University of Virginia Library

I

In 1970 Alfred A. Knopf, one of the leading publishers of quality trade books in the United States, in association with the leading newspaper of record, the New York Times, published a handsome book called A Short History of the Printed Word. Warren Chappell designed as well as wrote the book, bringing to a focus his substantial experience as an illustrator and book designer.[2] The bold frontispiece includes, in calligraphy, the motto

"LITTERA SCRIPTA MANET," and below it, in print, an ascription and translation: "HORACE: The written word remains" (Figure 1). The motto appears as white letters against a black ground, but the image may have resulted from a photographic reversal of letters inscribed in black ink on a white ground. Though evidently not typeset but hand-designed, the lettering of this motto suggests not handwriting but the monumental qualities of Roman letters carved in stone. Because such inscriptions supplied printing in the West with its repertoire of capital letters, the motto speaks here for the virtue not only of handwriting (probably the original referent), but also of the printed word that succeeded handwriting in Western culture—as Chappell explained (20, 22), and with the results that he celebrated. In fact, the manual calligraphy of this frontispiece mimics (though with considerable freedom of layout) the capital letters of the metal typeface, Trajanus, which Chappell had designed more than thirty years earlier; and which, in its name, saluted Trajan's column in Rome (c. A.D. 114), the originary source of Roman capitals.[3] Chappell's frontispiece artfully mediates script and printing,

making the same boastful claim for both: the written word remains.[4]

Chappell credits the claim to Horace, but Horace did not write it. It will not be found in the standard concordance to Horace, nor in the electronic edition.[5] But the mistake is a motivated one; for Horace did write the famous, self-reflexive, self-fulfilling conclusion to his Odes, "[e]xegi monumentum aere perennius":

These written words have indeed remained, long surviving the poet, as he boasted they would. And that extraordinary boast became a literary common-

place, renewed by Ovid, Spenser, Shakespeare, Herrick, and many others.[7] "Not marble, nor the guilded monument, / Of Princes shall out-liue this powrefull rime."[8] Only poetry remains to posterity.

But the paradox of this poetic topic—that fragile writing, if well written, can outlast even monumental stone—is not really the point of Littera scripta manet. The earliest known formulation, apparently already proverbial as Adam Murimuth used it in his chronicle of the reign of Edward III, which he completed in 1347, is "Res audita perit, litera scripta manet." [9] Caxton used a similar formula when he introduced the phrase to print: "Vox audita perit / littera scripta manet." [10] The balanced maxim draws a contrast not between the considerable durability of stone and the even greater durability of writing, but between the dissipation, the instant loss, of the sounds of the spoken word, and the fixity and durability of the written word. That is, the contrast is not merely comparative ("writing lasts longer than a monument") but absolute, and all in the favor of writing. Several formulations insist on the same sharp contrast: "Litera scripta manet, verbum ut inane perit": "The written letter remains, as the empty word perishes."[11] "Littera scripta manet, volat irrevocabile verbum": The written word remains, the spoken word flies away, not to be recalled.[12] "[V]ox emissa volat, litera scripta manet": "While words

spoken may fly away and be forgotten, what is written remains as evidence."[13] It has been suggested that "litěra scripta manet" is "a portion of a mediæval pentameter."[14] Maybe; but it wasn't something that Horace wrote.

The surfacing of this maxim in the late middle ages coincides with the consolidation of bureaucratic power by scribes and secretaries. As a kind of advertisement, the maxim promoted the careers of those who were invested in writing, not speech; it is easy to imagine why a scribe first wrote it down. Chappell translates littera scripta manet as "the written word remains," but the phrase is littera scripta, not verbum scriptum. Words are spoken before they are written; but letters come into being as they are inscribed, or printed, or electronically coded; and the adepts of writing technologies have always had a stake in their success.[15]