B51) circuit of Heraclitus's difficult thought. The criteria for selection must be appropriate to the matter and the fragmentary style of writing under consideration. In this case, the task would still be to select and gather the fragments into a certain way of laying out the thought; but one would do so by listening to the fragments themselves and, guided by the sayings, allowing to be disclosed what was hidden in the discourse of Heraclitus.⁵

This strategy of listening stretches back and forth in appreciation of the tension in the thought of Heraclitus. Like the relationship of the bow to the lyre, it discovers harmony in this tension (Fragment B51). This is of course in keeping with the recommendation of Heraclitus himself who warns in Fragment B19: "Not knowing how to listen, neither can they speak." Nevertheless, we remain suspicious of any strategy that would listen in order to take the obscurity of Heraclitus and try to expose and clarify it, as we remain suspicious also of the apparent aim of making present and available the true meaning of Heraclitus's words.⁶ Is this listening-reporting approach appropriate to the insight that all unconcealment remains in relationship to concealment and vice versa? Is there a more appropriate strategy and language that would not seemingly destroy Heraclitus by privileging unconcealment over concealment? At the heart of things in Heraclitus's thought is the unity of veiling and unveiling. Heraclitus tries to think the accord and, that is, the opposition between what shows itself and what does not. The opposition of revealing and concealing plays at the center of the Heraclitean cosmos. The Heraclitean commitment to a language that remains faithful to the double movement of revealing and concealing is evident in Fragment B93, where he calls such a way of speaking divine: "The Lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks (λέ-γει) nor conceals (κρύπτει) but gives a sign (σημαίνει)." The divine language of the sign, non-metaphysically understood, would seem to locate a way in which the transitional language of difference can be expressed. One might call such an originary speaking a signing, but a peculiar sign in that it comes before, not after, and brings forth what it points out and represents.

The interpretation of this fragment as speaking of a peculiar signature that exceeds the dichotomization of revealing and concealing and speaks in a kind of middle-voice⁷ of what neither can be (fully) revealed nor can be entirely hidden is warranted by other fragments such as Fragment B54: "The hidden harmony [that does not appear] is stronger