Tuesday, March 29, 2005

YET ANOTHER HISTORICAL PRECEDENT FOR SPOKEN WORD SLAMS

The Arabs of pre-Islamic times possessed a primitive script, but they tended to distrust writing as a medium which imprisoned the free spirit of their poetry. The spoken word was all-powerful; in comparison with this living splendour, the written word seemed to them dessicated, like a pressed flower.

-- Charles de Gai Eaton, Islam and the Destiny of Man, pp. 204-5

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