Chapter 1: Writing- An Examination
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Chapter 1: Writing- An Examination |
Writing was thought by the ancients to have come from the Gods. Thoth, the Greek name for the Egyptian God Djhowtey was believed to be the creator of writing, founder of social order, creator of languages and the ultimate scribe. A Reckoning that their God had given them writing is an indication of the power they recognized the craft of writing to have and that they saw it as a gift from a Great Spirit speaks to the reverence in which it was held.
In early 1940, Claude Lévi-Strauss [1] set sail from France for Brazil to study the culture of the Sabane people, specifically, the Caduveo and the Nambikawara. Like any anthropologist, he kept notes and in his case with a pad and pencil. He had, when he visited the Caduveo, handed out pads of paper and pencils to them, and repeated that gesture with the Nambikawara, knowing that neither group of people had a written form of their language, nor could they draw. But, in time, they began to draw wavy lines across the paper. Eventually, the chief of the Nambikawara grasped the concept that something was being transmitted to the paper which allowed the person who read it to have total recall of what had just transpired. The chief asked for paper, drew wavy lines on it and commenced to read aloud from it, giving a good semblance of a man reading from prepared copy, including pauses in appropriate places. He had learned the power of writing even though he couldn't write or read and he had guessed that by pretending to be able to do so would show his people that he had control of that power and could, consequently, increase his authority. The people's reaction to their chief was unexpected.
They too had grasped the power of writing but they exceeded their chief's grasp. They understood that the act of writing and reading involved considerable learning which they didn't have, and in addition, knew their Chief didn't, have. They regarded his pretending to read and write as a deceitful pretense and removed him from power, (Chapter 28 "A Writing Lesson", Claude Lévi-Strauss).
Further along in the same chapter, Levi-Strauss describes the activities of a Pakistani scribe: "...his knowledge is accompanied by power, with the result that the same individual is both scribe and money-lender; not just because he needs to be able to read and write to carry on his business, but because he thus happens to be, on two different counts, someone who had a hold over others" (emphasis his).
The late Walter Ong[2], literary critic, scholar and Jesuit Priest, championed what he claimed was the more vital form of the language, the spoken form, over the "embalmed" written form. In a conversation with me about why he thought escagraphs exist, he pointed out that the escagraph, from his point of view, is an artifact that verifies the human understanding that the spoken form of the language is superior to the written. He reasoned this way: Spoken language is formed in the vocal tract, the uppermost parts of which are the lips, teeth and oral cavity. To demonstrate our understanding of the inflexibility, fixity and unyielding nature of printed material, he argued, we created the escagraph. What does he mean by inflexibility, fixity and unyielding nature of written language? In his Interfaces of The Word he tells us that written language has no ability to alter once written, the words inside a 100 year old text can't and haven't been changed. Often, printed information is obsolete before it reaches the press, it can't react to the fast paced cutting edge of technological and scientific change. It is inflexible. Texts can be written anew, but, even in the new form they are fixed until they are re-written again. Oral language has the ability to transform with a speed that suits shifting realities and it can modify itself to fit current conditions in a way that writing can not.
So, he pointed out to me, we invented escagraphs so we could put writing in our mouths, masticate it with a crucial part of the vocal tract, our lips and teeth, and destroy it, chew it to pieces and swallow it thus demonstrating and verifying our understanding that the oral variety of language is the preferred sort. I wonder if I expected an answer from Walter Ong of any other sort? If Ong's thesis interests you, the two books which make the best beginning are the one named above as well as The Presence of the Word [3].
Above and beyond the information a written message carries, it brings with it a sense of power or mana, a term made famous by Robert Henry Codrington[4] in his famous look at the culture of Oceania. Codrington translated "mana" as a "supernatural power," and which Émile Durkheim later translated as "impersonal religious force," [5] .
When ancient scribes began to make meaningful marks on surfaces, those who could not "write" regarded the scribes' marks, their writing, with the greatest of respect which, from a contemporary point of view, bordered on worship. In a 16th century BC Egyptian medical scroll, the Papyrus Ebers, [6] attests to the power which writing was thought to have in ancient Egypt. The scroll contains remedies for illnesses in the form of prescriptions and those prescriptions quite often include urine of scribe or ink powder, ingredients which, because they were associated with people who could write, or writing itself (ink) which were thought to have power, would bring that same power to the ointment or medicine the patient was about to use. So, to receive an ancient Egyptian prescription which required the user to rub urine of scribe into his eyes that were losing their power to see was not as ridiculous as it may, at first, seem. Other scholars, [7] remark that "Where writing is a new and rare accomplishment there gathers round it all the mana and prestige of a superior foreign culture." Mana is only very remotely associated with the biblical term manna. [8]
Venerable Bede[9], the 7th century Anglo Saxon theologian, historian and chronologist in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, extends this power of the word of God to any book written in Ireland. He describes a cure for snakebite, "...the scrapping of leaves of books that were brought out of Ireland, being put into water, and given them to drink, have immediately expelled the spreading poison, and assuaged the swelling." This belief in the power of the written word as well as the power of the person able to write is still with us but in a different form. We marvel at the capacity of the computer expert who can retrieve and create information at a keyboard. To refer to a computer expert as a magician is commonplace.
Scattered throughout the histories of the world's cultures is the repeated refrain of reverence accorded a new system for handling information like, for example, the printing press. In order to understand the nature of the components of the escagraph and the functions they carry out, we need to examine a few more historical examples of the world's reactions to writing in order to see that the ability to write, and writing itself, carried magical and powerful overtones, overtones which I believe still resonate in a birthday cake which comes to the table today with a written message on it.
The reverence for the power of the written word was brought to bear on human illnesses by physicians of the middle ages in the form of incantations and amulets. To wear words, typically in an amulet around the neck, was thought to strengthen whatever prescription the patient had been given. The more powerful the source from which the words worn as amulets came, the better. Biblical passages or passages from the Koran were customary. In his work, The Infancy of Medicine,[10] Dan McKenzie tells us that is was of little importance how these charms were applied to the body. They could be worn around the neck or rubbed on the body or swallowed. He goes on to note that "...shrewd Arabian physicians, with admirable wisdom, used to write their prescriptions with a purgative ink." It was not rare for the written form of the prescription to be swallowed along with the prepared potion.
In Jewish Magic and Superstition, [11] Trachtenberg writes that medieval Jews were aware of the need to bring written words into contact with the body when some form of healing was desired, and also notes that the words were as often as not swallowed by the patients. Further along, he reports that scholars and their pupils ate cakes and hard boiled eggs (shelled) upon which names, Biblical verses or spells had been written so as to insure their success. Much the same procedure was carried out when a Jewish boy began his education.
The reports of the power of words and their use in spells and medicine is found again and again in the middle ages and verifies the power and magic which some people of the time believed written words to have, a magic and power which was ingested by eating those magical, powerful marks.
In a legend concerning St. Columba when he was a child, word power was replaced with the power of the mechanism for making words, the alphabet, which, in this example, was written on a cake. Individual alphabet letters are common today (alphabet pasta for example) but the form in which the alphabet appeared in this example was one whole alphabet written on a cake. This cake, for the student Columba, is the first mention that I have found of an escagraph with the alphabet inscribed upon it as if the alphabet were a text, the product of a block-print (a hand carved printing negative - the only form of printing known at the time). Alphabet escagraphs today are shaped individually, that is, like animal crackers, where each escagraph is shaped like one of the letters of the alphabet in upper case just as each animal cracker is the shape of one animal. Columba's escagraph was more akin to the alphabet written on a slate. Since the Leabhar Breac, from which this legend is taken, was compiled in 1411, a few years prior to the invention of individual type, 1450, it is not a surprise that the alphabet Columba was given to eat resembled the alphabet printed from a block-print and not as individual letters, as they are today. The entries for the Leabhar Breac[12] (Speckled Book) were purportedly compiled around 1411. The reported import of the legend is that Columba, almost immediately had the power to read once he had eaten he alphabet. The legend is discussed by Gaidoz in [13] Melanges Renier. The following is a condensed version of that legend as repeated by Gaidoz.
When it was time for Columba (later to be St. Columba b.521 - d. 597) to be educated, a soothsayer was sought to give advice on how this should be accomplished. The soothsayer recommended that Columba be given a cake to eat upon which the alphabet should be written. That was done. Shortly thereafter, Columba's teacher was called upon to read and sing Psalms before the Bishop; but, because of bashfulness, the teacher was unable to do so. The child Columba, student of the bashful teacher, was called upon to perform in his teacher's place. With only having eaten the alphabet on a cake, he was able to read from the book of Psalms. The legend does not mention if, or how well he sang.
At the time in the 15th century when the Columba legend was created and written down in the Leabhar Breac, other forms of food with writing on them existed, like the cakes Jewish scholars gave to their students to eat for success and luck in learning the alphabet which was written on a slate and smeared with honey which the young Jewish learner was instructed to lick off. Much of what the escagraph means today has its roots in those examples from the middle ages.
This brief look at the magic, supernatural power or impersonal religious force (mana) which has accompanied the advance of writing across the world reminds us not to overlook the possibility that our reverence for the power and magic we have attributed, through history, to the person who had the ability to write is still alive and will effectively play its part when we come to decide how the escagraph works.
Escagraphs are made of human food and writing. To be an escagraph, both of those elements must be present for the artifact to register as an escagraph. Over their history, the food which escagraphs have most commonly been made of are grain products, sugar, and in recent times, chocolate. There are more rare and unique escagraphs which are made of the pigment in the skin of a fruit (which gives the skin its color) and also, edible ink. Fats are not often used solely as an escagraph foundation with the exception of butter. Butter escagraphs are common to anyone who has dined out in the last forty years. In her collection of essays entitled As They Were [14], M. F. K. Fisher noted that in 1970, the Hotel du Forum in Arles served butter patties imprinted with "Forum". For the period, that escagraph was not unusual. Dining rooms, restaurants and cafes quite regularly served escagraphic butter patties carrying the name or a characteristic phrase that identified the eating place. Often a decorative design was present as well. After WW II and until the high tide of chocolate consumption in this country (about 1970), butter was regularly imprinted with messages. Mass produced, wrapped butter patties and individual servings of butter in containers, common now in restaurants, have put an end to that winsome artifact except in a few places.
The word or words on an escagraph are commonly imprinted, molded or stamped into the surface as it is made. Some bread products, throughout their history, have been stamped with a word or text before they rise. Extruding a word or words on the surface is also a common practice (as in cake icing). They are rare, but some escagraphs have a word or words in their interior instead of on their surface, like, for instance, hard candy sticks that carry a word printed through their middles so that it is present wherever the candy stick is broken. "Love" is a common word found in such sticks as is also the name of the place which gave this candy its common name, "Brighton Rock".
The writing must be edible, able to be consumed along with the food. In actual practice, if someone chooses not to eat the words on an escagraph, that does not alter its status as an escagraph. That only points up the peculiarity of the individual and does not effect the status of the escagraph. I have encountered a few people who have averse reactions to eating the words on an escagraph (often children) and I have encountered situations where a person will eat the words or letters on an escagraph selectively so as to make a new message, often a ribald or coarse one.
Writing on escagraphs takes every form that it takes on paper: block print, serif typefaces and cursive and there is even a form of escagraph (which we will examine later) which takes the form of the personal chirography (handwriting) of the person who plans to give it to another.
In this chapter. and the ones that follow, we will examine these basic requirements of an escagraph, writing and food, to see what qualities they bring when combined to form an escagraph. After we finish with food, we'll look at a particular kind of food which has had a tremendous impact on escagraphs, sugar. We will examine the characteristic powers of those three elements and come to realize that the escagraph strongly carries power (political, economic and social) as well as the capacity for subtle meanings made possible by the combination of flavor, color, and shape of food and the traditional meanings of the words it carries, a new dimension of literary irony.
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