Greetings, I've been thinking about words, well, words and their relationship to time. What might have changed when words went from an oral (hearing) tradition to a visual (books etc.) tradition? Isn't sound immediate and more dynamic? In the oral tradition, by the time you get to the last syllable of qual-i-ty, the sound of the first syllable is almost gone, while the word on a page does not cease to exist. The visual, written tradition, is certainly prone to be far more static. How does the transition from an oral tradition to a written tradition figure onto the level split between the social level and the intellectual level? Or even, does it figure into the split?
I remember trying to read Goethe's Faust (English translation.) I could not read silently and have it make sense. Finally, I took it into the bath with me each night and read it out-loud, and soon emerged the most wonderful rhythm and words with all sorts of deep meaning. And of course after that I loved Herr Goethe. I still have a desire to experience hearing Faust in the original German, and I do not understand German. Ahhhhh. Anyway, what might have changed when words went from an oral tradition to a visual tradition? Marsha Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
