Calligraphy: life lines

We have almost forgotten how to write with a pen – it is more convenient to type and edit any text on a computer. The unhurried epistolary genre cannot compete with cold and faceless, but so practical and convenient e-mail. Yet the ancient and completely impractical art of calligraphy is experiencing a real renaissance.

Do you want to change the rhythm, stop, focusing on yourself, your soul, your inner feelings? Take up calligraphy. You can meditate by writing lines with a perfect slope. And you can refuse the sample. “Not to strive to make a work of art, but to approach the sheet with the only vague desire – to make a gesture,” says artist and calligrapher Yevgeny Dobrovinsky. “It is not the result that is obtained, but the process itself that is important.”

Calligraphy is not just an “elegant handwriting”, not an artistically designed text, but an art that combines the master’s craft and his character, worldview and artistic taste. As in any art, convention reigns here. Whatever area a calligraphic text belongs to – religion, philosophy, poetry, the main thing in it is not information content, but brightness and expressiveness. It is in everyday life that handwriting is primarily required to be clear and legible – in calligraphy, ease of reading is far from the most important thing.

The great Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi (303–361) explained this difference this way: “An ordinary text needs content; calligraphy educates the soul and feelings, the main thing in it is form and gesture.”

This is especially true of Chinese calligraphy (it is also used in Japan and Korea) and Arabic, which, without exaggeration, can also be called spiritual practices. This applies to a lesser extent to Latin calligraphy.

Medieval monks who copied the Bible achieved great skill in the art of text design, but the development of printing and the triumph of a materialistic worldview forced calligraphy out of Western use. Today, Latin and Slavic calligraphy that emerged from it are much closer to decorative art. “Latin calligraphy is 90 percent beauty and style,” explains Yevgeny Bakulin, teacher of Chinese calligraphy at the Moscow Tea Culture Club. “Chinese is basically the content of life.” For the Chinese, comprehension of the “art of the stroke” is a way of gaining wisdom. In Arabic civilization, the “art of the line” is completely sacred: the text is considered the path to Allah. The movement of the calligrapher’s hand connects a person with a higher, divine meaning.

Chinese calligraphy: life comes first

Chinese hieroglyphs (from the Greek hierogliphoi, “sacred inscriptions on stone”) are schematic images, thanks to which ideas about objects and phenomena that are significant for modern man have come down to us from antiquity. The Chinese calligrapher does not deal with abstract letters, but with embodied ideas. So, from the lines symbolizing the streams of rain, the hieroglyph “water” is formed. The signs “man” and “tree” together mean “rest”.

“Before you write “bamboo”, you need to grow it in yourself,” taught the poet and calligrapher Su Shi (1036–1101). After all, this is art without sketches and the possibility of correction: the first attempt will be the last at the same time. This is the highest manifestation of the power of the present moment. A movement born of contemplation, inspiration and deep concentration.

The ritual of preparation contributes to immersion in oneself. “I tune in by spreading the ink, choosing brushes and paper,” says calligrapher François Cheng. As in other traditional Chinese practices, to practice calligraphy, you need to feel how the vital energy chi circulates through the body in order to splash it onto paper.

The posture of the calligrapher helps the unhindered movement of energy: the feet are on the floor, the knees are slightly apart, the straight back does not touch the back of the chair, the stomach does not rest on the edge of the table, the left hand lies on the bottom of the sheet, the right hand holds the pen vertically.

In the calligraphy textbook “And the breath becomes a sign”* Francois Chen explains the relationship between qi, the body and the line: “It is important to catch the moment of balance between tension and relaxation, when with exhalation the movement rolls in a wave from the diaphragm over the shoulder to the wrist and slides off the tip of the brush : hence the mobility and sensuality of the lines.

In calligraphy, it is important not to create an aesthetically flawless text, but to feel the rhythm of writing and breathe life into a white sheet of paper. Before the age of 30, it is almost impossible to become an experienced calligrapher. This is not “art for art’s sake”, but the path to wisdom. Only by the age of 50, having reached spiritual maturity, can a person realize its meaning. “By practicing it, you perfect your mind. The desire to surpass in calligraphy a person who is superior to you spiritually is doomed to failure,” Su Shi teaches.

Arabic calligraphy: master the breath

Let’s move from hieroglyphs to the Arabic alphabet, change the brush to kalam (reed pen), Taoism to Islam. Although Arabic calligraphy arose before the advent of the prophet, it owes its flourishing to the dissemination of the Qur’an. Because of the rejection of any images of God as a form of idolatry, the handwritten text of the Holy Scriptures has become its visual equivalent, playing the role of an intermediary between God and people, a form through which a person comprehends the divine. Surah The Clot (1-5) says: “Read in the name of your Lord … who gave knowledge of the writing reed. Gave knowledge to man about what he had no knowledge of.

Calligraphy is an excellent school of obedience, where the principle of obedience to the will of Allah, and therefore the Word of God expressed in a letter, is taken as the basis. Learning this art is a long and difficult process. In the first year, students do not touch the kalam, but only watch the teacher. Then, over the course of months, they produce “alif”, the equivalent of our letter “a”, which is a vertical bar. Its length serves as the basis for drawing up a proportion, without which writing a text is unthinkable.

The Arabic alphabet is only 28 letters. The uniqueness of Arabic calligraphy lies in dozens of canonized handwritings, or styles. Until the XNUMXth century, the geometric style “Kufi”, adopted for writing suras of the Koran, dominated. Strict “naskh” and cursive “rika” are now popular.

“The first step is to learn to capture the inner, invisible nuances, the movement hidden in the text,” explains Hassan Massoudy, a renowned European calligrapher. The whole body is involved in the creation of the text. But the ability to breathe is paramount: the calligrapher will not allow himself to take a breath until he completes the letter or completes the line. Kalam, which is held obliquely, should merge with the hand, become its continuation. It is called so – “the language of the hand”, and for possession it requires hardness and at the same time flexibility of the hand.

Before working with the text of the Koran or a poetic work, the calligrapher is imbued with its content. He learns the text by heart, and before taking up the pen, frees up space around him, achieving the feeling that “everything around has disappeared,” says Massoudi. “He concentrates, imagining himself inside a spherical void. Divine inspiration seizes him when he finds himself in the center: at this moment he is visited by insight, the body becomes weightless, the hand soars freely, and he is able to embody the meaning revealed to him in the letter.