This paper shows how stuttering occurs at the level of the syllable as the meeting point between writing and speech. Stuttering results from Howe's and Fourcade's efforts to bridge the gap between signifier and signified, to utter the unspeakable, while maintaining separation and preserving the veil over the illegible core of language. Hence the role of the glottis as the interface of murmur and speech where Howe's and Fourcade's missed Orphic encounter with the ineffable is played out. Before I begin, I want to risk three flat-footed intuitions and one hypothesis concerning the unreadable, its causes and its relation to modernism.