1.3 The Origin of Writing and James Joyce

"Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat [the message], the Lord of Kulaba pattes some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay."

— Sumerian epic poem Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (~1800 BC)

“For writing is a visual enclosure of non-visual spaces and senses. It is, therefore, an abstraction of the visual from the ordinary sense interplay, And whereas speech is an outering (utterance) of all of our senses at once, writing abstracts from speech.”

-Marshall Mcluhan, Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)

"Whatever the virtues of spoken language, it is through writing that humanity is best able to express an age-old dream: the dream of a release from nature, from the material tissue, from one's own constraining existence. “

-Claude Hagège (1988)

Sources and Discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/DilettanteryPodcast/comments/ig74du/13_the_origin_of_writing_and_james_joyce/?