The process of commenting on the world began with
the first manifestations of human art, even if the
meaning behind such commentary has been lost,
and may always remain so.
—Jean-Marie Durand
Alphabet. As notes score music, so the alphabet scores speech. Letters are notes for the music of language, and this explains two archaic practices that once mystified me. Until the Middle Ages scribes didnotseparatewords. (Punctuation had yet to be invented.) And originally readers read out loud, never silently. I now see how reading words is like reading music.
Book. I love a beautiful book. I love the feel of the pages as I turn them, the weight of the book in my hands. I love French flaps and deckle edges. I love book terms: foredge, foot, spine, head, headband, endpaper, flyleaf, pastedown, colophon, frontispiece, bastard title, font, the finials of fonts, type box, gutter. I hold in my hands a book, Uruk: The First City of the Ancient World. Its pages made of coated stock are large and heavy and smooth as silk. Its endpapers show a map of Uruk, located in present-day southern Iraq, city walls still plainly visible. The book is illustrated with photographs of excavated temples and statues and clay tablets inscribed with the world’s first writing. (Or, one of the first. Recent excavations have revealed early Egyptian writing contemporary with it. See ahead.) Uruk, the book, contains words composed by what may have been the world’s first named author, the high priestess Enheduanna. She wrote 4,200 years ago during a time of warfare and crisis. Enheduanna’s words praise the goddess Inanna, divine ruler of the city of Uruk:
Let it be known that you are greatly exalted like heaven!
Let it be known that you are immeasurably vast like the earth!
Enheduanna was certainly a powerful woman, but evidence that she was an author may be in doubt. See The Sumerians by Paul Collins.
Complete Writing. Steven Roger Fischer, in his book A History of Writing, defines “complete writing” as that which 1) must have communication as its purpose; 2) must consist of artificial graphic marks on a surface; and 3) must use marks that relate to conventional speech. “Complete writing,” then, is only a small part of the many meaningful marks made by our ancestors, including notches—cut lines—used as mnemonics as far back as Homo erectus.
Writing has another definition: visible speech. Speech that can be seen may include signs that do not involve “artificial graphic marks on a surface.” Such as the elaborate system of knotted ropes (khipu) used by the ancient Incas to communicate.
Diary. To write daily in a diary is to commune with the self. Is diary writing, then, a form of communication? It’s as if the self were two or more persons that had something to say to one another. How are you feeling today? What’s on your agenda? What’s happening, dear writer? Who and how are your beloveds? What’s in the here of here and what’s in the now of now?
I’ve never comprehended how those who do not keep a diary or journal can imagine the extent of their thoughts or feelings, their imaginings or dreams or deliberations or doldrums or delights. A diary is a friend to whom all things may be spoken.
English. I am monolingual, swimming in English, trapped in English, struggling to escape English by studying French. My progress is poor, but the door is open. To be inside the cathedral of a language is to be inside a particular view of the world. In French you don’t say “My name is Priscilla.” You say “Je m’appelle Priscilla” (“I call myself Priscilla”). Less fixed, more active. You don’t say “my hands,” you say “les mains” (the hands). Different ways of saying, different ways of seeing.
Fire. Books burn. Especially books made of the inner bark of the wild fig tree. These were the codices (old-style books) of Mayan civilization. In 1562, a Catholic priest, Diego de Landa, was assigned to “inflict Catholicism on the Mayan people,” in the words of Susan Orlean in The Library Book. Landa caused the torture and murder of numerous Mayans and burned most of their books. He wrote that these books contained “lies of the devil, and we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction” (quoted in Ambivalent Conquests by Inga Clendinnen, second edition). Only four Mayan codices remain.
Gods. Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 200,000 years old. A young, young species. And we are the only species to pay homage or pray to gods or goddesses or god. Our near relatives, the chimpanzees, for instance, do no such thing. When, in our existence as a species, did gods come to be part of it? When did the Sumerian goddess of writing, Nidaba, come into being? She must have arrived on the scene about when cuneiform appeared, between five and six thousand years ago. Nidaba originated as a grain goddess, but as Sumer became more urban, she changed occupations. She was widely worshipped, and Sumerian literary texts frequently end with “Praise be to Nidaba!”
And what of the Egyptian god of writing, Thoth, in the words of Fischer: “ibis-headed scribe of the gods, healer, lord of all wisdom, and patron of scholars”?
Handwriting. There is the feel of paper on fingertip, silken or soft or textured with a laid finish. A notebook can be pocket-sized or extra big as in the bulky blank book in which I now keep my journal. This Big Book is 13 inches tall, 11 inches wide, 2 inches fat. A two-page spread opens to 22 inches wide. So, room enough. In the notebook, of whatever size, you can practice making letters, drawing letters. You can write sideways or slantwise or in circles. You can draw pictures next to your words. You can dream, you can cross out words, write them again, begin again. You are free, at liberty. This is the quiet, intimate space of composition. By comparison, the keyboard is a corporate office machine.
Invisible. My need to write is compulsive, addictive, all-consuming. I am currently filling my 324th journal, and I have filled numerous other notebooks as well. Do we need to write because, although we may be shy and reclusive, we need to be recognized? As a child in school I was called “twin” (my twin sister was also called “twin”). I was quiet, and no one paid much attention to me. Am I a writer because I desire to be seen, to be remembered? To leave a record of my existence? Four thousand years ago, an Egyptian scribe wrote, “A man has perished and his body has become earth. All his relatives have crumbled to dust. It is writing that makes him remembered” (quoted in Fischer).
Jerome. Saint Jerome lived from 347–420 CE. Within the Catholic Church he is considered patron saint of archaeologists, biblical scholars, librarians, students, and translators. There exist hundreds of paintings of Saint Jerome, including paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Leonardo da Vinci, and Giovanni Bellini. Almost invariably Saint Jerome is shown reading a book or leaning over his desk, writing. He was a prolific writer and is best known for translating the bible into Latin (the Vulgate Bible). For our concerns, though, Saint Jerome is most important for seeing the importance of punctuation. He devised a kind of punctuation, where
