Read the travelogues of the last-but-one century and those older, and the strange and beautiful right-to-left Illitan calligraphy—and its jarring phonetics—is constantly remarked on. At some point everyone has heard Sterne, from his travelogue: “In the Land of Alphabets /Arabic/ caught /Dame Sanskrit’s/ eye (drunk he was despite Muhamed’s injunctions, else her age would have dissuaded). Nine months later a /disowned child/ was put out. The feral babe is /Illitan/, Hermes-Aphrodite not without beauty... read more
