First, thanks for such a brilliantly erudite essay.

It had occurred to me in reading this tour de force whether the aesthetics of the natural world might have brought forth a need for an Author of such beauty.

Re. Barthes, would it not be more accurate, even if it would be less dramatic, to talk about the life of the art as opposed to "the death of the author?" I am reminded of the remark Hume made concerning the publication of his first, wildly (commercially) unsuccessful, book: "It fell stillborn from the press."