Plato was not the only one who "complained" about "the inhuman and artificial" nature of writing. Seven centuries later, when the written word seemed to be already an integrated part of society, some of the monks in the Egyptian Desert were reluctant toward the graphic transmission of words, particularly the Scripture (the Word par excellence). Let's read Abba Serapion 2 (in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Publications, 1987):
"A brother asked Abba Serapion, ‘Tell me a word.’The old man said, ‘What can I tell you? You have taken what belongs to the widows and orphans and put it on this shelf.’ (He saw that it was full of books.)"
Not that they were completely oblivious and ignorant of the entire (Greek-Roman)culture, but they definitely understood the Word different than we usually do: not as information, but as formation. Each word (and conversation) is changing the whole life of a person and the desert monks were asking for a "word", saying: "Father, give me a word that I may live/for my salvation". So, having books was not a problem per se, but keeping them on the shelf without application in one's life was seen as unacceptable. They were afraid that without the oral-aural transmission the word would become dead.
I'm wondering if the invention of writing had the human race forget the enormous power of each word, the word as a meaningful event .
Viktoriia - Thank you for this. We rarely comtemplate the power of the Word, of language. We speak so freely, so carelessly.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason this reminds me of Rainier Rilke's words about living the questions so that some day we might live into answers. We in our society want the answers now, not realizing that life is a process and always filled with anbiguity and questions. I think it stems from a need to control.
So too with words and language. We feel we gain control over the Word and language when we can write it down, read it freely and quickly. I am right now plowing through our readings for tomorrow. I found Saenger's article, "Space Between Words" fascinating. Why did the ancients (Greek, Latin, etc) take their sweet time to reintroduce space between words in their writing, as well as adopt uniform word order -- because they were not in a hurry to read on, read the next, hurry hurry. They savored the Word, the text, took their time, rolled it around on their tongue, and read few texts and read them many times, studied them, memorized them.