Paradoxically, it is in the Middle East—site of the earliest alphabets and the first tablets containing civil and religious laws—that the spoken rather than the written word has held pride of place throughout the past and today.
A word consists of sound and rhythm, and so it is aimed at the ear—but in fact it touches all one’s sensibilities. When an aesthetic intention meets the word, it becomes poetry: shi’r ‘sensation
’. The emotional aspect of poetry thus has...