Thoth, James Joyce, Derrida

A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk-like man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier-woven wings, of Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.


Bend down your faces, Oona and Aleel.
I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes
Upon the nest under the eave before
He wander the loud waters.

[James Joyce; Derrida?]



James Joyce, 'Portrait of the artist as a young man'

Jacques Derrida, 'La pharmacie de Platon' ("La Dissémination',1972)

Garth Fowden, 'The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind', 1986