono reverses the authority of the Creator: While it is God himself who opens a path for man, here it is water that carves its own path. Moreover, the gerund "crawling" continues the extended metaphor of Medusa, as a snake. Water is not only deified, it is also animalized. The snake's body imitates the movement of water, its freedom of movement, undulating. [...]
[...] Just like the sun, Cronos is a bearer of ambivalence and duality. He is the father of the Gods, the generator, but he is also the one who swallowed them to preserve his power. Metaphorically, the sun also has this creative and destructive power, symbolized by 'black gold': it is the one that allows life on earth, but it also represents a terrifying existential threat, because it will one day engulf this same earth and these same lives. The selfish actions of man, which accelerate global warming, only hasten his own tragic destiny. [...]
