Japanese Calligraphy as a Way to Make the Invisible Visible [1 ed.] 1527501280, 9781527501287

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Japanese Calligraphy as a Way to Make the Invisible Visible

Japanese Calligraphy as a Way to Make the Invisible Visible By

Rodica Frentiu Translated from Romanian by Ciliana Tudorica Foreword by Florina Ilis

Japanese Calligraphy as a Way to Make the Invisible Visible By Rodica Frentiu Translated from Romanian by Ciliana Tudorica Foreword by Florina Ilis This book first published 2023 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2023 by Rodica Frentiu All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0128-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0128-7

Darkening the darkness there they are the gates of light. —Nichita Stanescu, Another haiku1

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(our transl.) In original: “Întunecând întunericul/ iată/ porțile luminii.” (Nichita Stanescu, Alt haiku)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword ................................................................................................... ix by Florina Ilis Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 9 Japanese Calligraphy: From the Medieval Secret Teachings to the Twentieth Century Avant-Garde Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 31 Reveries of the Brush: Writing by Painting and Painting by Writing Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 49 Japanese Calligraphy as an Artistic Act: Visibility, Movement, Calligraphicity Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 69 Contemplative Meditation and Transcendent Vision: The Calligraphic Work and the Byzantine Icon Chapter 5 ................................................................................................ 103 The Memory of an Instant: Fleeting Milestones on the Path of Calligraphy Bibliography ........................................................................................... 125

FOREWORD Western interest in Japanese art was initially manifested, predominantly, in favour of the ukiyo-e stamp, which European artists discovered with amazement and delight, beginning with the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1867), stirring among Parisian painters a true trend for Japanese-inspired elements. If Manet was attracted to the way in which Japanese artists painted nature and Monet was fascinated by the angles from which the woman was depicted in ukiyo-e, Van Gogh trained his eye to acquire a “Japanese perspective”, seeking to get out of the immobility of gaze of the academic painting. Pierre Loti, with the novel Madame Chrysanthème (1888), fuels the imagination of Parisians regarding Japan and arouses the interest of collectors in varied objects of decorative art. The windows of art dealers’ stores in Paris began to display prints of the floating world (ukiyo-e), kimonos, netsuke (miniature sculptures), ceramics, painted screens, as well as samurai armours or swords. Perhaps intimidated by a lack of knowledge of the Japanese language, art collectors were, however, less attracted to the refined and elevated art of calligraphy. Compared to the last century, the European perception of Japanese art and culture has evolved naturally, becoming more refined. Nevertheless, with the triumph of pop culture and, especially thanks to the internet, popular culture and art forms, such as anime (animated movies and series) and manga (comics) have gone far beyond the borders of Japan, conquering today's young audiences all over the world. Even so, certain fields of art, including Japanese calligraphy, have remained unknown to the general public, being reserved only for specialists, connoisseurs of the Japanese language, art and culture. The book Japanese Calligraphy as a Way to Make the Invisible Visible by Rodica Frentiu fulfils, from this point of view, a double role. Firstly, it demonstrates that the art of calligraphy is not only simple writing, but, by presenting to us the evolution and development of artistic writing styles, it shows that it is one of the oldest and most powerful forms of Japanese art that, in turn, influenced other art forms as well, such as the art of painting,

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the art of poetry, or the art of tea. Secondly, it introduces to the audience a remarkable art, whose artistic language can be understood and perceived also in an aesthetic and/or spiritual dimension, not only as a strictly linguistic one. Rodica Frentiu is the coordinator of the Japanese Language and Literature Programme within the Faculty of Letters (at Babes-Bolyai University, Romania). She is a professor who practices the art of calligraphy, having been guided by well-known calligraphy masters. Harmoniously combining the two qualities of the art of calligraphy, writing and art, Rodica Frentiu invites us, in this book, to a methodical lecture of understanding and studying the calligraphic techniques and styles, as well as to the artistic one of entering a fascinating field of art – which harmonises in perfect communion the beauty of the form of writing with the sensitive subtlety of its meanings. Developed in four substantial chapters, this book includes in its conception the four fundamental dimensions of calligraphy: the historical dimension, the cultural dimension, the aesthetic-artistic dimension and the spiritual-religious dimension. To these four great chapters a fifth will be added, not by chance, because, in the tradition of Confucian symbolic numerology, which speaks of the five elements (earth, water, air, fire and void), Japanese culture privileges the significance of the number five. Because it is a diary in images and words of initiation into the art of calligraphy, I would attribute to this last chapter, which acts as an epilogue, a subjective dimension. The first chapter of the work – Japanese Calligraphy: from the Medieval Secret Teachings to the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde – traces the history of Japanese calligraphy from its beginnings, with mention of its roots in Chinese calligraphy, continuing with the medieval period, when Japanese calligraphy refined its own identity and surpassed its models, achieving artistic perfection, ultimately reaching the modern era, when the artists of the avant-garde group Bokujinkai, who rethought the functions of calligraphy, reclaimed its status of art, ignored by the modern world. The second chapter –Reveries of the Brush: Writing by Painting and Painting by Writing – expresses the cultural dimension of Japanese calligraphy, which ever since the Heian period (794-1185) has gone beyond the field of beautiful writing, as calligraphy artists have tried, without distancing themselves from the ancient secret teachings, to follow the true path (way)

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of shodō art and to capture in their work the ephemeral beauty of the moment, conveying to the viewer serenity in the face of its impermanence. The aesthetic-artistic dimension is portrayed in the third chapter – Japanese Calligraphy as an Artistic Act: Visibility, Movement, Calligraphicity – which, by discussing the aesthetics of Japanese art, situates calligraphy in relation to the evolution of the vision of art, as an art of contemplation, but also of revelation, an art of rendering the metaphysical shadow of things. In order to better understand the extremely exciting relationship between the scriptural and the artistic, this chapter connects the art of Japanese calligraphy to European graphic poetry, which tried, in a relatively similar manner, to cause possible breaches in the modern theory of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and to impose visual poetry, practiced, for example, by Apollinaire. The comparative analysis of the poetics of visual poems and the art of calligraphy is unique and, put through the filter of the modern poetic paradigm, it offers us surprising reading suggestions. The fourth chapter – Contemplative Meditation and Transcendent Vision: Calligraphic Work and the Byzantine Icon – , built from a comparative perspective, creates a link between the art of Japanese calligraphy and that of Byzantine icon painting, showing that each of the two arts, by favouring the metaphysical dimension, represent a possible way of accessing the spiritual world. In an attempt to render the invisible visible, and to reveal what lies hidden beyond ordinary perception, writing with black ink fulfils, similarly to the art of the icon, a meditative ritual as well. The ritual character of the two arts, which consists in the preparation of the rice grain paper and ink, in the case of calligraphy, or of the wall for the fresco or the canvas, in the case of religious art, has the role of purifying the artists’ mind, preparing them for the true path of initiation into the religiosity of art. I have invoked only a few common elements between the art of calligraphy and Byzantine religious art, but the reader will discover others that the author captures and analyses here with boldness and intelligence, yet also with subtlety and artistic refinement. The four chapters portray, therefore, the conceptual framework of the book, but the reader will be surprised, going through them, to find, in addition to the description of the fascinating world of the art of Japanese calligraphy, examples of calligraphic writing as well. What is outstanding about these calligraphic works is the fact that they were created by the

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book’s author herself. She chose the most representative and expressive works from her rich artistic portfolio for the illustration and understanding of the text. Through the author's calligraphic works (which vary in size or style), the reader will discover the various Japanese calligraphy styles (tensho, kaisho, gyōsho, sōsho), but also an extraordinary variety of the possibilities of this art’s expression in relation to others, such as haiku or Zen meditative thinking. In full agreement, however, with the Japanese vision of seeing calligraphy as an art that does not represent the path of selfaffirmation, in contrast to the egocentric vision of the European artist, Rodica Frentiu adopted the precepts of the old Japanese masters of learning the path (way). She progressed over time, perfecting both her style and her technique, writing with force but also with delicacy, with serenity but also with momentum, with elegance and refinement yet always with a pure heart. In this sense, the last chapter of the book – Memory of an Instant: Fleeting Milestones on the Path of Calligraphy – compresses into only a few temporal markers, necessary for the reader’s orientation, the miraculous story of the encounter with the art of Japanese calligraphy, on whose path Rodica Frentiu perfected herself in search of harmony between ink, brush and paper, without ever forgetting the true way of calligraphy. The way that the brush and black ink follow to meet the white rice grain paper and then part with it forever, but not before unveiling the miracle of the harmony of the whole captured in the memory of an instant, is described with depth and subtlety throughout the book – revealing itself to the reader when reading the entire text, as well when contemplating the works signed by the author. The book Japanese Calligraphy as a Way to Make the Invisible Visible is the result of serious academic research on the poetics and semiotics of the art of calligraphy, yet the reader will discover in its pages not only a unique and profound book about the art of Japanese calligraphy, but also an authentic way of portraying, experiencing and understanding Japanese culture and civilization. —Florina Ilis

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Fig. 1 ࡺࡵ࣭Dream2

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All the calligraphic works in this volume belong to the author. These are used for illustrative purposes and do not always follow the text.

INTRODUCTION - Maître, la lune claire et paisible brille tellement haut dans le ciel! - Oui, elle est très loin! - Maître, aidez-moi à m’élever jusqu’à elle. - Pourquoi? Ne vient-elle pas à toi? —Henri Brunel, Les plus beaux contes Zen

The idea that the act of writing is also an art can be found in all cultures of the world, and the gesture of writing beautifully or artistically is called calligraphy (a term derived from the Greek kallos 'beautiful' and graphy 'to write'). If the art of calligraphy is generally associated in Medieval Europe with the peak of the manuscript – losing, with the use of printing, its artistic function in creating books –, in Islamic culture or in Asian cultures3 such as Indian, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean, Vietnamese or Japanese, calligraphy has retained its pictorial character, continuing, in parallel with writing, to develop as an art in its own right. Calligraphy has been considered, for almost two millennia, the highest art form in East Asia. In Japan, the art of calligraphy, having its origins in Chinese calligraphy, gradually nipponized and evolved, ultimately being considered a complex art, which incorporates the functions of a representative and expressive art, of a pictorial and verbal art, of an art of space and time. Using a flexible brush that responds to the calligrapher’s4 3

The Vedic Tantras record, for example, how Shiva reminds his consort Devi of the magic of writing: “While, subjectively, letters flow into words and words into sentences, and while, objectively, circles flow into worlds and worlds flow into principles, you can ultimately find these converging into our being.” (our transl.) [In original: “În vreme ce, subiectiv, literele curg în cuvinte și cuvintele în propoziții, și în vreme ce, obiectiv, cercurile curg în lumi și lumile curg în principii, află-le în cele din urmă pe acestea convergând în ființa noastră.”] (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 174) 4 The word for calligrapher is, in modern Japanese, shodōka (᭩㐨ᐙ: ᭩ 'writing, to write' + 㐨 'road' + ᐙ 'specialist'), and in old Japanese it was teshi (ᡭᖌ: ᡭ 'hand' + ᖌ 'teacher, master').

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Introduction

every breath and movement, both as a form of representation, as well as means of expression, calligraphy exploits the expressive potential of logographic characters that can be written in six different styles, with essentially infinite graphic variations. Combining the discipline of beautiful writing with the practices of individual cultivation and refinement – ࠕ᭩ࠖ ࡣࠕேࠖ࡞ࡾࠋ5 –, the art of calligraphy is, at the same time, an essential legacy in the development of Japanese culture and civilization. Of course, in contemporary times, when the pressure of the digitalization of written culture is so strong, research dedicated to the art of calligraphy might seem somewhat out of date. However, since it gives writing itself additional meaningful nuances such as aesthetic and philosophical value, Japanese calligraphy shodō ᭩㐨 (᭩ 'writing, to write' + 㐨 'path, way, road') is not only an artistic expression and form, but also a way towards knowledge. If a text is constituted by the selection of words and its syntax, the grammar of the calligraphic exercise is firstly linked to the harmony of four treasures (shihō ᅄᐆ) chosen with great care by the calligrapher: the animal-hair brush fude (➹), the rice paper kami (⣬), the ink sumi (ቚ) [obtained by dissolving a solid ink stick in water, through friction], and the inkstone suzuri (◵) [used for obtaining ink].

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(lit.) Calligraphy becomes the person. As an addition to its utilitarian function recognised over time, the practice of calligraphy also finds its purpose in institutionalised and/or personal education, for a complete formation of the individual through self-cultivation, in a harmonious relationship both with the self and with the other, both with the natural world and with society in general.

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Fig. 2 The four treasures of calligraphy: ජʀࢶʀ๿ʀ‫ݝ‬

The continuation of the calligraphic exercise requires the practitioners to follow the path through which they will deepen the peculiarities of logographic writing, based on the Shinto belief in a deity that rules the kingdom of words, according to which every word is endowed with soul (kotodama ゝ 㟋 ). In this way, the disciples will understand that the discipline of calligraphy is, ultimately, a sort of meditation that leads to mushin ↓ ᚰ (empty heart) or the state of mind that recognises the connection and dynamic motivation between opposites, and cancels, in the end, any possible contradiction. As a result, the preparation of the calligrapher for the practice of calligraphy (keiko ✍ྂ, in Japanese), which serves to awaken the body and mind as a single unit, becomes, naturally, as important as the final calligraphic work; from the unfolding of the rice paper to the dripping of water into the inkstone to prepare the ink, from the smooth hand movements that dissolve the ink stick in the water, held with the fingers relaxed, to the delicate pressing of the hair of the brush and its proper dipping into the ink, from the actual writing to washing the utensils, all the gestures prepare the “emptying” of the mind, so that the state of mushin can be achieved. What is more, given the connection between the human body and the calligraphic text as a material continuum, not only the fingers or the wrist, but the whole body must be in permanent relaxation, allowing the flow of vital energy ki (Ẽ) to freely circulate from the physical centre and the spiritual one of the body hara (⭡) to the brush in the hand, without the slightest pressure or force exerted locally – creating calm movements,

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Introduction

without any hurry, with minimal pressure, so that the peace of mind can release, free from all constraint, the black line on the white sheet. Ki manifests itself in the dance of brushstrokes (hippō ➹ἲ), in the balance of the features of logographic characters, in the movement transmitted from one character to the next, remaining permanently recognisable in the finished product (= the calligraphic work), as evidence of the artistic process (shohō ᭩ἲ), which reconstructs the experience of creation. Ki, hippō and shohō become the (unique) stylistic signature of each calligrapher, and the sense of movement, similar to a dance, brings the calligraphic work to life.

Fig. 3 ݆ਭʀThe Moon on the Water

Calligraphy is a rather difficult art to understand. Most studies in the field pay attention to considerations of historical and cultural nature: how to explain the evolution of the art of calligraphy in the respective historical context, with whom a certain calligrapher studied, in which style or in the technique of which old master would his or her artistic line fit, what are the known influences, etc. These are important elements, of course, in the study of calligraphy from a diachronic perspective. But there are also desirable

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elements of visual analysis, contextual or purely visual approaches, which highlight its artistic values as a choreography of line and form in space, so that calligraphy can be seen immediately and as an art of pleasure. Although oftentimes illegible, the calligraphic work becomes a purely visual experience that can be understood as a direct and powerful expression of the spirit and mind, which will reveal the true face of the calligrapher, becoming an experience (= arousing a physical and emotional reaction) both for the practitioner and the receptor (experienced or not), in a movement that passes from the moment of creation to that of interpretation. The unknown always invites the public to create projections, as a function of the human psyche, so that even the viewer alien to the culture of logograms, when in front of a calligraphic work, will try to fill the abyss of lack of information with perceptions, sensations, feelings or ideas. A calligraphic work reveals the meaning of a continuous, unbroken rhythm, as well as physical sensations and emotions/feelings caused by tactile and visual senses, which give the viewer a vivid perception of the balance and harmony of the logographic character, passing from flat two-dimensionality to spatial three-dimensionality. The spirit of the calligrapher and that of the receptor are thus captured in a time frame that reveals an expressive flash from a particular moment. Nevertheless, in the end, the calligraphic work is a paradox that displays a contradictory characteristic from a compositional point of view. On the one hand, since no feature of the calligraphic character can be left unfinished, redone or corrected, it – as a final product – must be contemplated by the calligrapher as a whole before the brush touches the paper, creating a kind of vision of the mind. On the other hand, calligraphic execution must be quick and spontaneous, without any hesitation; although the calligrapher feels the movement of the brush as very slow, to an outside eye it might appear very fast... The creative synergy that overlaps the calm rapidity of the brush movement in a moment of concentration, attention and freedom, over an act the contemplative mind becomes synonymous not only with the return to oneself, but also with the revelation of the way of calligraphy. I discovered the art of calligraphy when I started studying Japanese at Kobe University (Japan) as a Monbukagakushō (Ministry of Education and Research) scholar. As a foreigner coming from a completely different cultural horizon, when I began learning Japanese, I was in awe at the writing

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Introduction

used, especially after I learned that, in Japanese, writing and drawing/painting are homophones (kaku). The state of awe continuously grew and, together with it, the questions that would not stop coming: What are the origins of such writing? Is there any way to understand it at a deeper level? If the kana syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) used by Japanese writing seem accessible, since they are, like their names, the graphic correspondent of some phonetic syllables, the kanji (₎Ꮠ) writing system, which borrowed the Chinese logographic characters, is close to a true revelation for someone educated in the culture of the alphabet. The number of kanji characters learned in the classes was increasing and I had begun to wish, more and more, for a closeness – somewhat from the inside – to this graphic form concomitantly word and image. The memory of the first Japanese calligraphy class will forever remain linked to the question asked by the sensei (‘teacher, master’) at the end of the class: Are you sure you’ve never done Japanese calligraphy before?! At first, shūji (⩦Ꮠ) or the exercise of writing logograms with the brush, the practice of Japanese calligraphy turned for me, without realising, into shodō (᭩㐨) or the way of writing as an art, the personal narrative being configured by and through three coordinates: a space of the meeting between the West (the culture of the alphabet) and the East (the culture of logographic characters) through Japanese calligraphy, a place of dialogue of the disciple (deshi ᘵᏊ) with the master calligrapher (sensei ඛ⏕) and a time of adoption offered by this art to the disciple, marked by the moments of learning, self-cultivation and discovery of the creative dimension. My books dedicated to Japanese calligraphy have been shaped and structured over the years through the direct experience of calligraphic practice and complementary readings6. The movement towards the art of My previously published works in this field are: Haiku şi caligrame [Haiku and Calligrams] (Cluj-Napoca, Echinox, 2000, in collaboration with Florina Ilis who signs the haiku poems); Imagini-cuvinte în mişcare. Caligrafia japoneză [Imagewords in Motion. Japanese Calligraphy] (Foreword by Florina Ilis, Cluj-Napoca, Echinox, 2004); Caligrafia japoneză. Metamorfozele liniei [Japanese Calligraphy. Line Metamorphoses] (Foreword by Dr. Livia Dragoi, Preface by Dr. Nina Stanculescu, Cluj-Napoca, Diotima, 2006); Lecţia de caligrafie japoneză [Japanese Calligraphy Lesson] (Cluj-Napoca, Argonaut, 2008); Une leçon de calligraphie 6

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calligraphy was initially, naturally, from the outside to the inside. However, the process of writing this book, in which I highlight the role of Japanese calligraphy in a historical and cultural context, as well as in an artistic and spiritual one, forced me to make a reverse movement, from the inside to the outside. The narrative of personal experience is here rather implicit, suggested by the calligraphic works that support the various (unique) investigations and explorations of a semiotic-cultural, hermeneutic and poetic nature in the universe of calligraphic art. In order to avoid writing a purely descriptive work, and so as not to piercingly separate scientia from sapientia, I prefer to reveal the personal experience of calligraphy first in a mediated manner, by approaching this art as an aesthetic exercise and spiritual practice – with examples provided by my own works –, and to end with a fictitious calligraphy journal to illustrate the meaning that Japanese calligraphy has gained for me over time7. If the story of the experience (direct and mediated) as a practitioner of Japanese calligraphy is the personal “testimony” coming to signal the uniqueness of the calligraphic art encountered in its home country, I find it appropriate to express my gratitude to the Japanese master calligraphers for the generosity with which they helped a foreigner get closer to the Japanese soul, and interpret the seen and the unseen of the black line on the white paper... I, therefore, dedicate the book of Japanese calligraphy written in these lines to the memory of my calligraphy master Nishida Senshū sensei, humbly.

japonaise/ A Lesson in Japanese Calligraphy (Cluj-Napoca, Argonaut, 2010); Caligrafia japoneză: meditaţii din vârful pensulei [Japanese Calligraphy: Meditations from the Tip of the Brush] (Cluj-Napoca, Argonaut, 2012). 7 I do not wish to imply that only those who practice the art of calligraphy can understand it. However, the attempt to pick up the calligraphy brush can show someone not only the difficulty of controlling the movement of the brush, but also the extent to which it allows for the expression of individual personality. The experience of calligraphy is within everyone's reach...

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Introduction

Fig. 4 Ensō (Zen Circle)

CHAPTER 1 JAPANESE CALLIGRAPHY: FROM THE MEDIEVAL SECRET TEACHINGS TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AVANT-GARDE Calligraphy is one with form, and yet manifests an individual’s heart. —Fujiwara Norinaga (1109-1180), Saiyōshō Ultimately, the study of any Way is a labor of the heart. —Son’en (1298-1356), Jubokushō

Japanese calligraphy, as an academic subject of study directs research towards a field whose complexity is given by various cultural characteristics, out of which the writing system immediately stands out. Writing, one of the most important forms of human communication, through a set of visible marks, related by convention to certain layers of language, includes in its history two great directions: Sumerian and Chinese writing. The first of them, also known as cuneiform, symbolic writing, used in the 8th millennium BC, has evolved, over time, from a pictorial form, to an increasingly conventionalised one, the culmination of its transformation being the invention of the Greek alphabet (later borrowed by other cultures), considered to be the great fulfilment of Western logical and scientific culture (The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1993, 1025). Chinese writing, whose history begins around 1400 BC in East Asia (Shang Dynasty period, 1600-1046 BC), used pictorial signs to represent objects, in the original form of oracular inscriptions on turtle shells or animal bones (Ishikawa, 2011, 22), created, according to the legend, by a mysterious person with four eyes, named Thang-Hsieh, and inspired, the legend continues to say, by the footprints left by birds on the sand (Kuiseko, 2002, 8). Structurally, the Chinese character is a composition of horizontal, vertical, zigzag and curved lines, their number reaching 50,000, unlike the alphabet, which has

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Chapter 1

only 26 letters. Also, because they are ideographic characters, in Chinese writing, there is no need for a space between words as they can be freely aligned horizontally or vertically. And if, in Egypt, abbreviated paintings were used to represent sounds, the Egyptian hieroglyphs being later transformed into the alphabet through an “aural transliteration” (Ishikawa, 2011, 249), in the Far East, the Chinese characters (which can be divided, in turn, into pictograms and ideograms – the pictograms being closer to the real referent than the ideograms), without being paintings of sounds, to this day mean stylised copies of nature or stylised paintings of the concepts they represent8. It is an eloquent case from human history that makes it difficult to understand language without writing, the particular influence between the two thus modifying the usual relationship between referent-signifier-signified (Kristeva, 1981, 79). In the absence of a complete hierarchy, the meaning, the sound and the object, acting as functional actors in a “spatial theatre”, overlap and get confused in such a language in a single feature transformed into a logographic character: Cette soudure du concept, du son et de la chose dans la langue chinoise qui fait que la langue et le réel construisent un ensemble sans se poser face à face comme l’objet (le monde, le réel) et son miroir (le sujet, la langue), est matérialisé par et dans l’écriture chinoise : écriture idéographique, vieille de plus de trois mille ans, la seule qui n’a pas évolué vers l’alphabetisme (comme ce fut le cas de l’écriture égyptienne ou de l’écriture cunéiforme). (Kristeva, 1981, 80)

The history of writing in Japan spans nearly two millennia, and its study brings together many facets of Japanese culture. The earliest Japanese compilations, Kojiki ྂ஦グ (Records of Ancient Matters), from 712, and Nihon shoki ᪥ᮏ᭩⣖ (The Chronicles of Japan), from 720, record the time when the (Korean) king of the land Paekche Shōko sent as a gift to the (Japanese) emperor Ōjin through Wani – considered one of the greatest 8

Recent theories in the field indicate only the phonetic basis of Chinese characters, as they do not express ideas through their visual form; see Yuehping Yen, Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society (London and New York, Routledge, 2005).

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scholars of his time – the Analects (Lunyu) of Confucius (551 BC-479 BC) in ten volumes and a scroll of Chinese writing (Seely, 1991, 4-5). Without having developed a writing system of its own, between the 4th and 6th centuries, Japanese culture borrows Chinese characters and, as a result of understanding the function of writing, instruction in this direction begins. Although Japanese chronicles try to highlight a cultured branch through which Chinese writing entered Japan, archaeological discoveries have proven that, before the scroll manuscripts (maki), Chinese writing had been introduced to the archipelago through inscriptions on various artefacts: coins, arrived in Japan in the century 1st and 2nd, mirrors from the 3rd century or swords from the 4th century (Seely, 1991, 9-12). What is more, this is the moment that also prepares the birth of calligraphy in Japan, when this art, created from the deconstruction and reconstruction of Chinese logographic characters, acquires its own style (wayō ࿴ᵝ), derived from the strongly stylised onnade ዪᡭ (women’s hand) style, the most beautiful achievement being the creation of kana syllabaries. Interpreted as grammatical “morphemes” (Seely, 1991, ix), following a series of readings (the kun Japanese reading and the on Chinese reading), the texts composed in Japan during this period are consistent with the writing rules of the literary Chinese language, although written with the intention of being read or decoded as Japanese (not Chinese). However, either as a result of the scribe’s insufficient knowledge of the Chinese language and of how to avoid the difficulties of the Chinese style, or due to simple errors, but, above all, in response to the need of a formal expression much more suitable to the vernacular language, the linguistic influence of the Japanese language soon made itself felt. In this way, texts in a hybrid style begin to be written, conforming to the model provided by the syntax of both the Chinese and Japanese languages, so that, gradually, short inscriptions in the Japanese style began to appear, certainly a revolutionary moment in terms of impact. If, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the use of writing seems to be quite limited, beginning with the 7th century, reading and writing became an important part of political, social-administrative and religious life. Prince Shōtoku (574-622), the follower and promoter of Buddhism in Japan, created, in 727, for example, the Sutra Buddhist Texts Copying Bureau (Shakyōjo), to meet the great demand for Buddhist texts of the time. What is more, by the 7th century, the Manyogana syllabary had

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Chapter 1

been compiled in Japanese (Ishikawa, 2011, 158) and named after the most famous use related to the collection of poems Manyōshū ୓ ⴥ 㞟 9 (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, ca. 759), and, from the 8th century, the syllabary consisted of an inventory of kanji (₎Ꮠ) characters – the Japanese word for Chinese characters – selected and used mainly with phonetic value (which use the on Chinese reading)10. However, these kanji constituted, in the following centuries, the basis on which the most simplified characters from the kana 11 syllabaries (hiragana and katakana 12 ) were created. Obtained through the graphic deformation of current Chinese logograms, Japanese writing is, even today, being considered “the most complicated system of writing” (Seely, 1991, ix) in use in the modern world. In Heian ( ᖹ Ᏻ ᫬ ௦ ) culture (794-1185), the classical golden age appreciated as the peak in Japanese cultural history, all the arts excelled (painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, etc.), in a new environment, 9

The collection contains approximately 4,500 poems, most of them written in the Japanese style. It is true that, due to its orthographic complexity, the anthology remained unintelligible for two hundred years. 10 This form of “derived writings” (Seely, 1991, 49-52) may include a semanticphonetic double association when using the kun Japanese reading of the logograms. An erudite (bookish) example of this would be the bi-syllabic sequence teshi: ⩔அ and ኱⋤. The word teshi with the meaning 'calligrapher' existed in the old Japanese language, consisting of the components te 'hand, writing' and shi 'teacher, master'. On this basis, in several poems from Manyōshū, the compound suffix -teshi is written ⩔அ, by association with the characters used to write the name of the Chinese master calligrapher Wang Xizhi ( ⋤ ⩔ அ , 303?-361?). Wang Xizhi's seventh child, Wang Xianzhi (344-388), became a famous calligrapher as well, and in the era the two were referred to as “the greater Wang” (኱⋤) and “the lesser Wang” (ᑠ⋤), which could explain the use of ኱⋤ for the compound suffix -teshi (Seely, 1991, 51-52). 11 The word is derived from karu ('to borrow', in Late Old Japanese) and na 'name, symbol'. 12 While the term katakana appears in the 10th century text Utsubo monogatari (The Tale of the Hollow Tree), the first known occurrence of the term hiragana is in the Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapan, a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary compiled by Portuguese missionaries and published in 1603. The hiragana type of writing seems to have as an equivalent in the Heian period that of onnade (Seely, 1991, 78).

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freed from the influence of Chinese culture, against the backdrop of Japan breaking off diplomatic relations with China in the 9th century, during the declining times of the Tang period (618-907). The ladies of the imperial palace (the palace beyond the clouds) now came to play an unprecedented role in the midst of an aristocratic court that valued the official recognition of the culture of the Chinese language and Japanese poetry. In this context of elegance and poetic dreaminess, but also of effervescence of literature in the vernacular, Sei Shōnagon (966?-1024?) wrote her daily notes, The Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi ᯖⲡᏊ, ca.1000), and the lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu (978?-1016?) wrote the world's first novel, entitled The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari ※ Ặ ≀ ㄒ , 1008?). These may be considered illustrious examples not only for the nikki (᪥グ) type journal or for the new monogatari (≀ㄒ) type literary genre, but also for the onnade style. Consisting of 41/54 “books”, which recount the childhood, the youth full of love affairs, the career and death of Genji, an imperial prince of captivating beauty and endowed with special artistic talents, the novel The Tale of Genji also contains the first essay on calligraphy (shoron ᭩ㄽ) with reference to the traditional wayō style, revealing the importance of handwriting in expressing an aesthetic sensibility (Eubanks, 2016, 186). Chapter 32 The Plum Tree Branch (Umegae ᱵࡀᯞ), for example, provides details about a calligraphy competition, which sets the narrator up for various references to calligraphers and styles of calligraphy, suggesting that the aesthetic choices regarding the paper and its decorations, the intensity of the ink, the brush or the writing style used should be understood as subtle nuances of the calligrapher's emotional state of mind. Kanji and kana writing are now and here put on an equal footing: Genji secluded himself as before in the main hall. The cherry blossoms had fallen and the skies were soft. Letting his mind run quietly through the anthologies, he tried several styles with fine results, formal and cursive Chinese and the more radically cursive Japanese “ladies’ hand.” He had with him only two or three women whom he could count on for interesting comments. They ground ink for him and selected poems from the more admired anthologies. Having raised the blinds to let the breezes pass, he sat out near veranda with a booklet spread before him, and as he took a brush

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Chapter 1 meditatively between his teeth the women thought that they could gaze at him for ages on end and not tire.

Fig. 1-1 ࠾ࡶ࠺࠿ࡓࡼࡾ࠿ࡐࡸࡩࡃࡽࡴ࣭The wind blows from the dear one Murasaki Shikibu (978?-1016?), The Tale of Genji His brush poised over papers of clear, plain reds and whites, he would collect himself for the effort of writing, and no one of reasonable sensitivity could have failed to admire the picture of serene concentration which he presented13. (Murasaki Shikibu, 1976, 517-518) 13

In original: ࠸ࡘࡶࡇࢇ࡞࡜ࡁ࡟ࡍࡿࡼ࠺࡟ࠊ※ẶࡣᐷẊࡢ᪉࡬⾜ࡗ࡚࠸ ࡚᭩࠸ࡓࠋⰼࡢ┒ࡾࡀ㐣ࡂ࡚ῐ࠸⥳Ⰽࡀ࠿ࡗࡓ✵ࡢ࠺ࡽࡽ࠿࡞᪥࡟ࠊ※Ặ

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15

Shoron-type discourses on calligraphy had first appeared in Japanese culture in the form of handbooks with recommendations for the calligraphic style used in letter writing, so that over time the information and details related to calligraphy became more numerous and specialised. Preceding the shoron-type passage from the novel The Tale of Genji, the list of discourses on calligraphy would also include the treatise Shōryōshū ᛶ㟋㞟, signed by Kūkai ✵ᾏ (774-835), a compilation on various topics made by disciples after the death of the master nicknamed “the priest who writes with five brushes”, as proof that he flawlessly mastered all five calligraphic styles of Chinese writing. In the short sequence devoted to calligraphy, Kūkai, with the posthumous canonical name Kōbō Daishi (The Grand Master who Propagated the Dharma), borrows much from Chinese treatises on the subject, to which he had access during his visit in China (804-806), placing calligraphy in the context of poetry and insisting on the practitioner's study of past masters, with the mention that study should not be limited to them alone (DeCoker, 1988, 201). However, the first treatise exclusively dedicated to calligraphy is considered to be Yakaku Teikinshō ኪ 㭯 ᗞ カ ᢒ , signed by Fujiwara Koreyuki ⸨ཎఀ⾜ (?-1175), the sixth head of the Sesonji ୡᑛᑎ School of Calligraphy. Less of a study manual, Yakaku Teikinshō is more of a document-record inventorying the Sesonji family's “secrets” regarding not only the most appropriate calligraphy tools, but also various conventions a calligrapher should follow in order to maintain his position in the ritualistic society of the late Heian imperial court, in the context of the competition created by the growing popularity of the Hosshōji ἲ ᛶ ᑎ School of

ࡣྂ࠸リḷࢆ㟼࠿࡟㑅ࡧ࡞ࡀࡽࠊࡳࡎ࠿ࡽ‶㊊ࡢ࡛ࡁࡿࡔࡅࡢᏐࢆ᭩ࡇ࠺ ࡜₎Ꮠࡢࡶ௬ྡࡢࡶ⇕ᚰ࡟᭩࠸࡚࠸ࡓࠋࡑࡢ㒊ᒇ࡟ࡣዪᡣࡶከࡃࡣ⨨࠿ࡎ ࡟ࡓࡔ஧୕ேࠊቚࢆࡍࡽࡏࡓࡾࠊྂ࠸ḷ㞟ࡢḷࢆ࿨ࡐࡽࢀࡓ࡜࠾ࡾ࡟᥈ࡋ ฟࡋࡓࡾࡍࡿࡢ࡟ࠊᙺ࡟❧ࡘࡼ࠺࡞⪅ࢆ࿧ࢇ࡛࠶ࡗࡓࠋ㒊ᒇࡢᚚ⡘ࡣࡳ࡞ ࠶ࡆ࡚ࠊ⬥ᜥࡢୖ࡟ᖒࢆ⨨࠸࡚ࠊ⦕࡟㏆࠸࡜ࡇࢁ࡛ࡺࡿࡸ࠿࡞ጼ࡛ࠊ➹ࡢ ᯶ࢆཱྀ࡟ࡃࢃ࠼࡚ᛮ᱌ࡍࡿ※Ặࡣ࡝ࡇࡲ࡛ࡶ⨾ࡋ࠿ࡗࡓࠋⓑ࡜࠿㉥࡜࠿ࡁ ࢃ❧ࡗࡓ∦ࡣࠊ➹ࢆ࡜ࡾ┤ࡋ࡚≉࡟ὀពࡋ࡚᭩࠸ࡓࡾࡍࡿែᗘ࡞࡝ࡶࠊᚰ ࡢ࠶ࡿ⪅ࡣᩗពࢆࡣࡽࢃࡎ࡟࠸ࡽࢀ࡞࠸ࡇ࡜࡛࠶ࡗࡓࠋ(Murasaki Shikibu, 1965, 344-345)

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Calligraphy, led by the famous rival Fujiwara Tadamichi ⸨ཎᛅ㏻ (10971164). In the aristocratic circles of the imperial court of the time, great importance is given to the elegant style of wayō calligraphy and, as a result, schools were created in which directions related to the teachings and rules regarding the correct use of the brush were promoted. Saiyōshō ᡯⴥᢒ, the first important shoron discourse exclusively on calligraphy in the tradition of the Japanese wayō school of calligraphy, contains the teachings of Fujiwara Norinaga ⸨ཎᩍ㛗 (1109-1180) along with Fujiwara Koretsune ⸨ཎఀ⤒ (?-1227). In 1177, Koretsune visits Norinaga's Mt. Kōya hut, on which occasion the latter reveals to the guest the “secrets” of calligraphy, which Koretsune would later compile as Saiyōshō or Notes on Talent/ Notes on Generations of Talent (ᡯ 'talent, ability, bud' + ⴥ 'leaf, book pages, generation' + ᢒ 'notes'). Norinaga, famous especially as a poet with forty of his poems being included in imperial anthologies, began his study of calligraphy at the Sesonji School and remained faithful to the more conservative rules promoted by it, not being influenced by the Hosshōji School of calligraphy, deliberately less elegant and less refined than the competing school (DeCoker, 1988, 261). According to Norinaga, calligraphy is primarily the result of the harmony of four treasures (shihō ᅄᐆ): the animal-hair brush (fude ➹); the rice paper (kami ⣬); the ink (sumi ቚ), obtained by dissolving a stick of solid ink in water, through friction; and the stone container (suzuri ◵), used to obtain ink. As an addition to the details related to the tools and materials used, which regard the choice of paper and the preparation of the brush, the shape, dimensions and positioning of the logogram on the page, the feeling of flow that must be created between the characters and the space of the paper, the author insists on spiritual preparation of the practitioner, prior to the calligraphic exercise itself, emphasizing the importance of his or her mental concentration: When you want to write, first grind the ink, focus your spirit, and quiet your thoughts. Consider beforehand the size of the characters and the various movements of the brush, making the muscle and the bone of the character

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unite. Put your mind ahead the brush, then write characters. (Norinaga quoted in DeCoker, 1988, 273)

The centuries following the Saiyōshō treatise bring out discourses on calligraphy such as Yakaku Shosatsushō ኪ㭯᭩ᮐᢒ, uncertainly attributed to Fujiwara Yukiyoshi ⸨ཎ⾜⬟ (1182-1253), Shinteishō ᚰపᢒ, written by Fujiwara Tsunetomo ⸨ཎ⤒ᮅ (1215-1276), and Yūhitsu no Jōjō ྑ➹ ᮲ࠎ, belonging to Fujiwara Yukifusa ⸨ཎ⾜ᡣ (?-1337), the grandson of Tsunetomo, whose contents consist of conventions of the Sesonji School, preparing the appearance of the Jubokushō ධᮌᢒ text, considered to be the first true shoron to discuss the theory and criticism of calligraphy. 170 years after Fujiwara Norinaga’s Saiyōshō treatise, Prince Son’en ᑛ ෇ (1298-1356), the son of Emperor Fushimi, whose master calligraphers include Fujiwara Yukifusa, drafts the Jubokushō treatise in 1352 for the young Emperor Go-Kōgon (r.1352-1371), recording his teachings related to the secrets of calligraphy. In the same year, Son’en wrote both the calligraphy treatise Juboku Kudenshō ධᮌཱྀఏᢒ, which mentions the secrets of calligraphy that he had learned during a period of study, some of which may be found in Jubokushō, and a history of the Sesonji School of Calligraphy, with the title Mon'yōki 㛛ⴥグ. In 1343, he compiled the Shūyōshō ᣠせᢒ, which was a vocabulary list for beginners of calligraphy (DeCoker, 1988, 202-206). The Saiyōshō and Jubokushō treatises admiringly recognise Ono Michikaze ঘ໼ಕ෫ (894-966), Fujiwara Sukemasa ౽‫ࠦݬ‬ཀྵ (944-988), and Fujiwara Yukinari ౽‫ߨݬ‬੔ (972-1027) as the Three Masters (sanseki ࢀ੽) who paved the Japanese style (wayō) of the world's most elegant and sophisticated calligraphy (DeCoker, 1988, 198), giving it legitimacy. As a result, both shoron consider the study of the models provided by the classics as an essential tool in fulfilling the ultimate goal of mastering the art and gaining freedom, proposing their interpretation as calligraphic writings in which the kanji characters take on the properties of bodily images such as “skin, flesh and bones”. And, if nuanced differences can be noted in the two treatises related to the secrets of body posture, the duration of daily calligraphy exercise, the position of the brush, the deformation of the

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character or the calligraphic style that should be learned first, the opinions of both masters converge on the intrinsic connection between the brush and the heart or mind (kokoro ৼ) of the calligrapher. If Norinaga openly admits that a calligraphic work becomes the mirror of the person's soul: You can know the level of a person’s heart through his calligraphy (Norinaga quoted in DeCoker, 1988, 274), Son’en, in turn, emphasises the connection between the brush’s stroke and the heart of the writer: The shape of a character is, in a manner of speaking, a person’s appearance, and the vigor of the brush is the expression of the workings of his heart (Son’en quoted in DeCoker, 1988, 213), here the two master calligraphers recognise the role of calligraphy practice in spiritual (self)cultivation.

Fig. 1-2 ৼʀHeart, Spirit

As a way of expression, similar to other visual arts, calligraphy would fall into the category of the type of communication that uses tools as an extension of the body, creating a particular type of expression: the brush is the tool that establishes, directly and indirectly, the connection between the calligrapher and his environment, the paper offers them the necessary “space” for the act of creation to happen, while the ink is not only the simple recording of the brush’s movements, but also the reflection of the calligrapher’s inner light.

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The historical Momoyama and Edo periods (1568-1868) that followed, when Japan was ruled by the powerful shoguns of the Tokugawa family, mark a time of great variety in all artistic fields, including a new interest in the art of calligraphy. In this “early modern” period, a newly unified Japan sees civil wars replaced with peace and prosperity, artistic production spread unprecedentedly. Calligraphy was now practiced not only by master calligraphers, but also by poets who excelled in the classical Chinese or Japanese style, by haiku poets, literary artists, Confucian experts and Zen masters, showing how deeply this art-discipline had permeated the Japanese social and artistic environment (Addiss, 2006, 2). A few hundred years after Jubokushō, Hitsudō Hiden Shō (The Secrets of Calligraphy) – a famous 17th century shoron, made by the great calligrapher of the time Ojio Yūshō – once again brought attention to the secrets of calligraphy, highlighting (directly or indirectly) the aesthetic elements of the calligraphic line. In the aforementioned treatise, the master Ojio Yūshō answered the questions of his students through seventy-seven articles, one of which enumerated the most important rules of calligraphy (Ueda, 1991, 173-185), which have become famous, over time, both through their clarity of expression, as well as through their way of highlighting the main foundations of studying an art of such difficulty. Thus, a beginner in calligraphy receives the following recommendations from the master: Keep your body upright and your soul righteous as you take up the brush. Write with a calm mind carefully studying the forms of characters. Be gentle in the use of the brush. Put flesh to the characters. Let the characters observe the prescribed form. Pay close attention to the soul of the brush and of the characters. Consider the weight of each character. Pay attention to the rhythm of the brush. Thoroughly understand how to handle the brush. Give heed to the way of connecting one character with another. Additionally, in the case of the practitioner who is in a more advanced stage of the calligraphic exercise, the master wants to draw his attention to a few details: Write with force, while retaining gentleness in the brushwork.

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Chapter 1 Let the characters depart from the prescribed form. Consider the momentum of the brush. Consider the length of the proposed phrase in proportion to the size of your paper. Do not lose the individuality of your brush. Give thought to the balance of the characters. Be attentive so as to allow no slackening in your brush movement. Give thought to the amount of ink in your brush, so that there may be no excess or deficiency. Create a harmony among the ink, the brush, and the paper. Learn the Way of Calligraphy. (Ojio quoted in Ueda, 1991, 174-175)

If the beginner in the study of the calligraphic art is asked to follow the rules, the intermediate-level disciple, according to the set of precepts above, is advised to go beyond them. In other words, the first must pay attention to the representation phase of this art, so that, evolving, he reaches the realm of the expressive. Expressiveness means, for the master Ojio Yūshō, also finding the right face and the right shape for the logographic character through a line that can either give life to the character or make it sick and kill it: Write with force, while retaining gentleness in the brushwork! (Ojio quoted in Ueda, 1991, 182). The kanji character, an imitation of simplified visual forms, originally created in the image of the human figure (Ojio quoted in Ueda, 1991, 176) can be considered a product of mimetic art. However, to write calligraphy of a kanji, with a predetermined order of strokes, implies, in the beginning, conforming to some rules, in a certain gesture of imitation of imitation, calligraphy being an art of representation. Even so, as underlined by the master Ojio Yūshō, only by first mastering this basic framework will the calligraphers then be able to assert their own creative individuality: Follow the rules and yet depart from them! (Ojio quoted in Ueda, 1991, 183). The art of calligraphy, as the master calligrapher continued to emphasise in the tradition of the predecessors Fujiwara Norinaga and Son’en, ultimately involves the artist’s search for the perfect form for the calligraphic character, in a visual compositional harmony similar to painting. But unlike painting, a calligraphic painting involves a composition of rhythmic lines, through which the artist composes music through the lines, stopping the moment. The black mark left by the brush on paper captures time, and the harmonious

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relationship between the lines outlines the space. Seen as a material element of a visual art, the line has the direction, length, thickness and intensity of black. A long line can speak of peace, calm, freedom, and a short one can be a sign of the instant, of haste, of discontinuity. A thick line can also suggest abundance and softness, just as a thin one can express impermeability, inflexibility and determination. A horizontal line can contain peace, calm and femininity, and a vertical one can create the impression of effort, endeavour, aggression or suffering. The black calligraphic line, through speed, rhythm and instant expression makes, therefore, calligraphy an art of time. A line written quickly will create an effect of haste, aggression, simplicity, while one written in a slower tempo can suggest quietness, meditation and passivity. However, in the end, all these alternations and combinations of lines will create the rhythm of the respective work, which can resonate with the very rhythm of nature: A rhythm created by momentum is fine. (Ojio quoted in Ueda, 1991, 182).

Fig. 1-3 㢼࣭Wind

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The density of black, in turn, contributes considerably to the fulfilment of a calligraphic work, designating it a certain characteristic in the dimension of artistic expression: a line full of intense black can suggest an abundant energy, a carefree desire, while a “dry” line can indicate loneliness and desolation. Nevertheless, the calligraphic work does not only represent harmony in the relationship between black and white, but also artistic emotion, being the spontaneous expression of an aesthetic attitude through which the calligrapher follows his true heart: Keep your body upright and your soul righteous as you take up the brush… It is only natural that handwriting should mirror the writer’s personality as it follows the way of his heart. (Ojio quoted in Marra, 2010, 37).

Fig. 1-4 ࿴࣭Harmony, Japanese

By writing with a brush, a kanji character is infinitely enriched: in addition to the meaning it contains, through the generated rhythm, the written character becomes active, expressive and powerful. In this way, the kanji is transformed into a “medium” for an unwritten poem, which is born in a time and space of its own, as the way of calligraphy shown over the centuries by the master calligraphers Fujiwara Norinaga, Son’en and Ojio Yūshō. The mentioned treaties ultimately justify the terms shūji (⩦Ꮠ) and

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shodō (᭩㐨) that exist in the Japanese language, which would be translated into English through a single possible equivalent: “calligraphy” (a term derived from gr. kallos ‘beautiful’ and graphy ‘to write’). In fact, the relationship between them is nothing more but the representation of a bifurcated meaning: while shūji would refer to study (⩦ ‘study, to learn, to study’ + Ꮠ ‘character, letter’), shodō would denote the actual act of creation (᭩ ‘writing, to write’ + 㐨 ‘path, way’). Thus, the kanji characters written by the calligrapher’s hand also become modes of expression through which one can study the evolution of the line that gives birth to an art. The secrets revealed by Fujiwara Norinaga, Son’en and Ojio Yūshō in their treatises certify the art of calligraphy as a complex art, which synthesises the functions of a representative and expressive art, a pictorial and verbal art, an art of space and time, or, in other words, traces the way of calligraphy.

Fig. 1-5 ᭩࣭Japanese Calligraphy

However, the times were changing, bringing unprecedented challenges for the art of calligraphy, whose modern history begins with the Meiji era (1868-1912), when Japan, after 250 years of (self-)isolation, opens its

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Chapter 1

borders to Western modernism, under the slogan “Adopt what is best in the culture of Europe to compensate for the shortcomings in that of Japan” (Hirakawa, 2009, 59). Similar to the searches of the time in various directions (political, social and cultural), calligraphy follows, in turn, a winding and difficult route, from which several major experiments stand out. The first conflicting situation in which calligraphy is seen as taking part in was generated by the government, which promoted a new policy in order to affirm Japan as a modern state among the states of the world. Against a backdrop of internalised ambition, in which the role models for the new Japanese state now became Europe and the United States of America, even from a conceptual point of view, the modern Japanese state creates the term bijutsu ⨾⾡ (⨾ ‘beautiful, beauty’ + ⾡ ‘technique, craft’) to name the fine arts, after the German Kunstgewerbe (Bogdanova-Kummer, 2020, 10-11), as an expression of its new vision of art. In this context, in the 1880s, a debate initiated by the oil painter Koyama Shōtarō (1857-1916) and the art theorist Okakura Kakuzō [Tenshin] (1862-1913) decisively marked the status of calligraphy for the following decades, which was seen as marginalised due to its Sinocentric roots. Koyama publishes a text entitled Calligraphy is not Art (᭩ࣁ⨾⾡ࢼࣛࢬ), in which he put forward the idea that the art of calligraphy could not fit into the bijutsu category because, being writing and word rather than visual image, it cannot be understood by foreign audiences and therefore it is not suitable for international exhibitions. Whereas Okakura's response, entitled Reading 'Calligraphy Is Not Art' (᭩ ࣁ⨾⾡ࢼࣛࢬࣀㄽࣤㄞ࣒), drew attention to the need to bring into global discussions the East Asian perspective as well, but it does not, however, openly advocate for placing calligraphy among visual arts, evasively stating that only time will be able to decide the fate of this art (Takahashi, 2005, 704). As a result, whilst at the National Industrial Exhibition (Naikoku kangyōhakurankai) of 1877, calligraphic works were still displayed alongside paintings in the bijutsu section, following the tradition of shoga ittai (calligraphy and painting as a whole), by 1890 calligraphy was separated from painting, being grouped in the photography and prints section. Moreover, in its fifth incarnation, in 1903, the calligraphy section had disappeared entirely.

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Additionally, the Bunten Salon – the most important state exhibition of the Meiji era, inaugurated in 1907 – eliminated from its inception calligraphy from the arts with exhibition space, which amounted to its official exclusion from the visual arts in modern Japan. Although it had been, over the centuries, one of the components of the cultural-artistic triptych poetry-painting-calligraphy, always considered as a unit, since each art used the same four treasures (brush, ink, paper and ink stone), calligraphy was removed from the course of history. Since it has no counterpart among the European arts, calligraphy would eventually be replaced by painting, which became the representative art of the moment. Modern times undoubtedly put the art of calligraphy to an unprecedented test. Under these circumstances, as a natural consequence, the pride of the artisans made the calligraphers willingly exclude themselves from participation in official events of the new state and, consequently, create an independent society of calligraphers who defined their field of study as a form of personal expression, built on mastering the technique of the old masters. In this way, calligraphy acquired a semi-official status (Bogdanova-Kummer, 2020, 12), being perceived not only as a vestige of the past, but also as an art indifferent to the modernism of the 20th century. Forced by these circumstances, and seeming to have no other option at the time, calligraphy turned its gaze back to its origins, trying to regain its privileged position through the power of tradition. Between 1930 and 1940, a period described as the “valley of darkness” (kurai tanima) in Japanese art, which gravitated towards the “liberalism” of the Taishō period (19121926) and the post-war “democracy”, Japanese calligraphers called themselves cultural ambassadors of the Japanese empire and travelled frequently to the colonies on the Asian continent. Their meeting with Chinese fellow colleagues oriented towards the neoclassical style (Tamiya, 2005, 838), which brought contemporary elements to the classical ones, and constituted a true incentive for the modernization of calligraphy through the introduction of new materials to make the calligrapher’s particular voice heard, expressing his or her personal feelings and state of mind. But the revaluation of the tradition and its new reception would only be properly recognised after the end of the Second World War, as is the case of Aoyama San’u (1912-1993), an illustrious representative of this movement: deeply

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Chapter 1

understanding the art of the Chinese calligraphic masters, Aoyama San’u tried to put their principles into practice while paying attention to modernity.

Fig. 1-6 ᝟࣭Passion

The post-war period would bring with it a modernization of the art of calligraphy, under the strong influence of the Gendai-sho ⌧ ௦ ᭩ (Contemporary Calligraphy) expressionism, developed together with the avant-garde and contemporary art movements (Iijima, 2005, 836). The creative activity in the field would be promoted, moreover, by three currents: kindai-shibunsho or the calligraphy of modern poetry, which proposes the modernization of the language and poetry used in calligraphy; shōjisū-sho or the calligraphy of a logographic character, which wants to highlight the expressive and visual potential of a kanji; and zen'eisho (๓⾨

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᭩ ) or avant-garde calligraphy, the most radical, which fights for the emancipation of calligraphy from the semantic coordinate and (why not?!) even from the strictly-formal one, guiding it towards abstract art (Bogdanova-Kummer, 2020, 15). Traditionalist calligraphers coexist, for the moment, with the avant-garde, and calligraphy has now been admitted to the Nitten exhibition (the post-war successor to the Bunten exhibition) after its exclusion at the beginning of the century. Fully exploiting the potential of calligraphy as artistic simplicity and economy of means, in 1952, in Kyoto, the avant-garde group Bokujinkai ቚ ே఍ or People of the Ink was created, consisting of five calligraphers: Morita Shiryū ᳃⏣Ꮚ㱟 (1912-1998), Inoue Yūichi ஭ୖ᭷୍ (1916-1985), Nakamura Bokushi ୰ᮧᮌᏊ (1916-1973), Sekiya Yoshimichi 㛵㇂⩏㐨 (1920-2006) and Eguchi Sōgen Ụ ཱྀ ⲡ ⋞ (1919-2018), who have successfully managed to highlight the artistry of calligraphy on an international level. Initially, the Bokujinkai group tried to incorporate modern conceptual notions as promoted by abstract art into the guiding principles of tradition but, ultimately, in order to place calligraphy on the same level as abstract art, the group had to prioritise, in calligraphic exercise, the visual experience, to the detriment of reading. In the context of the turbulent years after the Second World War and against the backdrop of the Cold War that followed, American Abstract Expressionism, through Mark Tobey (1890-1976) or Franz Kline (1910-1962), and European tachism (tachisme), through Hans Hartung (1904-1989) or Pierre Soulages (1919), refused direct representation in order to try a new visual language, searching for a new means of expression. In this context, given the perceived value of spontaneous expression as a preferred medium of communication than that offered by the art of calligraphy, in the desire to break out of a regional landscape, the members of the Bokujinkai were ready, at first, to negotiate for international appreciation, but would end up, after a decade, in the ideology of ethno-aesthetic nationalism (Bogdanova-Kummer, 2020, 145). A movement sometimes centripetal Sinocentric or Eurocentric, sometimes centrifugal Sinocentric or Eurocentric, the post-war Japanese avant-garde further gave rise to an experiment that could be called romantic style calligraphy (Tamiya, 2005, 838), characterised by a creative option based on the free placement of characters in the flat space of the paper

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(chirashi-gaki), but also to another experiment, based on the creation of a spiritual space rooted in Zen philosophy. Presenting spiritual and philosophical aspects far away enough to be truly understood, East Asian calligraphy has always been regarded by the West as an “esoteric” subject, charged with a certain “mysticism”, and perhaps that is precisely why it has been one of the last artistic “disciplines” to enter into the international art world. And if, in general, the transcultural constellation offered by abstract art is directed towards the interaction between representatives of European and North American abstract painting, on the one hand, and the Japanese Gutai group, on the other, recent research in the field (Bogdanova-Kummer, 2020) also tries to include Japanese calligraphers as an important component in this constellation. The Modern Calligraphy Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (in 1952) was followed the next year by the Architecture and Calligraphy of Japan Exhibition at the same museum and by the Japanese Calligraphy exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1954. This was held concurrently with the Younger American Painters exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Remarkable also was the presence of the art of calligraphy at the Salon d'Octobre in Paris, in 1953, which occasioned the exhibition Japanese Calligraphy, Art in Sumi, which subsequently toured European museums in Amsterdam, Basel, Paris, Hamburg and Rome between 1955-1956. Also worth mentioning are the Japanese calligraphy exhibitions in The Carnegie International Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture, in 1958, and the São Paulo Art Biennial, in the following years, etc. All these constitute irrefutable evidence for the starting moment of international visibility that the art of calligraphy continues to enjoy today. Of course, the history of the art of calligraphy as tradition, as practice and as theory cannot be understood through the simple tradition versus innovation dichotomy, since innovation does not necessarily represent a refusal of tradition, but rather a progress based on the traditional component. Contemporary Japanese calligraphy is, therefore, the result of a dramatic evolution resulting from an orientation towards individual expression that gave rise to the consciousness (Tamiya, 2005, 838) of calligraphy as an art. In a certain way, calligraphy is still an independent art today, carrying with it the entire history of writing in Japan. But, through the encounter with

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Western thought, calligraphy inevitably entered new directions, with the modern era recognising it as a visual art and as an academic discipline (Takahashi, 2005, 708). Hence, probably, the confidence of the moment that Japanese calligraphic works can be exported across borders, even for an audience foreign to the culture of writing kanji and kana.

Fig. 1-7 ࡺࡃ࠿ࢃࡢ࡞ࡀࢀࡣࡓ࠼ࡎࡋ࡚ࡋ࠿ࡶࡶ࡜ࡢࡳࡎ࡟࠶ࡽࡎ The river flows without stopping, but it is never the water from before Kamo no Chōmei (1155-1216)

CHAPTER 2 REVERIES OF THE BRUSH: WRITING BY PAINTING AND PAINTING BY WRITING L’art d’écrire relève des premiers mystères. L’effort est impuissant; tout dépend de l’action spontanée. La réussite doit venir d’elle même, on ne peut la vouloir. —Yu Shinan (558-638) Before taking the first step, the goal is reached. Before moving the tongue, the speech is finished. It takes more than brilliant intuition To find out the wellspring of the true path. —Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki, Zen14

The painting entitled Black Square, which Kasimir Malevich (18791935) exhibited in 1919, proposed, within the visual arts, a new aesthetic program, called Suprematism by its creator, a program that would completely revolutionise the way art is perceived, further perfecting the ways through which painting could be abstracted. The aesthetic of the “supreme”, with which Kasimir Malevich made his way into the world of plastic art, was established as an aesthetics of becoming, in which abstraction, assuming a strict economy of forms, led to the revelation of essences. Starting the search for the “supreme”, Kasimir Malevich discovered, through essentialised representation... silence. Preferring neutral colours like white, black and grey, in a space perceived as infinite in its potentiality, the only possible value of manifestation in the given frame of the painting was movement, which determined the specialised literature to interpret 14

(our transl.) In original: “Înainte de a face primul pas, țelul e atins./ Înainte de a mișca limba, cuvântarea e isprăvită. /E nevoie de mai mult decât intuiție strălucită/ Ca să afli izvorul drumului adevărat.”

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Malevich's creation as a desire of the creator to accomplish a spiritual conquest (Brion, 1972, 173) through the material means of art. There are, without a doubt, in the paintings of the Russian painter, projections of a spiritual experience, and similarities that could evoke, on another layer, the way to Enlightenment perfected by meditation and the practice of Zen Buddhism. Malevich's creation established itself as a direction new in art: The extreme rigor of a painting almost totally devoid of colour and form, demanding from the viewer as much inner life intensity as the artist had instilled, constituted an unprecedented and unparalleled effort. 15 (Brion, 1972, 171)

The search continues in the European cultural space with Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) “colour cosmosophy” – where, if white is absence and absolute silence, black is “nothingness” (Besançon, 1996, 366) – and with the “calligraphy” of Pierre Soulages (1919), who makes black a colour full of strength (Brion, 1972, 241). At a time when the harmony of the ego was threatened by different currents of disintegration, in the spirit’s effort to reorder the world according to new laws, required by the evolution of nature itself, human restlessness tried different means of dominating the tragic, pouring it into new forms of expression. One of them became abstract art and, for its representatives, the non-figurative metamorphosed into a special form of calligraphy, which required not only an essentialised aesthetic of line and composition, but also the expression of an emotion that would appear as an emanation from the creative act. In the same context of the discovery of new means of expression in pictorial representation, one of the other important conquests of abstract art is the discovery of black, rejected until then by traditional painting, as it had been conceived as a noncolour (Brion, 1972, 241). The time had come for Pierre Soulages to make black a powerful colour, observing all its nuances, from “monastic simplicity” to “the gloomy sumptuousness of the nocturnal lyricism of the romantics” (Brion, 1972, 242):

15

(our transl.) In original: “Extrema rigoare a unei picturi aproape total lipsită de culoare şi formă, cerându-i spectatorului tot atâta intensitate de viaţă interioară pe care o depusese şi artistul, constituia un efort fără precedent şi fără urmaşi.”

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In Pierre Soulages’ drawings, emotion reaches sign, symbol, not through an allegorical or alphabetic simplification, but because this sign, like in oriental or Arabic calligraphy, is the very form of the thing that has reached the state of emotion: not a figure, but a pathetic emanation16. (Marcel Brion, 1972, 239)

However, the essentialised representation and the richness or varieties of expression that black implies were, in East Asia, a discovery that had already been made millennia ago, due to the logographic character in Chinese writing, and its representation through the art of calligraphy – the black was already used “as a unifying feature between man, nature and divinity, between the world of matter and spirit” 17 (Brion, 1972, 242). Unlike the cuneiform script, which in time led to the appearance of the Greek alphabet and later to that of the Latin alphabet, the Chinese script used pictorial signs to represent objects, which were created, according to the legend, around 2700 BC, by a mysterious four-eyed person named Thang-Hsieh, who was inspired by the footprints left in the sand by birds and animals. And the legend also has it that the God of Heaven himself, amazed by such ingenuity, made grains fall from the sky, as a reward for the miraculous deed (Davey, 1999, 15). Affirming the unity between painting (image) and writing, the logographic character could be defined as a stylised image through which the eye, once moved by its impact with the world, wishes to restore this emotion to the visible. But writing is closely related in this part of the world to the birth of calligraphy, which, over time, has come to use five styles of writing, each type presenting its own particularities (their names are in Japanese): the seal script (tensho ኳ᭩), which highlights, in a stylised manner, a pictorial form; the clerical script (reisho 㞔᭩) which appears rectangular; the cursive script (sōsho ྀ᭩), which freely breaks the norms of the other styles; the block script (kaisho ᴠ ᭩ ), clear and regular; and the semicursive script (gyōsho ⾜ ᭩ ), a 16

(our transl.) In original: “În desenele lui Pierre Soulages emoţia ajunge la semn, la simbol, nu printr-o simplificare alegorică sau alfabetică, ci pentru că acest semn, ca în caligrafia orientală sau arabă, este forma însăşi a lucrului ajuns la starea de emoţie: nu o figură, ci o emanaţie patetică.” 17 (our transl.) In original: “ca o trăsătură de unire între om, natură şi divinitate, între lumea materiei şi a spiritului”.

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combination of the kaisho’s regular structure and the fluency of the sōsho cursive line. The calligrapher exploits the potential of each type of writing and the opportunities offered by it, as each style has its own rhythm, in various canons of beauty (Addiss, 2006, 6-8), which crosses a varied range of lines: from structure and balance to the open expression of emotion, from calmness or serenity to dynamism or energy. Chinese writing is, in fact, a graphic thinking (Barthes, 1970, 117), a primary given (Cornea, 1988, 111) of civilizations at the dawn of their existence, which the East developed, refined and preserved over time.

Fig. 2-1 ኳ࣭Sky, Heavens (kaisho block script)

Japan adopted the writing system of Chinese logographic characters between the 4th and 6th centuries, as it reached the Japanese archipelago together with Buddhist texts. Chinese characters, called kanji (₎Ꮠ) by the Japanese language, are reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, although they are not as close to the objects represented as those of ancient Egyptian writing, being, rather, simplified images, whose meaning is shown through suggestion or imagination.

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Western culture, mentions Plato (427 BC-347 BC) in the dialogue Phaedrus (Plato, 1993, 143), met the appearance of writing with some reservation, considering it an ominous sign for man. Plato records in the mentioned dialogue how Theuth of Egypt, after numbers and calculation, geometry and astronomy, finally discovers letters as well. Presenting the art of writing to King Thamus, Theuth says: This […] will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specification both for the memory and for the wit. Surprisingly, the king, judge of all the arts discovered by Theuth, is convinced, however, of the opposite. This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, answers the king of Egypt to Theuth – the inventor of writing, god-scribe and patron of scribes –, because they will not use their memories; they will trust the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence. The East Asian culture seemed to welcome the gift of writing in a completely different way. In its desire for communion with the inner nature of things, having the belief that the external properties of objects and phenomena are only barriers that hinder the immediate penetration of the truth, it considers writing and, above all, calligraphy, as an active philosophy, a sacred practice, through which humans can fully fulfil themselves. If the Greeks valued the oral word and, as a result, the artisans of the living word, the skilled handlers of the oral logos being considered the “incarnation of wisdom”, East Asia saw the wisdom of the spirit embodied in the creation of the master calligrapher, the “artisan of the written word” (Cornea, 1988, 106). This love of the abstract pushed Zen Buddhist monks to prefer black and white painting to colour painting (Kakuzo, 1983, 111) and, furthermore, to choose calligraphy as a means of revealing the sacred, to the detriment of painting. Calligraphy enters the category of “fine arts” in Japanese dictionaries (Tsuru and Reischauer, 1995, 155), being always considered the twin sister of painting, due to their miraculous origin in ancient times – the painter and the calligrapher use almost the same materials, the brush technique has much in common and both are judged by the same criteria of strong or subtle accentuation of the rhythm of the brush lines. And, although logographic writing seems to derive from painting, it is increasingly believed that it “simply establishes it” (Barthes, 1970, 116).

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Trying to translate the Japanese words shūji (⩦Ꮠ) and shodō (᭩㐨) into English, we would give them both the same translation: “calligraphy”. However, shūji calligraphy involves learning to write Chinese characters and kana syllabaries with a brush, a study subject included in the school curriculum, with the calligraphy lesson being part of a tradition that requires every Japanese person to have written with a brush during their studies (Diot, 2014, 135-144). Shodō calligraphy is, as the word’s component ideograms show, ‘the way of writing’ or, loosely phrased, ‘the way towards writing as art’.

Fig. 2-2 ᚰ࣭Heart, Spirit

Calligraphy – to which those on the path of meditation devote themselves – exploits the formulas learned in its golden age, namely the period between the 10th and 12th centuries, when Japanese calligraphers, starting from the teachings of Chinese masters, made some innovations, with their most

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beautiful achievement being the creation of kana syllabaries, born from the graphic deformation of current Chinese characters. Giving the kanji a cursive aspect in the sōsho writing style is directly inherited by the hiragana syllabary, while the kaisho block script can be recognised in the katakana syllabary. Each graphic sign is, therefore, loaded with a legendary and poetic task at the same time. The calligrapher can oppose it, but never ignore it, because this heritage remains present both in its spirit and in that of the one who observes, as an indirect imaginary (Starobinski, 1970, 194-195), provided by culture, be it mass culture or any other form of tradition. The courses of the sinuous kana, which draw their energetic or gentle curves from line to line, or the solidity of the Chinese kanji characters which, even when reduced to the symbol of their own ideogram, always retain something of their original vitality and enliven the paper in an artistic search. The master calligrapher, while writing, discovers a magical worldview. The things already symbolised by the kanji character pass through the calligrapher, or perhaps the spirit of the master leaves the body through the eyes, in order to walk in and among the image-things represented by the kanji, as the artist-soul does not stop interpreting the characters according to a personal vision. Many painters say that they feel watched by things.

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Fig. 2-3 ᾏ࡟ฟ࡚ᮌᯤࡽࡋᖐࡿ࡜ࡇࢁ࡞ࡋ࣭ Coming out on the sea/ Winter wind/ There is no turning back Seishi Yamaguchi (1901-1994), haiku poem

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The calligrapher feels, perhaps, watched by the logographic characters trying – with the artist’s support – to breakthrough towards the heart of the artist’s own self. The calligraphic work is the eye that has opened towards an inner world, trying to discern and express it through a brushstroke on paper. The moving line, as Leonardo da Vinci would call it, is the axis that generates an entire meaning: the chained and unchained line dies and is reborn, releasing its constitutive power. The line is left to create, and simultaneously recreate the world.

Fig. 2-4 ࠺ࡁࡼ࣭The Floating World

The beginning of the brushstroke, the first touch on the paper of the brush so that the line can be and become a line, establishes the code of the writing, creates a certain perspective of being in the world of the spirit, a certain way of looking with the eye – while the practitioner understands, by means of the black line on the white paper, that they feel alive in the living world of ideographic characters. Everything that follows will create “une

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aventure, une histoire, un sens de la ligne” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 74), as it moves more smoothly or more abruptly. Irreversible and fragile writing (Barthes, 1970, 116), calligraphy is born, at the same time, in a contradictory way, through incision and gliding. It is not the description of the outside world that is pursued, but the awareness of the internal lines that structure and connect things to each other (Cheng, 1983, 93). Depending on these, the line can be thicker or thinner, forceful or softer. The line, simultaneously instantaneous and rhythmic, acquires the power to suspend the conflict created between the flat surface of the paper and the infinitely varied movement of the world rendered by the brush and the black ink. The calligraphic line is the so-called “controlled accident” (Cheng, 1983, 58), the very principle of painting that wants the brushstroke to be cut in a single movement, once and for all, never corrected. The black ink, in turn, through its internal contrasts, seems to be rich enough to be able to express the infinite shades of light, through the play of light-dark, full-empty, in resonance with Confucius’ conviction that human beings cannot hide. The gesture of calligraphy recalls the passing in time of the soul, with its paradoxes of deepening disharmonies and fruitful imbalances (Blaga, 1994, 52). The brush, a method of communication in the art of calligraphy that uses tools as an extension of the body, establishes, directly and indirectly, the connection between the calligrapher and his or her environment, while the paper gives it the “space” necessary for the act of creation to happen. The dynamics of the brush that goes up and down on the paper, by stroking and striking, that pulls and pushes the black line, creates a paradox that brings together, as calligraphers say, the “hard as steel” and the “soft as cotton” (Ishikawa, 2011, 182). However, this meeting of oppositions and contrasts gives calligraphy access to another world, where movement appears exactly where it should stop. The brush and the environment constantly interact (Ishikawa, 2011, 162), with movement anticipating stillness and vice versa. Simultaneous graphic and scriptural images, the calligraphic work constantly proposes an explicit complemented by the implicit: Calligraphy is the drama of the stylus, a drama that unfolds between the calligrapher and the medium. The calligrapher applies force through the brush. A recoil arises from the medium. And the calligrapher parries that

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counterforce, either responding with an opposite force or absorbing and appropriating the recoil. (Ishikawa, 2011, 163)

Shrink whatever is big and render it small. And render whatever is small as large as you would like (Wang Xizhi quoted in Ishikawa, 2011, 183) – this is, according to the founder of this art Wang Xizhi (303?-361?), the ars poetica of calligraphy. Transformed into a distinct discipline in the period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), calligraphy as an art has several secret rules that are required to be followed by the practitioner. Taking into account the difficulty of achieving the density of large characters or the openness of small ones, the right gap between character brushstrokes, which makes the speed slow and the effort a spontaneous movement, a calligraphic work combines vertical and horizontal lines in “the drama of the stylus” (Ishikawa, 2011, 3), in which the creator pours out his or her spirit, giving the viewer the opportunity to experience the act of creation through tactile visualisation. A sudden change, accompanied by a variation in the size of the character or of the size of the logogram’s line, generates a unique calligraphic work. The line, as the basic unit of calligraphy, is incorporated into a composition in which all the lines, following a syntax specific to this art, are formed into phrases that converge in a story-telling text. This movement of the brush that leaves full and empty traces behind it can be analysed according to its depth (kaisho block script), speed (sōsho cursive script) or brush angle (gyōsho semicursive script) (Ishikawa, 2011, 10), creating, in this way, the aesthetic dimension of calligraphy, which departs, historically speaking, from the free and impulsive cursive script, to reach, passing through the natural and rhythmic semicursive script, the architectural and regular block script (kaisho) (Cheng, 2010, 24). Different types of writing require different types of reflection of rhythm in artistic expression. The rhythm of the block script (kaisho), also called architectural, is regular, each line being strongly highlighted by the pause at the end of each brushstroke, while the cursive (sōsho script) and semi-cursive (gyōsho script) lines are, from a rhythmic point of view, much more expansive (Flint Sato, 1998, 1217). Therefore, calligraphic writing is different from the usual writing of a character. The kanji character written in the kaisho style is just a flat, twodimensional sign, while the same character, calligraphic, becomes a line that

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acquires body, bones, muscles... Depth refers to the size of the character and the blackness of the ink: the longer a line is, the deeper its cut. If power and ephemerality are the two extremes of the line given by depth when talking about rhythm and technique, rapidity, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the freedom that humans can gain with the brush’s help and of the creative expression they can create. The calligraphic work does not remain a mechanical exercise of repetition, but becomes, in this way, a creative act. If a printed kanji (faithful to the kaisho block script) does not allow the slightest deviation from the order and number of its strokes, a calligraphic character is no longer necessarily a symmetrical arrangement of lines and dots, and the calligraphic work turns into a harmonious whole – in which an initial impulse invites the kanji character’s component strokes to a onemoment dance, and in which forces emanating from the interaction of handbrush-paper give it soul. The talent and imagination of the calligrapher will give the strokes of the logographic character a beautiful line and will create the balance of the respective structure, animating it: L’Encre, en impr±gnant le Pinceau, le dote d’une Ÿme; le Pinceau, en utilisant l’Encre, la doue d’esprit... L’Homme d±tient le pouvoir de formation et de vie, sinon comment serait’il possible de tirer ainsi du Pinceau et de l’Encre une r±alit± qui ait chair et os... (Shih-t’ao quoted in Cheng, 1991, 128)

The viewers of a calligraphic work, following the black line of the work with their finger, can reconstruct the gesture that conceived the creation, easily recognising the combination between the movement seen and the motion felt (Ishikawa, 2011, 228). Similar to music or dance, a continuous movement in calligraphy would very quickly become uninteresting, even boring. The importance of the pause, like that of the empty space between lines, becomes crucial (Addiss, 2006, 8) in establishing the rhythm of a calligraphic work. The moment of tension ma that appeared between the explicit (the movement seen) and the implicit (the motion felt) is what could be called, from a certain perspective, the revelation of the sacred through a calligraphic work. The logogram ma (㛫), also read in Japanese as kan in nouns such as jikan ࠕ᫬㛫ࠖ('time') or kūkan ࠕ✵㛫ࠖ('space'), in a literal translation means ‘space’ or ‘interval’ and refers to the space between

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something and what follows it, such as, for example, the interval between one drum beat and the next, the interval between a dancer’s pose stance and its change to another, the interval between an actor's phrase and the next, etc.

Fig. 2-5 ᭶ග࣭Moonlight

Ma is, therefore, the interval of time in which nothing happens; it is the blank moment to which the actors are invited to give maximum importance: Nothing apparently happens in these periods, but they are by no means empty moments. On the contrary, they are conceived of as fully significant moments – as significant as those moments at which something is really taking place. (Ikegami, 1986, 398)

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The true nature of ma seems to be that of an “unbound continuum”, continuity being a fundamental feature of traditional Japanese culture, as it can be found in “linked-verse” renga poetry or emaki scroll painting. Continuity is shown by ma in two ways: on the one hand, by neutralising the distinction between “nothing” and “something” it makes each moment seem as significant for the other, and, on the other hand, it destroys the clearly articulated performative structure to which it contributes, giving significant value to the period in which nothing happens. Ma thus becomes an aesthetic concept that can be found not only in different musical or theatrical forms, but also in the way of thinking of the Japanese (Miyoshi, 1985, 117). Considering, for example, a linguistic phrase (regardless of the language) as an architectural structure, in which the individual elements called “words” combine in different ways their own syntax, in a Western (Indo-European) language, the accent of a such a construction falls on structure and clarity, characteristics that are not found at all in Japanese (Miyoshi, 1985, 101). Therefore, if in a Western language “structure” and “clarity” become fundamental elements of the construction of meaning, the Japanese language seems rather oriented towards “ambiguity” and towards “a-logical” or “non-structural” combinations of words, an example being the haiku poem, the poetic formula of seventeen syllables, whose brevity could guarantee formal perfection and whose simplicity could testify to semantic depth. The role played by ma or the “silent” beat in this concentrated form of poetry is essential, dominating the structure of an utterance in which the words are not necessarily in a logical relationship. The haiku listener or reader will be able to extract his interpretation of the meaning precisely from this silent space ma. As the miniature knows how to store size, being “vast” in its own way (Bachelard, 2005, 243), similarly, a haiku poem or the painted or written Japanese scroll kakemono can testify that the literary, musical or pictorial expression of the feeling of nature can have a mystical component. If the immense nature cannot be contained only approximated, its expression can only be reduced to an allusive element that summarises it and, in this way, concentrates it; in the “charm”, “mystery” and “grandeur” of nature (Durand, 1977, 346) one being able to decipher the traces of some religious values that humans are encouraged to perceive through artistic expression as well (Eliade, 1992, 141).

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The two formal elements of calligraphic art, the black line and the white space, create an art of infinite depth and subtlety that has ignited the Japanese imagination for centuries.

Fig. 2-6 ឤ᝿࣭Impression (Thought, Feeling)

In the reproduction of kanji, it must be remembered that the calligraphic line is unique for each calligrapher. The line is an energetic, dynamic and sensitive expression, complementary to and, in a certain way, defined by the white space. The relationship between line and space describes a state of deep artistic intimacy, bringing it somewhat closer to the expressive tangential relationship between matter and air that sculpture exploits with new valences. The calligraphic line descends dancing in the Japanese vertical writing from right to left towards the bottom of the page, in a rhythm that gives the calligrapher complete freedom. The energy expressed with the help of the line has, in calligraphic writing, priority over the shape of the character: the living line (sen ga ikite iru) is full of life (sen ga iki iki shite

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iru), sensitivity and lyricism. Through rhythm, the calligrapher controls the energy of the line (Flint Sato, 1998, 9), the rhythm being infused in the movements of the hand and brush. It is a base-rhythm, which gives the calligrapher total freedom of expression. From a flat one, the line became sculptural, three-dimensional. It is no longer a line that only runs on the surface of the paper; it is no longer a design that superficially decorates the paper. It has turned into a deep, strong, energetic line, profoundly engraved inside the white, with which it reacts and activates. It is believed that this black line vibrates, causing an intense echo within the viewer, even long after the calligrapher gave it life following a process of real meditation, through a gesture of concentration that implies an acquired naturalness and spontaneity, paradoxically, through continuous practice.

Fig. 2-7 ⏕Ṛ࣭Life and Death (sōsho cursive style)

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In the Western mentality, the white space is seen as a kind of "tabula rasa" (Flint Sato, 1998, 55), a waiting space that demands to be filled. In Japanese calligraphy, on the contrary, the white space is felt as a full one, as an active space, which the calligrapher does not intend to fill, but to activate, to vitalise, the black line becoming what the space asks it to be. The calligrapher balances black and white, being aware of the line and the space that must be harmonised, and the energy and size of the black line are modulated according to the rhythm suggested by each individual calligraphic creation. Exhibited in the form of a scroll, a calligraphic work can be caught (captured) visually in the span of an instant, and its two-dimensionality or visual aspect is reformulated into a tactile three-dimensionality. The brush is the tool through which humans attempt to access a world beyond, while the white sheet could be compared by physicists to a vacuum (Ishikawa, 2011, 42), a field of minimal energy that has the potential to let anything occur. The brush soaked in black ink, adding energy and putting into motion the particles from the paper’s vacuum, creates a favourable environment for the emergence of various histories that remind of the sacredness of the world. Calligraphic writing has, as its start, the white, empty paper, which it turns into a partaker in the gesture of separating the Heavens from the Earth through the tracing of the first line. Thus, with the following brushstrokes interpreted as metamorphoses of the first line and with the final line viewed as the moment of returning to the primordial void, calligraphic writing could be likened to the creative act of poetry. While they were writing by painting, it is said that the ancients did the hardest thing possible, namely they focused on the space where the couple Brush-Ink is absent: Car c’est moi qui m’exprime au moyen de l’Encre et de non l’Encre qui est expressive par elle-m²me; c’est moi qui trace au moyen du Pinceau, et le non le Pinceau qui trace de lui-m²me. (Shih-t’ao quoted in Cheng, 1991, 149)

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Fig. 2-8 㐨࣭Way (Path)

CHAPTER 3 JAPANESE CALLIGRAPHY AS AN ARTISTIC ACT: VISIBILITY, MOVEMENT, CALLIGRAPHICITY - Maître, où allons-nous? - Nous y sommes, répond le maître. -Vous voulez dire que l’étape est proche? insiste le jeune moine. -Ici, maintenant. Nous y sommes. —Henri Brunel, Les plus beaux contes Zen

Having reached the third millennium, humanity is passing through an era in which the experience of high speed (in transport, in information, etc.) has become vital for everyday life. This century of velocity, which imposes speed as a measurable value, whose records mark not only the history of the progress of the machine and humans (Calvino, 2019, 100), has inevitably attracted an issue which is specific to a horizon of existence set under the sign of technology and information: that is language seems to have lost its power to speak – often transformed into an automatism that seeks to flatten expression, and the image seems to have forgotten how to impose itself on attention as a force, as abundance of possible meanings. In the “civilization of the image”, a context in which contemporary people are bombarded with so many images that they sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish between direct experience and what they saw on television or on computer screens, the future of individual imagination becomes truly problematic, legitimising the fear of how the power to conjure images in absence will continue to develop in the human mind. In a society flooded with prefabricated images, Italo Calvino (1923-1985), in the series of lectures

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designed18 for the Norton Poetry Lectures Charles Eliot series at Harvard University, in the academic year 1985/1986, rightly adds visibility on the list of values to be saved for the third millennium, along with lightness, quickness, exactitude and multiplicity (Calvino, 2019, 156). He does it, as he openly confesses, to warn the younger generation against the danger of losing a fundamental human faculty, which consists of the power to focus visions with closed eyes, to unchain colours and shapes from the black alphabetic characters on a white page, to think in images. As a cultural object, the alphabet is the support mechanism of a reading that activates the visible (through looking) and the vision (through interpretation), imposing a certain reception tributary to the combination of experiences and information, of readings, of the imaginative power of each viewer-receptor. Simultaneously knowledge and action, the use of alphabetic characters or logographic (ideographic) characters becomes the permanent testimony to remember an early moment in the history of humanity, when writing served magical practices. At the dawn of its civilization, as Plato mentions in the dialogue Phaedrus (1993, 143), Western culture met the appearance of writing with an ambivalent reaction: on the one hand, with joy that the cure for forgetting and, equally, for ignorance, had been found, yet, on the other hand, with some reservation, considering it an ominous sign for humans – because of the forgetfulness it was going to bring to the soul of those who will learn it, dulling their memory. In the centuries that followed, the attitude continued to be dual in the European space. Seeing in the combinatorial capabilities of the alphabet a possibility of immediate communication established between all existing or possible things, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), for example, expressed in Saggiatore (1623) his superlative appreciation for the alphabet, considering it the greatest human invention (quoted in Calvino, 2019, 99), an unparalleled way of various combinations of only twenty poor characters on a sheet of paper that can communicate to anyone – however distant in time and space – one’s most hidden thoughts. But, at the opposite pole, in an irreconcilable parallelism, the current oriented towards the arbitrariness of the linguistic

18

Italo Calvino died suddenly in September 1985, before publicly giving these lectures, which were published posthumously.

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sign noted the infinite gap between linguistic experience and sensorial experience or the impossibility of the word to encompass visual imagination. The gift of writing was, however, received by Oriental culture in a completely different way. It considered writing and, above all, calligraphy, as a complete art (Cheng, 1983, 33), through which humans can truly fulfil themselves. Unlike the alphabet, which developed a linear form of representation, the writing system proposed by Chinese logographic characters, since they are not conventional signs, represents a situation of unique balance in the history of writing (Mukai, 1991, 72): pictograms and ideograms can easily transform into means of transmission and recording of thought (Pound, 1979, 19), while remaining, at the same time, graphic signs with a high visual potential. In the East Asian space, calligraphic writing occupied the spot that music had in the Western culture of the alphabet (Ishikawa, 2011, 3), the calligraphic works seen as an open musical phrase, being interpreted as music for the eyes through fast or slow rhythm, strong or light ink, wet or dry texture, boisterous or delicate tone. A Chinese character, through its graphic quality, activates a rhythmic form (Mukai, 1991, 77) with its own meaning, thus becoming a visual sign that, while representing a concept, also allows the direct recognition of symbolic thoughts (Mukai, 1991, 65). It is a graphic quality that the art of calligraphy exploits generously, revitalising the functions of the sign freed from its object. Like a monochrome painting, East Asian calligraphy distils and crystallises experience through a movement from the outside to the inside, becoming the direct revelation of the abstract nature of the cosmos, seen in terms of fundamental essences: Literary composition needs several characters to complete the meaning [of a line], whereas calligraphy can reveal the mind with only one character. This is certainly the ultimate attainment of economy and simplicity [in art]. (Chang Huai-kuan quoted in Yu Kung Kao, 1991, 75)

Although the calligraphic linguistic-scriptural element initially corresponds to a real element, it is considered (Kristeva, 1981, 84) that, before graphic writing, there was in the East Asian cultural space a marking system based on braided strings and encrusted stones. At its beginnings, this type of writing was, undoubtedly, part of magical rituals in which the signs were

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seen as talismans that proved humans’ government over the universe. Having become in a certain way the practice that activates the sacred, writing, and especially writing with a brush, acquired particular attributes. Telling or translating reality in its own way, the Chinese pictorial sign is, at the same time, a textual one, and it demands, for its decoding, that the subjects recognise a process in which various forces converge. Through a language of images that can always turn into a story, the calligraphic imaginary, provoked by a black line in motion, sees the world through its own optics and logic, which constantly open up, through various styles, new ways to explore and new forms that can change the image of the world.

Fig. 3-1 ⴥ࣭Leaf19

19

Gold Prize at the International Calligraphy Exhibition 1st International Japanese Calligraphy Exhibition, Yasuda Women’s University, Hiroshima, Japan, 2016. [Brush Writing section]

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Pure forms, reminiscent of geometric figures, with a solidity that can be defined by the law of an internal structure, kanji characters are, ultimately, a manner of perceiving the world, a subtle connection of the microcosm with the macrocosm. Since the calligraphic work is viewed both as an object of reception, and as an aesthetic relationship, it invites universal contemplation through visionary intuition. What is more, considering that any art is a human practice, the attempt to explore the way of existence through calligraphy leads to a highlighting of the calligraphicity of the finished product or, in other words, the aesthetic artistry of the calligraphic work, with an emphasis on the distinction between doing and creating. Naturally, as a theme that is subject to variations, the calligrapher, similar to a ceramicist, can also produce objects where the practical function takes precedence over the aesthetic one, but given the diversity of applications, these would rather fall into the category of artistic products, if the distinction between aesthetic and artistic is functional (Genette, 1994, 246). The defence and illustration of calligraphy as an art and of the calligraphic work as an object of relation and aesthetic reception is based on the consideration that one can identify here, in the argumentative line affirmed by Genette (1994, 10), an attention and an intention. In the reproduction of kanji, it must be remembered that the calligraphic line is unique for each calligrapher. Since aesthetic objects are, first of all, objects of attention, aesthetic attention – the term attention being used by Genette symmetrically with intention – aims at the visual appearance or aspect of this object, whereby the attention is aspectual, oriented towards appreciation (Genette, 1997, 8-9). The signs of aesthetic attention consist, among others, of multiple and complex references, which bring together distinct modes of semantic plurality, such as ambiguity (multiple denotations coexist) and figural transnotation (the denotated is, in turn, the denotator). Given that aesthetic or taste judgment is necessarily subjective (affective-psychological, but not individual), and appreciation is constitutively objective, taste is objectified through appreciation in the form of aesthetic predicates, such as, for example, graceful, elegant, bland, vulgar, superficial, classic, etc. However, the same object can also be an artefact with an intentional aesthetic function, the status of a work of art being given to the reader by the feeling, justified or not, that this object was produced with an intention, at least partly aesthetic. In other words, from an interpretative objective-

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ontological perspective, a calligraphic work is a work of art if it originates from an aesthetic intention, just as, from a subjective-functional perspective, it can function as a work of art if it was received as coming from an aesthetic intention. A transformation of the logographic (ideographic) character, the calligraphic work imposes a reception that is, in every occurrence, always partial, because no contemplation or reading is long or careful enough (Genette, 1994, 239) to exhaust the properties of a work. Just as there are no two paintings alike, this is also the case for calligraphic work, since functional plurality (attentional or receptive) never produces the same effect or has the exact same meaning. This attentional or receptive plurality stimulates a latent state, which, later on, acts through a symbolic relevance, the calligraphic art becoming the object of a reading that activates the visible (through looking) and the vision (through interpretation). The poetics of the factual and of the artistic in the case of Japanese calligraphy can be understood as the active encounter between attention and intention that accommodates a pragmatic function with an aesthetic one, making the transition from the embedded class to the encompassing one. Regarding the calligraphic work as an art object, the aesthetic component is necessarily accompanied by the technical component. Speaking of rhythm, for example, if depth takes into account the size of the character and the black ink’s intensity (the longer a line is, the deeper its cut), emphasising, as two extremes, the power and ephemerality of the calligraphic line, speed, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the freedom that the calligrapher can gain with the help of the brush and the creative expression he can create, returning to the calligraphic work its expressive, cognitive and imaginative possibilities. Furthermore, depth refers to the profound understood as the experience of the dimensions’ reversibility, to the way in which a third dimension is created in a two-dimensional calligraphic work. A mixed case (Genette, 1994, 32), the calligraphic work is simultaneously a material work, in an autographic way, and an ideal, in an allographic way, combining the materiality of graphic elements with the ideal element of the text. Autographic in some of its parts and allographic in others, one and the same work of calligraphy is a graphic work that includes a verbal inscription, which enhances paratextual elements that cannot be transmitted through diction, using, at the same time, the resources of graphic arts (figurative,

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decorative, connotative) and those of language (Genette, 1994, 146). When Genette invokes the characteristics of mixed works, by referring to the illustrative example provided by the term “calligram”, he refers, I believe, – although he does not explicitly state it – to the French Symbolists, those adherents of a neo Cratylian poetry that supports mimologism (placed in a direct relation with the imaginary), or the adequacy, and the effort to imitate the world by language on different levels, beginning with the letter, the script, the sound and, in the end, the word, morphology and syntax.

Fig. 3-2 Ọ㐲࣭Eternity

Mallarmé (1842-1898), Valéry (1871-1945), or Apollinaire (1880-1918) openly admit an inadequacy of language and of the world, and they attempt to elaborate a reformation project, as part of a logic of correction and compensation, through which language can regain its original function of signification. Written between 1913-1916 and published in 1918, not long

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before his death, the volume entitled Calligrams (Calligrammes) by Guillaume Apollinaire – from Poems of Peace and War (Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre) – was considered, even at the time of its publication, one of the most remarkable works that had appeared during the war (Apollinaire, 1971, 564). The poems, proposing a new poetic formula that experiments, among others, with vertical writing, similar to the Japanese one, are “ideograms”, the author confesses, which he “loves” as a “novelty of his spirit”, rejecting through this the accusation of being a “destroyer” that was levelled at him. The attempt at novelty revealed by the French poet was not based on the destruction of classical verse or of the old schools of visual arts, but on the “building” of the new by “bringing back” the old to life (Apollinaire, 1971, 565). His own characterisation of calligrams in terms of the “idealisation of free verse poetry” (Apollinaire, 1965, 1078) shows that the French poet always wanted to be a “creator” who tried to keep pace with his time, at the dawn of a technological revolution that featured reproduction devices such as the cinema and the gramophone. The calligram seems to Apollinaire as not only a reflection on the relationship between image and word, on the way in which they highlight and eclipse each other, but also as an analysis of the coherence of this vision. By bringing together various fields of knowledge and various codes of interpretation of the world in a multi-faceted vision of the world, the calligraphic work provokes, in turn, the communication between image and word, in search of meaning, through the ideographic sign. Ernst Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908) had interpreted Chinese characters, which had the energy of the original language, as a medium for poetry (Fenollosa and Pound, 2008, 59-80), while Ezra Pound (1885-1972) saw in them the strength to invoke concrete images the source of inspiration and a possible source of energy for a new type of poetry (Pound, 1979, 20-23). An ideographic kanji sign, interpreted as a painting in motion (Fenollosa, Pound, 2008, 63-64), which combines, at the same time, the “vivaciousness of the painting” and the “mobility of sounds”, can become a particular “medium” for poetry. Fenollosa’s attempt to present to the Western metaphysics and poetic theories tributary to the logos, the Chinese character – a pictorial sign seen by Fenollosa as a drawing that is similar to a film – was considered by Jacques Derrida the moment that launched the twentieth century’s “great adventure” known as “deconstructivism”:

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That is the significance of Fenollosa’s work. As is well known, he influenced the poetry of Ezra Pound. This absolute-graphic poetry, together with Mallarmé’s poetry, was the first break with the most fundamental of western traditions. And the attractive force with Chinese ideograms acquired from Pound’s writing gained intellectual-historical significance. (quoted in Mukai, 1991, 72)

In analysing a work’s means of existence, Genette (1994, 17) identifies two categories: immanent and transcendent. Being the first mode of existence of the work, immanence refers to the object of which the work consists, which, in turn, can be divided into material (autographic) or ideal (allographic). As a second means of existence, transcendence (term etymologically understood as the overtaking of a limit, as exiting an enclosure) refers to all the ways in which a work exceeds, overflows or plays with its object. The relationship between transcendence and immanence can be defined in functional terms: the work is the action that an object of immanence exercises. In other words, if immanence defines the motionless work, transcendence indicates the work in action (Genette, 1994, 288). The relationship between the two modes of existence is obviously “in a loop” – each of them wanting to illuminate the other, there is a complementarity between the issue of the work of art’s status and that of its function. As an autographic work, the calligraphic work – a product of transformative manual practice guided by spirit and aided by instruments – is a unique object of immanence (Genette, 1994, 40). But the particularity of the calligraphic work consists of the fact that its object of immanence is, at the same time, both a physical and an ideal one. Calligraphic works, through their linguistic-scriptural content, are able to express thoughts and emotions by themselves. In the case of the calligraphic work, transcendence, conditioned by immanence (the texture of the handmade rice paper, the materiality of the mounter silk scroll), would try to speak of the product’s calligraphicity, of what might be called the “process of becoming” in calligraphy, achieved through two stages (shūji and shodō), the mix of the (non)colours black and white – which creates the six colours of black (dry, diluted, white; wet, concentrated, black) (Cheng, 1983, 74), and the silent thinking of calligraphy. Similar to painting, both being elements of the art of space, calligraphy, in turn, shares the same principle of harmony and visual balance, as the pictogram is a copy of nature, the harmony of the

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ideographic sign in brush writing being, ultimately, the harmony of nature. Ignoring the weight of established tradition, calligraphy, as an art of time and space, turns into a complex pictorial and verbal art, synthesising the functions of a representative and expressive art, through the dot, line, surface, light, space, sound, rhythm, movement, time (Mukai, 1991, 74), the calligraphic logographic character managing to stimulate not only the sense of sight, but also the tactile sense of direct touch. The art of calligraphy is, therefore, the pictorial science whose expressive means are the graphic line and the word. It is the science that comes from the eye and addresses the eye, revealing the way (path) of the invisible doubled as visible.

Fig. 3-3 㞷᭶ⰼ࣭Snow. Moon. Flower

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Simultaneously image and word, the Japanese calligraphic work appeals to its own language given by the meeting between visual and verbal art to find natural simplicity (soboku) through sought simplicity (tanjun), with the help of two types of imaginative processes: the one that, starting from the word, reaches the visual image and the one that, starting from the visual image, reaches the verbal expression. Being at the same time both knowledge and creation, Japanese calligraphy attempts to appropriate the surrounding universe through the calligraphic movement of the brush: what is seen becomes the equivalent of what is felt by the calligrapher who thinks in, and through, calligraphy. Hidden visible and revealed invisible, inexpressible visible and tangible invisible, the work of calligraphy claims, through somewhat particular manifestations, its own imaginary. Through the embedded space and light, the black calligraphic line on a white paper can make visible, for example, the logographic signs “crane”, “flight” or “spring”, remaining faithful to nature, yet without copying it: it transcends the apparent opacity of objects or things and, as a body associated with the calligrapher's eye, it gives voice to the silence of thoughts or ideas. The calligraphic work of art creates the paradox of making two divergent paths (ways) meet, each corresponding to a different type of knowledge: one that belongs to the mental state of a dematerialised rationality, with projected lines and points, and another that tries to create a verbal equivalent of that space. The first is materialised through the image or the visible that gives way to the expression of the senses, in order to transmit the imaginative power of the visual language, and the second is fulfilled through the word or vision, the visible trace being connected to the invisible, absent thing. The visible and the vision complete each other through the space left to the imagination, the visual part of imagination that coexists with the inventive-linguistic rationality. An instrument of knowledge, but also a means of communication with the soul of the world, imagination leaves open the field of analogies, symmetries, and counterbalances; the process of associating images actually being, in fact, the fastest system of choosing and connecting the infinite forms of the possible and of the impossible. By exploiting the imagination as a repertoire of the potential, of the hypothetical, of what is not, what never was, and what perhaps will never be, but what could have been, the calligrapher – with the help of the four treasures (the brush, paper, ink and ink stone) – creates a weave between

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vision and motion, the resulting calligraphic work of art being a personal representation of the world: a world of immanence and ideality. In a visible universe, the calligrapher enters with his visible body, which he draws near through sight, in order to offer it to the world through a calligraphic work. The body that sees becomes seen, it is touched by touching; aware of his corporality, the calligrapher will try to transcend it through a personal vision, made in the midst of things, where a visible lets itself be seen (MerleauPonty, 1964, 19). The white of the rice paper, the six black colours, and the animal-hair brush become the echo of an inner feeling of the calligrapher, transferred to the moving brushstroke, in which the viewing eye would probably want to recognise the similarity with the outside world. As the painting celebrates no enigma other than that of visibility (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 26), the calligraphic work of art bears within itself the vision that gives the receptor the impression of an imminent visibility. In this way, the calligraphic work makes visible what the profane vision believed to be invisible. Although it would appear to be two-dimensional, through shadows (nijimi) or dry line (kasure), the world is recovered in its voluminous tridimensionality. The height and width of a calligraphic work of art are the diacritic signs (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 45) from which the third dimension – that of depth –will derive. A two-dimensional calligraphic work becomes a window opened to another universe that guides, polarises the viewing eye towards a vision which it overflies, without a compulsory viewpoint, sharing the contents of an imaginary: “la quasi-présence et la visibilité imminente qui font tout le problème de l’imaginaire” (MerleauPonty, 1964, 23). The visible, in a narrow and prosaic sense, demonstrates that, while writing, the calligraphers practice a magical theory of vision: the spirit walks among things, following its own concentrated vision of the universe. As if through a form-performance, the kanji character, which was at the heart of things, is now at the heart of vision, creating une chose semblable (something similar) (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 28), in an adequate similitude, related in genesis and metamorphosis. The ideographic sign “crane” (㭯) is now the one that interrogates its calligrapher with its eyes. The invisible is claimed through visible means, which makes the crane bird appear before the viewing eye as light and shadows through black and white, although these are visual rather than real. Nevertheless, the calligraphers live in their

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fascination, and the gesture of drawing the line becomes a real revelation, as if coming out of the object itself. It seems that the relationship between the calligrapher and visible things has been reversed, the calligraphers coming to feel that they are being watched by things. In fact, in this case, inspiration should be taken literally, as the in-spiration of the visible and the ex-piration of the vision, a passionate action that constantly changes roles in the act of calligraphy. Moreover, the virtual visible that was waiting in darkness became visible through the vision of a line. As a kind of mirror of this invisible seen and visible unseen, the calligraphic line reveals the reflexivity of the sensible, translating and duplicating it. Essence and existence, imaginary and real, visible and invisible, the calligraphic work unfolds its own oneiric universe of essences and likenesses through silent meanings. It can deceive the eye, establishing a perception without an object. It thus excites the viewer’s imagination, making present what was absent. Vision has become une pensée conditionnée (a conditioned thought) (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 51), which is born on an occasion provoked by the calligraphic line. The means of expression of calligraphy are put at the service of a moving line that subjects the objects to a vision that metamorphoses the world. Nothing is ornament, because everything tries to recover perspective, to recreate the world in the eye of the beholder, without necessarily being conditioned by reflexivity.

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Fig. 3-4 㭯⯙࣭The Dance of the Crane20

The art of calligraphy is technique and inspiration, and the external world at the end of the hand (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 58) is seen, through

20

When I showed this work to my master calligrapher, the master exclaimed: I see the crane!

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visionary imagination, stored in a calligraphic work. The calligrapher’s vision is not looking outward, towards a world seen in its physical-optical coordinates, but rather, en crevant la peau des choses (cracking the skin of things) (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 69), towards a nothing which is, at the same time, the spectacle of something that makes things be things, and the world be world. Calligraphy is not a construction or artifice in an industrial relationship with the outside world, but an articulate outcry through which things and ideas find voice. Once uttered, it awakens the dormant visions from their pre-existence phase, recovering living and active essences. The internal animation or the glimpse of the visible is what the calligrapher is looking for in the name of depth. Releasing the line, bringing it back to life through the movement of the brush, gives free way to the vision, to the reveries of the calligraphic line that creates its own space, outside, but also inside the common one. In this way, the Logos of lines (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 71), based on the captured light and the acquired stereoscopic contour, leads to the non-conceptual presentation of the universal being. The calligraphic line is now no longer simply a positive attribute or property of the object itself, but its generative axis, permanently doubled by an invisible line, which descends into the visible from mu or Zen nothingness.

Fig. 3-5 ↓࣭Nothing, Void

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The calligraphic work can be ultimately interpreted as a poetry of the invisible, of infinite unpredictable potentialities, a poetry of nothingness coming from a calligrapher who has no doubts about the visible concreteness of the world. The pulverised reality extends over the visible aspects and everything can be transformed by the calligraphic line into new forms. But the dissolution of the compact structure leads to a relationship of parity between the existent and the non-existent, abolishing any hierarchy of powers or values. Moreover, as no calligraphic work ends calligraphy, and as, in fact, none is definitively finished, each calligraphic work can create, change, alter, illuminate, deepen, confirm, or recreate another. That is why the title of calligraphic works, in general, testifies to their linguistic content, as a completion of the image, letting the dreamy line pass from its own space to that of immediate reality, so that, in the end, the plans mix: the visible has become a vision and the vision has become visible. The title, as a paratextual element which is eminently pragmatic (Genette, 1987, 73), in most cases, will try to seduce the potential buyer by attracting them towards reading. In the case of calligraphic works, it acquires not only a designating or identification function and a descriptive one, but also a thematic one, so as not to forget the area of transition and transaction between text and image. Although the title may offer, through a first reading, a declared authorial intention (I wanted to write...), the physical route it invites includes a univocal syntactic component, and the semantic description is a plural one, leading to interpretation: what could this calligraphic work represent/signify to the viewer?

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Fig. 3-6㸦≀ࡢ㸧ယ࣭The Beauty of Simple and Ephemeral Things

The calligrapher guides the receptive eye through the common line and line of sight, which he interprets as a pivot in a system of activity and passivity. Apparently immobile, the moving line carries a dynamic meaning, constantly revised, completed, renewed. The moving line, caught in its progress, multiplies, every new second, the visions that can resonate in the beholder’s eye long after the calligraphic content has disappeared from the retina. The calligraphic work constantly conjugates the verb “to see”, makes visible the movement and, simultaneously, in its own way, the metamorphosis of time. The vision it creates is not only a certain kind of thinking, but also the means through which the viewers, led by the calligrapher, can step outside themselves to witness, passively or actively, the emergence of the spirit. The visible addresses the eye through vision. The image embraces the word and offers the moving line to the eye for contemplation, which will open the spirit to the world of objects and ideas. It is as if the calligraphic work tries to get out of the limited perspective of an individual self, in an attempt to give a word to the wordless (the crane, flight, spring), reaching an arrival point that could prove the continuity of forms (Calvino, 2019, 192) and the identification of the self with the common nature of all things. Through vision, the contemplative spirit opens the window to the understanding of the crane, flight, spring or the mystery of (not) being. Not a mere self is revitalised, but a self in cohesion with the full void, as anything visual is separated and reunited with the universal spirit. In other words,

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anything visible is doubled by something invisible, and it is precisely the depths of this hidden dimension of the world that the calligrapher tries to reveal through the movement of the black line. Calligraphy does not seek the frontal properties of the visible but tries to reach le fond immémorial (the immemorial background) (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 86) in which something has moved, ignited, and the calligraphic work is the calligrapher's response to these stimuli: the visible has returned to the eye, in order to pass beyond it. The visible, or rather what exists, what is seen and what the calligrapher causes to be seen, was metamorphosed into vision itself. Aware that, in the end, nothing is gained, and that depth, colour, form, line, movement are frames of creation that work to open up the possibility through which all that has already been said can be said in another way, the calligrapher proposes the moving line as support for la pensée parlante (the speaking thought) (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 91). By considering the calligrapher’s hand “comme point ou degré zéro de la spatialité” (as the point or degree zero of spatiality) (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 59) and the universe as encompassing the writing hand, vision acquires its fundamental power to manifest, to show more than it is: through this, space and light speak, creating an imaginary of its own. The calligrapher’s vision becomes gesture, and its meaning metaphysical. You’re never too old to learn [Rokujū no tenarai භ༑ࡢᡭ⩦࠸], states an idiomatic Japanese saying, its literal translation being ‘calligraphy practice at the age of sixty’. Having been regarded as more than mere cultural heritage, calligraphy has now found its role in contemporary Japanese society, as a continuously rediscovered art, never having been forgotten. As a traditional art, a “social grace” (Uyehara, 1991, 11) and the object of academic research in its homeland, calligraphy is considered an integral part of the Japanese spirit (yamato damashii ኱࿴㨦). Capable of adapting to the course of the world, calligraphy has, until now, translated the sensitivity of the epoch, because the calligraphic scroll, beyond its ornamental role, preserves a statute and a meaning translated into images and words, while always remaining the same spiritual testimony of a different kind of metaphysics. However, in an epoch in which other forms of media overwhelmingly triumph, being faster and faster and with a growing range of action, will calligraphy ensure its survival, or will it perhaps be resurrected?! Considering the fact that the context determines

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not only the type of artistic function, but also its absence (Genette, 1994, 287), will the art of calligraphy lose its cultural importance in the postindustrial technological era?! Will it manage to filter the contemporary world through images and words?! However, if science manipulates things, art undoubtedly replaces them (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 9). As a writing instrument, the quill has continuously been anthropomorphised by writers in the European cultural space. At the end of Miguel de Cervantes’ (1547-1616) Don Quixote, through the author’s good will, although it had already been hung on the wall, the quill receives (indirectly) the final words of the novel: For me alone don Quixote was born, and I for him. He knew how to act and I how to write. (Cervantes, 1965, 591), and the Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) – a Romantic seeking the spirit – rhetorically asked Why does my quill remain in the ink? (Eminescu, 1984, 107), the two writers showing that the traces of the black letters left by the quill on the white sheet of paper had, in the end, created a fictional universe. In Japanese culture, Murasaki Shikibu (978? – 1016?), in the novel The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari, 1008?) – considered the world’s first novel – naturally places the brush in the hand of Genji, who is seeking his words for an epistle-poem: He was thinking while resting and resting the brush (Fude o yasume yasume kangaete ita. ➹ࢆఇࡵఇࡵ⪃࠼࡚࠸ࡓࠋ) (Murasaki Shikibu, 1965, 92). Be it a quill or a brush, quill ink or calligraphy ink, all of these utility objects point to the search for an inner energy, for a motion of the mind through handwriting or through the calligraphic brushstroke, which somewhat meets the feeling of unlimited time. In the contemporary culture of the image, although the computer keyboard is at the end of the hand on a daily basis, and the computer screen replaces the paper, perhaps praising speed does not negate the pleasures of dawdling that could be taken from handwriting or calligraphic writing. Counting on the image and on the motion that naturally derives from it, on the flow of the imagination that becomes the word, the imaginary created by the calligraphic brushstroke – regardless of the European or the East Asian meaning of the term – probably inclines not so much towards multiplying the possibilities of expression, but, paradoxically, towards approaching that unicum which is the self of the calligrapher who directly makes known his or her inner sincerity and spontaneously discovers his or her own truth.

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Fig. 3-7 ᫬✵࣭Space and Time

CHAPTER 4 CONTEMPLATIVE MEDITATION AND TRANSCENDENT VISION: THE CALLIGRAPHIC WORK AND THE BYZANTINE ICON A monk asked his master to express Zen on paper so that he would have something tangible to study. At first, the master refused, saying, “Since it is right in front of your face why should I try to capture it with brush and ink?” Still the monk continued to plead with the master for something concrete. The master drew a circle on a piece of paper and added this inscription: “Thinking about this and understanding it is second best; not thinking about it and understanding it is third best.” The master did not say what is first best. —A Zen Kōan

Equally placed between the concrete and the abstract, between the real and the imaginary, between the sensible and the intelligible, the image has become a centre of interest for a wide range of areas, coming from both the socio-human and scientific fields, to the extent to which images allow not only a simple preservation of the real (thanks to material support), but also the revelation of a mysterious world, located in a horizon of mystery, to which it can give meaning. The image, defined as the concrete representation of a material or ideal object (public image, mental idea, painting/what is seen, description, resemblance in form or content), present or absent from a perceptual point of view, continues to maintain a

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relationship with its referent, thus allowing knowledge of the latter (Wunenburger, 2004, 13). The specialised literature that deals with the phenomenon of the image from various perspectives permits one to understand the complexity of the phenomenon and the numerous issues it generates. As a dictionary entry, “image” refers to a large number of occurrences and contextualisation instances, and the etymology considers two etymons, one Greek and another Latin, in order to explain today’s meanings of the word – “representation given to the view, which reproduces reality”. The Greek term, originating from an Indo-European root, which would have meant “the idea of similarity”, is eikon, with the meaning of ‘truthful representation of an existing thing’ (Origene quoted in Besançon, 1996, 75). It is from this that the French icône, the English icon or the Romanian icoană were later created. The Latin term imago, however, having a difficult to specify etymology, entered European languages in the form of (fr.) image, (en.) image or (ro.) imagine and has not lost any of its original meanings. Moreover, the original meaning ‘visual image’ was enriched with that of ‘literary image’, which became a key concept in the rhetorical vocabulary of Antiquity. The stylistic register of the image is, therefore, no longer linked only to a visible form, but also to that of an unreal content (Wunenburger, 2004, 16-18), transmissible through words. As for the Japanese language, the Longman dictionary (English-Japanese) gives us four Japanese equivalents for the en. image, the first and last of which are used with two meanings each: 1. Imēji ࢖࣓࣮ࢪ (image, in phrases such as public image, but also symbolic image); 2. Gazō ⏬ീ (portrait, but also televised image); 3. Shinshō ᚰ㇟ (mental image) and 4. Zō ㇟ (reflected image – in a mirror, for example, – but also figurative image) (Ronguman/Longman, 2006, 811). It can be easily observed that the lexicon of the Japanese language offers enough terms for the broad spectrum of connotation that the image implies. But the question that arises is to what extent, in Japanese culture, does it acquire a semantic load similar to Western terms?! It is the exploration that my current analysis proposes, as it focuses on Japanese calligraphic art, attempting a hermeneutic investigation of the nature and function of this type of image, of the value and significance of this way of representing the sacred in Japanese spirituality.

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In Europe, any attempt to define things almost always passes into an increasingly unknown and abstract domain (Pound, 1979, 19), and the explanation for this could probably also be related to the writing system adopted by this geographical area. Humankind knew, at its origins, two types of writing systems: cuneiform writing, based on sound, from which the Greek and later Latin alphabets were derived, and Chinese writing, based on sight. Chinese logographic characters – originally pictographs and ideograms– can be considered, to some extent, stylised paintings (Pound, 1979, 21) of the things or of the concepts they represent. But, since they are not conventionalised signs, unlike the alphabet, which has developed a linear form of representation, the writing system proposed by Chinese characters represents a case of “unique balance” (Mukai, 1991, 72) in the history of writing; Chinese characters are easily transformed into means of thought transmission and recording (Pound, 1979, 19), but remain, at the same time, graphic signs with a very high visual potential. A Chinese character, through its graphic quality, activates a rhythmic form (Mukai, 1991, 77) with a meaning of its own, thus becoming a visual sign which, while representing a concept (Mukai, 1991, 65), also allows the direct recognition of a symbolic thought. It is a graphic trait that the art of calligraphy generously exploits, revitalising the functions of the sign freed from its object. Through dot, line, surface, light, space, sound, rhythm, movement, time (Mukai, 1991, 74), the calligraphic ideographic character manages to stimulate not only the sense of sight, but also the tactile one, of direct touch. Not coincidentally, perhaps, in the cultures of ideographic characters (China, Taiwan, Japan and, initially, Korea and Vietnam), writing was always regarded as being more important than speech. The oracular inscriptions on bones (jiaguwen), tortoise shells or those in bronze (jinwen), similar to hieroglyphs in Egypt and cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia, were, originally, written offerings given to the gods or a source of predictions related to the future (Ishikawa, 2011, 22). In ancient Chinese mentality (1766-1122 BC), the various inscriptions on animal bones or tortoise shells were considered manifestations of the divine will. The bone and the shell, in which some holes had originally been created, were put in fire, and the cracks and lines that appeared as a result of the burning were interpreted by the priests of those times and recorded in the form of

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simplified paintings, being considered representations of divine voices (Kuiseko, 2002, 8). The idea of pictographs being consecrated and reserved for oracles seems to have become fundamental to the further development of Chinese characters and, implicitly, to the art of calligraphy, which tries to recover their spirit, as the calligrapher aligns himself with the powers of the universe. In calligraphy, to write the kanji for mountain ( ᒣ ), for example, means to invoke the power of the mountain, just as writing the kanji rain (㞵) can refer to an invocation of rain. Even today, in China, these logographic characters, illustrious messengers of old, are considered “objects” of veneration, “chalices” charged with magic, voices of the cosmic power that directs human life, blesses or protects it (Gunn, 2001, 135). Moreover, accepting that writing appeared only when humans felt the need to enter into communication with divinity, the close connection between writing and religion seems indisputable: In the writing on shells and bones and on bronzeware, no system had yet emerged to govern the order of the strokes or even the number of strokes per ideograph. The scripts, albeit to differing extents, remained in the realm of pictorially symbolic carving rooted in the mythology and worldview of religious states. They served largely as means of expressing queries to a deity on high. (Ishikawa, 2011, 24)

Although the calligraphic linguistic-scriptural element corresponds, initially, to a graphic element, it is considered (Kristeva, 1981, 84) that, before graphic writing itself, in the East Asian cultural space there existed a marking system based on braided strings and encrusted stones. This type of writing, in its beginnings, was undoubtedly part of magical rituals, in which the signs were seen as talismans proving that humans mastered the universe. Having become, in a certain way, the practice that activates the sacred, writing – particularly writing with a brush – acquires specific attributes, narrating or translating reality in its own way. Thus, the Chinese pictorial sign is, at the same time, a textual one, requiring, for its decoding, that the viewer recognise the process in which various forces converge. Vertical logographic writing, from right to left, also means that what has been written, already having become part of the past, is hidden, while the future can always remain open (Ishikawa, 2011, 61) in front of the writing hand.

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Adopting the Chinese writing system (kanji, in Japanese) between the 4th and 6th centuries together with Buddhism, Japan developed, a few centuries later, the kana syllabaries, through the graphic deformation of current Chinese characters, creating a Japanese writing system that was and is successfully exploited by the art of calligraphy: Our writing system with its mixture of Kanji and the syllabic letters of Kana is more varied than alphabetical writing systems. For just this reason, each incorporates a different feeling. Is it not the integration of feelings in Kanji which permits the original form of the cosmos of a language to live on? Kanji – to prescribe it somewhat roughly – incorporates painting, poetry, music, sculpture and even gesture in their original form in the words. (Mukai, 1991, 66)

Due to the encounter between the hand that writes and the eye that reads, the calligraphic art proposes a visual reception of the act of reading, the image that is inserted into the linguistic sphere establishing an intermediate level between word and thing, a kind of verbo-iconic texture (Wunenburger, 2004, 40) between the abstract and the sensible. There are many experiences that a calligraphic work can create, interpreted as a certain type of search for spiritual perfection, through which human beings, in their desire to communicate with the divine, try to reveal a mysterious meaning. And the two formal elements of calligraphic art that have captivated the imagination of East Asia for centuries, the black line and the white space, create a simple, but deep and subtle art, tributary to tradition, but without limiting originality. That is why, even today, master calligraphers are studied carefully, in a spirit of docility, but also of freedom, by sincere students without pride. The teachings are transmitted from master to apprentice, aiming for a certain stability of the forms, though this does not mean that the rules are considered immutable. The apparent rigidity is perhaps only the convention within the transcendent, which gives way to the unique moment of revelation when amazement approaches silence. The sacred is unseen, yet it is reflected in the human visible. Passing the phenomenal veil, through the musical consonance of the black lines, full, but also invisible, empty, through the flying white technique (Cheng, 2010, 50), calligraphy opens up to the revealing vision. Just as for Plato the image preserves the “imprint” (typos), that allows the original to be found, or as, for the Byzantine Christian, the

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icon is an “inscribing” image that ensures a non-substantial presence of the divinity in the sensible (Wunenburger, 2004, 190), so does the calligraphic work certify a visible presence, whose preservation depends on a singular sacredness, for something that remains invisible. Composed of a plurality of meanings, because an intuitive content put in metaphysical terms turns into a representation (Wunenburger, 2004, 103), the meaning of the calligraphic image contains, beyond an immediate meaning, an indirect, hidden connotation, which needs to be revealed. By exploring deeper layers, the interpretation acquires the value of a true way of initiation. The meaning becomes a spiritual one and, as a result, access can no longer be logical and rational. In this way, meaning enters a world of its own truth and meaning, openly opposing a logical-conceptual rationality. If the data of the world is reversed, the calligraphy artist, in an attempt to visualise and express a sacred emotion, is no longer a proposer of meaning, but a receptor of meaning, passive and simultaneously active, aware that understanding is not immediately accessible and that it needs to be translated into a different code than the already-known ones. Therefore, the calligrapher is not the centre, but only an intermediate moment in the meaning that is created, attempting to get closer to it through a journey on the demanding path of contemplative meditation: It is probably its very simplicity which is part of its charm. It is a simplicity which has given birth to a plethora of expressive lines. There are as many lines as there are calligraphers who write. The scripts have certain conventions that should be followed, but the lines themselves are unique to the person writing them. (Sato, 1998, 1)

Similar to the Byzantine icon which encompasses the connection between the visible and the invisible, calligraphic art confirms the same combination of the seen and the unseen, as the information of an image is not immediately legible, being hidden in the form of the written character. In visual works, especially non-figurative ones, the abandonment of the principle of representing objects made it possible to bring into sight the invisible structure of the world (Wunenburger, 2004, 302). Giving up the representation of the visible, calligraphy also tries to transform itself into a way of presenting metaphysical contents, of revealing the absolute. Calligraphic art can be read as a mandala that embodies divine powers (Ohki,

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2007, 122-127), whose morphological and aesthetic properties provide support for meditation, through which the spirit can perceive the communion with the universe. The calligraphic image is not its own purpose, but only a means for entering the state of supreme meditation, through which one can intuitively perceive a hidden truth. The calligraphic image freed from the constraints of the real allows the human spirit to access another world. And since the infinite cannot be reduced to the finite, the invisible is only seen if suggested by the visible. As a result, the calligraphic work requires a poetics in which the role of the visual and of the linguistic image is to capture the inexpressible that is never exhausted in an immediate of any nature, and that easily transforms into a space of reflection, as the ensō or Zen circle also proves: When the inhalation and exhalation merge, at that moment the centre without energy reaches the centre that is full of energy21. (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 174).

Fig. 4-1 Ensō – Zen Circle

21

(our transl.) In original: “Când se contopesc inspirarea cu expirarea, în acea clipă atinge lipsitul de energie centru plin de energie.”

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In addition, if the sacred cannot be defined, but only analysed (Otto, 1996, 13), calligraphy, in its sacred dimension, seems to illustrate that something which can never be learned, but only, possibly, awakened or intuited. A testimony of an a priori truth, the calligraphic work as a sacred text has its origin in these inscriptions from the dawn of the existence of writing, whose cryptic atmosphere obviously suggests the religious dimension of writing (Ishikawa, 2011, 172). In this way, the analysis of a calligraphic work as an artistic work and as hierophany has to put into play both rational and irrational elements, coming from the “deep abyss” of the human soul. Calligraphy also tries by means of its own, the revelation of the sacred as “vision of the eternal in the temporal” (Otto, 1996, 180). Being a “religious experience” (Eliade, 1992, 9) in a certain way, writing calligraphy becomes synonymous with engaging in a dialogue with divinity.

Fig. 4-2 ᅾ࣭Existence

The calligraphic line is an energetic, dynamic and sensitive expression, defined by white space, the relationship between line and space describing a state of deep intimacy. Moreover, because these black marks engender the possibility of revealing anything, suddenly the gesture of calligraphy adds to the black visible lines – lines that are invisible, empty (kūkaku). Unlike

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Western calligraphic writing, which is horizontal, continuous, the East Asian one is vertical and optically discontinuous (Mukai, 1991, 67). Or, in geometric terms, the logographic characters written in a calligraphic manner are seen architecturally, in their three-dimensionality, and this interpretation is offered precisely by the invisible, empty lines that do not appear clearly traced on paper. Between the lines, however, there is a mandatory connection that is in fact very strong, yet, precisely so as to increase its dynamic force, it is hidden from view from time to time. It is like a sort of exemplification of what might be called the “process of becoming” in calligraphy. Generally, the relationship between the visual image and the scriptural one can be interpreted from two contradictory perspectives. On the one hand, the signifier-signified relationship that it generates seems to be related to a signified irreducible to a model, revealed by and through writing, as it is known in a mystical communion, a model in front of which the image could only create the impression of a degraded message. However, if the visual image is, by definition, an object, writing has, in this case, the privilege attached to immateriality. Writing thus appears as the attribute of an elite, for whom it is both reading and practice, and the image, marking the divorce between deciphering and practice, is then placed in the service of writing. Another perspective, inverted, interprets the visual image as a panoramic, synoptic one, in which everything is offered at once, while the linguistic image would remain tributary to the linearity of the signs that are written one after the other (Wunenburger, 2004, 34-35). The art of calligraphy seems to offer a totalising vision, in which the visual combines with the scriptural to configure a harmonious whole, because two registers of images meet in Japanese calligraphy: a visual image, which belongs to intuition, and a verbal one, which belongs to an abstract analysis function. As a result, a calligraphic work implies not only perception through the senses, due to its pictorial character, but also distance from this type of perception, due to the linguistic aspect of the image. Sight is closely related to intuition, making the viewer an active participant in the creation of meaning, while the linguistic image remains tributary to the linearity of discourse and to the temporality of the sign. Thus, the art of calligraphy involves both the representation of the world by means of the black line accompanied by the white space, and the progressive discovery of the written characters’

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meaning. The global meaning can be instantly deciphered, but also graduated, making the calligraphic work a unique way of manifesting being in the world.

Fig. 4-3 ⛅㢼࣭Autumn Wind

Simultaneous denotation and connotation, questions like “What is this?” or “What does this mean?” seem to find an answer in the calligraphic work in both a cultural and a spiritual sense. However, object and interpretation are in an interdependent relationship and, in order to understand an image of this type, one must initially understand not only its nature but also its purpose. The meaning of this image undoubtedly lies beyond the meaning of calligraphic characters, as a vast experience is concentrated in a meaningful graphic sign. The visual and the verbal image evade intellectual understanding and the calligraphic work masks another side of meaning, hidden, “understood as the source of a different truth” (Wunenburger, 2004, 257), although it remains recognisable in its literal aspect. And yet, it would not be a question of a meaning that would refer to a univocal concept, but rather to an ideational network, which can, naturally, even combine

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opposites. The pictorial and textual language become a revelation, although the ultimate truth seems not to exist or, if it does exist, it is not the objective that becomes important, but the way (path) towards it, the revelation that the search for the ultimate meaning entails. This is what also happened in various Western popular traditions, where beliefs, especially religious ones, acquired an iconographic expression, the icon becoming “an image of existentially assimilated revelation” (Uspensky, 1994, 15). However, unlike Latin rite Christianity, which situates the image in the realm of rhetoric (Besançon, 1996, 9), the Greek Church conceives the image from a metaphysical angle, in which the figurative tries to encompass the absolute. The visual image is combined with the verbal one in Christianity as well, where the manifestation of God passes from the Word revealed and written in the Gospels to the representation in the image painted in the icon. Therefore, the practice of icon art in Byzantine Christianity will be based on a principle situated at the “limit of the principle of similarity” (Wunenburger, 2004, 143), through the founding myth of the icon not manmade (acheiropoiètos), so that, in the future, the art of manufacturing manmade icons yields a chain of images of unaltered manifestation of the absolute Being. The icon – “a theology in images” (Uspensky, 1994, 183) – results from a change of attitude: following a downward path, God makes himself visible through a human path, his unrepresentable aspect becoming a face by “closing in the spatial limits of the visible world” (Wunenburger, 2004, 154). The icon is the image that does not cover (as appearance), but reveals something (as apparition) (Wunenburger, 2004, 203), thereby actively participating in the regeneration of humans through a new image. The icon puts an end to the ontological fissure between the natural and the supernatural, between the visible and the invisible, accepting the mysterious presence of the model in the image (Evdochimov, 1992, 78). In addition, in the art of calligraphy, the image will associate its fullness with the “emptiness” or “void”, the only way of accessing the invisible that hides and reveals the sacred. As a result, both the icon and the calligraphic work challenge the receptor to adopt a particular way of looking in order to access what is hidden. Since the beginning, the mystery or the enigmatic horizon of the icon and the calligraphic work could only be assumed or missed. An aesthetic emotion is mystically transfigured into a “sacred image” (Uspensky, 1994, 15), and

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the direct revelation of divinity is made through both word and image, the unseen becoming visible and the unrepresentable representable. However, in an icon, it is not only the subject that is very important, but also its means of representation, together with the manner in which the subject is treated. It is natural to develop a pictorial language corresponding to divine revelation, according to which the icon can express the “spiritual experience of holiness” (Uspensky, 1994, 118) – holiness that is signalled with the help of shapes, colours and symbolic lines, as component parts of a harmonious whole. Therefore, in order to fulfil the call of tradition, the iconographer is required to empty the icon of any individual or personalised element, and since the composition of the icon is already established, no deviation from the canon is allowed. Without the signs of the visible world, without shadows, the characters in the icon, presented frontally, communicate directly with the viewer, talking to him about a spiritual, sacred world (Uspensky, 1994, 46). The delight offered to the eyes by the icon, the solar mystic, through gold and the brilliance of rainbow colours, becomes almost sonorous (Evdochimov, 1992, 141), the liturgical function of the icon culminating in the contemplation of the mysteries. From the point of view of the production technique, calligraphy attempts a transfiguration of the image of the world (imago mundi) through a very simple material technique, provided by black ink and white rice paper. The colour pigment becomes all shades of black, and the balance between the black line and the white space becomes a way to convey the light-versusshade ratio. The black-white monochrome element serves here to the attempt to reveal the sacred. Without figuration and without the technique of perspective, the calligraphic work includes in itself a system of its own connections, in which the space of the abstract representation obeys the law of movement, oriented from right to left, anticlockwise. Movement allows metamorphosis, namely the transition from a materially constituted space, with its own laws, towards an imaginary space, which makes possible the recreation of a world “whose specific constraints serve precisely to present what is given to the subject” (Wunenburger, 2004, 173). Through the icon, the holy word becomes visible and can be contemplated, because the church does not only speak about the truth, but also shows it through the image (Uspensky, 1994, 59): it is not enough that the truth is spoken, it has to be shown as well. The icon thus becomes the

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contemplation of both the unspoken and the depicted (Uspensky, 1994, 112). In the universe proposed by the icon, it is not the rational categories or human morality that prevail, but divine grace, from which, naturally, the grandeur of the icon in its simplicity follows. The icon – “pattern of ineffable reality” (Uspensky, 1994, 139) – became the visible testimony of the descent of divinity towards humans, but also of the human's elan to divinity (Uspensky, 1994, 130). The icon makes human beings more attentive to the presence of the divinity, without them being able to see it in themselves. The icon is a visible figure that invites humans to go beyond the visible, towards the invisible, that is why the icon cannot legitimise adoration (latreia), but only a recognition of its sacredness through an attitude of veneration (proskunesis) (Wunenburger, 2004, 207). In the attempt to pictorially translate such a revelation, the icon replaces sight through reading. It helps humans participate in divine life, offering them the possibility of a spiritual rebirth, although this inner growth is recognised to be inexpressible, close to absolute silence (Uspensky, 1994, 121). As religious experience, the icon proposes “seeing” God on the eighth day (Evdochimov, 1992, 33), proving the visual character of the word. To the intelligible-scriptural order is added the visual one; next to the word, the image is placed (Evdochimov, 1992, 35) and it becomes an object of contemplation – the unseen is shown in the seen and the image acquires the same value as the word, searching for the expression of divinity. However, unlike the icon, which tries to integrate the Christian believer into the universal unity of the church, the calligraphic work urges a return of the self to itself, in an often times solitary meditation, on the path (way) to revealing the noumenal, hidden depth of this world. The Japanese soul (yamato damashii) is characterised, among other things, by a religious syncretism, which includes Shinto (literally: ‘the way of the gods’) and Buddhist values. If Shintoism is the ancient faith of the Japanese, Buddhism – a religion imported from India, via China and Korea, which established itself in Japan in the 6th century – offered to the new culture another gift: writing. Moreover, if we were to functionally divide the two main religious currents, Shintoism, like all animistic religious manifestations, would be associated with the “forces of life and fecundity”, while Buddhism would be linked to “the world beyond and death” (Berthon, 1996, 578). According to the oldest Japanese text Kojiki ྂ஦グ (Records of Ancient Matters), a

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three-volume compilation (written in 712) of the “old deeds” of Japan, intended to present the genealogy of the gods, from the creators of the archipelago to the ancestors of the imperial house of Yamato, presided over by the sun goddess Amaterasu O-mikami (the Great Divinity that Illuminates the Sky), the Shinto belief refers to a diverse set of creeds based on the importance of shamanic practices, agrarian rituals and the cult of the dead (Berthon, 1996, 578). Buddhism, however, the most difficult to characterise among universal religions, is the only religious manifestation whose founder is not declared to be the prophet of God, nor his messenger on earth. Moreover, the Buddhist faith rejects the very idea of a divinity as a supreme being, the founder of this religion proclaiming himself as “The Awakened One” (= Buddha)22 and, starting from here, “spiritual guide and master” (Eliade, 1986, 73). Not being a proper name, Buddha is, in fact, an epithet for those who have reached supreme intelligence, having the connotation of a paradigm (Robert, 1996, 431). Later, detached from Buddhism, contemplative meditation as a means to access enlightenment without resorting to saluting the Buddha or the various bodhisattvas – a practice originating in India – becomes the foundation of a doctrine that finds a favourable ground for consolidation and spread in China. According to an old legend, a monk of noble origin coming from India, named Daruma (or Bodhidharma, in Sanskrit), introduces meditation in the Chinese land, at the beginning of the 6th century, after imposing nine years of meditation in the face of a rocky wall. His teachings are afterwards transformed into a fascinating doctrine, called chan in Chinese or Zen (⚙) in Japanese 23 , considered the most “irreligious” 22

The term “buddha” itself is, moreover, a form of the past participle – meaning ‘awakened, accomplished’ – from a verbal root denoting the action of ‘waking up, understanding, recognising’. 23 Zen is like a man clinging to a tree with his teeth, hanging over a chasm. His hands do not grasp a branch, his feet do not rest on a branch, and someone under the tree asks him, “Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?” If the tree man doesn't answer, he loses; and if he answers, he falls and loses his life. What should he do? (our transl.) In original: Zen-ul este ca un om care se ține cu dinții de un copac, atârnând deasupra unei prăpăstii. Mâinile nu-i apucă vreo creangă, picioarele nu i se sprijină pe vreun ram, și cineva de sub copac îl întreabă: “De ce a venit Bodhidharma în China din India?” Dacă omul din copac nu răspunde,

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(Murase, 1992, 173) of all universal religious doctrines. Prince Son’en, moreover, describes calligraphy in his treatise Jubokushō (1352), as the Way that goes parallel to the depths and to the ultimate goal of Buddhist enlightenment, for which the spiritual cultivation of the individual through art becomes fundamental. Calligraphy implies a certain type of search for spiritual perfection – kanshō han'nya (‘intuition obtained through contemplation’) – through which human beings, in their destiny of continuous exorcism of death, try to reveal a hidden meaning of the world. A way to purify the soul, the art of calligraphy eventually becomes a method of self-improvement: “Calligraphy is considered to be active meditation by the painter, while the visual depiction serves as a teaching tool for others.” (Stevens, 1990, 23).

Fig. 4-4 ⱁ㐨᫝ష㐨࣭The Path of Art is the Path of Buddha

pierde; iar dacă răspunde, cade și își pierde viața. Ce ar trebui să facă? (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 104)

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In the 13th century, through Japanese monks who had studied in China, Zen doctrines, practices and teachings reserved for an intellectual or warrior elite were imported to the Land of the Rising Sun as well, which gave a new impetus to Japanese Buddhism (Eubanks, 2016, 173-197). Myōan Eisai/Yōsai ᫂⳽ᰤす (1141-1215) brought the Zen called Rinzai, whose practice is based on the meditation on a koan, an enigma that leads to enlightenment by putting a stop to the drunkenness of words and the wandering of thoughts, and his disciple Dōgen Zenji 㐨ඖ⚙ᖌ (1200-1253) lays the foundations of Sōtō Zen, whose sole practice is zazen (sitting meditation). The success known in Japan by Zen Buddhism, with its numerous sects, was probably also because this doctrine was addressed, above all, to the common people, proposing the path of individual salvation, located somewhere beyond life and death, beyond history and society (Kato, 1994, 83). The attempt to define Zen Buddhism runs into many obstacles, being, for the researchers who had this initiative, an attempt in equal measure difficult and risky. The origins of Zen Buddhism (< skt. dhyana ‘meditation’) are linked to the yoga tradition, respectively to the belief that self-control and meditation can lead to the peace of enlightenment (Matsunaga, 1993, 193). On the one hand, from the point of view of historical manifestations, Zen can be interpreted as a form of Buddhism; therefore, the phrase Zen Buddhism does not seem inappropriate. On the other hand, for some interpreters (Abe, 1985, 194), Zen would lie beyond Buddhism, since it is not based on any Buddhist sutra or scripture but goes directly back to the roots of Buddhism. Not being able to be considered a religion, since it is not based on any theological doctrine, Zen Buddhism has been interpreted as a philosophy. However, there are studies that try to argue that Zen is not even a philosophy, since it is behind words and intellect, being neither a study of the processes which govern thought and conduct, nor a theory of the principles or laws which govern the human world or the universe. As a result, Zen Buddhism could rather be considered a form of antiintellectualism or intuitionism: “Zen is taken to be a form of antiintellectualism or a cheap intuitionism, especially when satori in Zen is explained as a flash like intuition.” (Abe, 1985, 3). Even though it appears to be neither, Zen Buddhism includes a very deep philosophy, although it is not, in the true sense of the term, a philosophy.

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According to it, satori 24 , the enlightenment or awakening of Buddha’s consciousness, occurs on the occasion of an unexpected event, occurrence, chance, when the spirit is ready to receive it: Pouvez-vous me dire ce qu’est le chemin sacré de l’illuminé? (What/which is the sacred path (way) of enlightenment?), the disciple asked his master. Le reflet des fleurs dans l’œil de celui qui les regarde! (The reflection of flowers in the eye of the beholder)25 (Brunel, 2002, 254), answered the master with a koan...

Fig. 4-5 ᱜⰼ࣭Cherry Blossom

The present has turned into eternity. Devoid of any sense of attachment or possession and removing all desire, Zen means complete freedom26, the

24

The Japanese verb satoru means ‘to understand, to understand deeply, to see beyond appearances’. 25 (our transl.) 26 It is better to fulfil your spirit than your body./ When the spirit is fulfilled you no longer have to worry about the body./ When the spirit and the body become one/ Man is free. Then he doesn't want any praise. (our transl.) In original: E mai bine să-ți împlinești spiritul decât trupul./ Când spiritul e împlinit nu mai trebuie să-ți

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journey from the shore of illusion (samsara) to that of enlightenment (nirvana) (Stevens, 1990, 132). Because each human being is a miniature version of the universe, enlightenment would consist, in a certain way, precisely in achieving the understanding of this fact (Stevens, 1990, 138). Moreover, if enlightenment must be immediate and direct, the path one has to follow is only practice, the meandering way of the search for enlightenment, through which one tries to know and overcome one's own self. The art of calligraphy becomes, in this way, Zen practice and meditation, a mental-sensory experience that can elevate the spirit: Zen masters never considered their painting to be either abstract or ‘art for art’s sake’, as it is the Zen masters’ spiritual zeal which is expressed in their brushstrokes. Reflecting the unique Zen Buddhist vision, spontaneous brushwork can be a path to enlightenment. (Stevens, 1990, 19)

Bypassing the theoretical attempts to define it, Zen means, first of all, practice and teaching through which (self)awakening can be achieved, since, as a Zen koan mentions, it is too clear, so it is difficult to see 27 (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 106). That is why, according to the Japanese tradition, the art of calligraphy is not only a means of expressing the spirit, but also the path to self-improvement, one of the paths to satori or Zen enlightenment: “Zen is none other than your own mind, so look within and wake up!” (Daruma quoted in Stevens, 1990, 66). Since the way (path) of calligraphy can access a hidden meaning of the world, revelations of a higher ontological order, Zen religious philosophy introduces the textual and iconic image into the sphere of ordinary existence, of everyday life, imposing a certain type of thinking through a graphic-scriptural image that tries, by means of a visible form, to approach not an invisible super-reality, but a state of mind called mushin (↓ᚰ) or “empty heart” (mu ↓ 'nothing, empty, void, nothingness' + shin ᚰ 'heart, spirit') – the state above all determinations. Nothingness is the indication of an emancipation, of an optimistic or tragic liberation of the world; being and nothingness, full and

faci griji pentru trup./ Când spiritul și trupul devin una/ Omul e liber. Atunci nu-și dorește vreo laudă. (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 107) 27 (our transl.) In original: “e prea limpede, așa că-i greu de văzut”.

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empty, presence and absence are concepts that can be re-known through the black line in the calligraphic image: The stroke originates, and returns to konton kaiki (‘pristine existence’); it arises from nothingness and that nothingness is incomprehensibly gathered up in the brush. When the writing springs forth from konton kaiki the effect is dramatic… (Ōmori, 1983, 9-10)

The world conceived by reason is, for Zen Buddhism, an apparent one, a world of ignorance and deception, far from the true world of reality. By denying the influence of reductionist reason, the world of discrimination would disappear with it, and true reality could make way, in all its fullness. Denial, in turn, is not a simple abandonment, but a redefinition of the world. In Zen, the absolute is identified with Mu, the boundless Nothing, which is entirely non-substantial; therefore, the individual can be, paradoxically, identical with this absolute: “Many people are afraid to empty their minds lest they plunge into the void. They do not know that their own mind is the void.” (Addis, 1978, 31). Nothingness surrounds humans, helping the individuals directly connect with their own selves: In Zen’s realization of absolute Nothingness, an individual is determined by absolutely no thing. To be determined by absolutely no thing means the individual is determined by nothing other than itself in its particularity it has complete self determination without any transcendent determinant. This fact is equally true for every individual. (Abe, 1985, 20)

The tension between being (Yu) and not being (Mu) that governs the human condition is overcome by Mu, Nothing being the transcendence of the contrast existence/non-existence. But Mu should not be understood as a denial of Yu. Being the opposite of Yu, Mu is a stronger form of negation than simply not being. Taken to the absolute, it transcends both Yu and Mu, in their relative meanings (Abe, 1985, 94). In other words, life no longer differs from death, good from evil, etc. In Buddhism, life is not superior to death, because life and death are two antagonistic processes that are mutually exclusive, all the while being inseparably linked to each other. What Buddhism calls samsara – transmigration or the wheel of life and death – is nothing but the endless cycle of life and death. Only in this way

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do the past and the future become present, the only moment that can be recognised (Abe, 1985, 131); perfect liberation, awakening can only happen through the fulfilment of the Nothing, which is beyond any form of duality: Thinking of nothing, the bounded self will become unbounded.28 (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 186). Without the hope of any salvation from outside, Zen Buddhism pursues only self-Enlightenment. Nothing is external to humans, but, from the beginning, it exists in humans, in their own selves, here and now: Mu is the absolute ‘no’ of Zen practice; it demands everything we have: To pass this barrier, concentrate all 360 bones and joints and 84,000 pores of skin of your body on this word mu… every ounce of strength you have must be exhausted on this single character. (Ōmori, 1983, 90)

Fig. 4-6 ↓࣭Nothing, Void

The present time of life is a very important principle in Buddhism29, which concerns each individual, and the seekers of perfection must discover 28

(our transl.) In original: “Gândind la nimic, sinele mărginit se va nemărgini”. The principle can also be found in Zen parable anecdotes: “After all, we are only solitary beings, too attentive to our senses, what the ear hears and what the eye sees. 29

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in their own existence the reflection of the light from within. Zen Buddhism insists on clarifying its perspective: the self is, from its origins, in enlightenment30. It is, therefore, inseparable from self-enlightenment, this true face of humans can only be shown through practice: “The work is executed in the space of a moment, but this can only be done after twenty or thirty years of practice.” (Earnshaw, 2000, 119).

Fig. 4-7 㐣⌧ᮍ࣭Past. Present. Future

Living in this way, we cannot enjoy the present and we are never truly free for a moment. What difference then is there between all this and the chains that bind a man in prison?”. (our transl.) In original: “Până la urmă, suntem doar niște ființe singuratice, prea atente la simțurile noastre, la ce aude urechea și la ce vede ochiul. Trăind în acest fel, nu ne putem bucura de prezent și nicio clipă nu suntem liberi cu adevărat. Ce diferență mai este atunci între toate acestea și lanțurile care-l țin legat pe om în temniță?” (Liiceanu, 2020, 146.) 30 You can't describe it, you can't picture it,/ You can't admire it, you can't feel it./ It's your true self, it has no place to hide from you./ If the world is destroyed, it won't be destroyed. (our transl.) In original: Nu-l poți descrie, nu-l poți înfățișa,/ Nu-l poți admira, nu-l poți simți./ Este sinele tău cel adevărat, n-are unde să se pitească./ Dacă lumea e nimicită, el nu va fi nimicit. (Reps and Senzaki, 2008, 120)

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True Zen is in itself enlightenment or the understanding that Mu, Nothing, is not outside of humans, but within ourselves: “In the realization of absolute Nothingness, the true Self awakens to itself.” (Abe, 1985, 187). The realisation of the absolute Nothingness becomes, in Zen, the fulfilment of the self, which goes beyond individual subjectivity, beyond any possible subject/object duality or the so-called human/divine relationship, a fulfilment that can also be acquired through the way (path) of calligraphy. Hitsuzendō ➹⚙㐨 (Ōmori, 1983, 89) means the combination of calligraphy exercise and Zen practice. Hitsu (➹ ‘brush’) is the brush that captures and then projects the practitioner's state of mind and spirit, Zen (⚙) becomes the function activated by the mind and spirit, and dō (㐨 ‘path, way’) is the path of uninterrupted practice. The unity of the three components becomes, in the end, the way to oneself and the revelation of the ultimate truth.

Fig. 4-8 ⯡ⱝᚰ⤒࣭Heart Sutra

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Fig. 4-9 Heart Sutra (fragment)/ ↓ (Nothing, Void)

In Western culture, however, the void was felt as empty of divinity, a “refusal” of the visual and sensory testimony of the incarnation of divinity, whereby Christ’s quality of God is ignored, and his resurrection no longer presents any important aspect (Uspensky, 1994, 214). Therefore, the contemplation of nothingness can coincide, in such a culture, with metaphysical despair and religious gravity (Besançon, 1996, 326) and the consequence becomes inevitable: the theology of the death of God. Buddhism records three periods after the Buddha’s death: shoho, zoho and mappo (Kato, 1994, 72). The shoho period, in turn, could be divided into three sub-periods, each of them bearing a specific imprint: kyo (teachings), gyo (asceticism) and sho (nirvana). The immediately following zoho period would be characterised by teachings and asceticism, without being able to reach nirvana, so that during the period of chaos in the mappo, only the Buddha’s teachings would remain accessible. The art of calligraphy also has several types of styles: the seal script (tensho), the clerical script (reisho), the cursive script (sōsho), the printed-block script (kaisho) and the semicursive script (gyōsho). In their evolution from the seal style to the semicursive one, these cover a time interval between the 3rd century BC and the 3rd century of our era. Could it be a mere coincidence

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that the existence and name of calligraphy styles have no possible connection with the periods mentioned by Buddhism?! Harmony, sometimes in asymmetry, sabi (‘loneliness’), and a simplification to the essence, are features that the eye of the beholder could glimpse in a calligraphic work. The creative spirit of the calligraphic work consists of direct expression, simplicity, movement, fulfilment through mystery (myo). The satori experience that is seeing within yourself can be achieved through intuition, the one which comes into direct contact with reality and which is nothing but the mystery of being. In this way, humans can become conscious of the un-conscious (mushin), and the “out-of-spirit” state, when the self acts in full harmony with nature and turns into the path beyond all limitations (Suzuki, 1997, 17). The calligraphic image is a vehicle of meaning, and the calligraphic work, like any ordinary visual image, not only does not attempt to reproduce the real, being, concomitantly, something other than the real, but also may even testify to the negation or absence of the represented reality. The image gave way to the revelation of eternity, in which calligraphy has the role of an interpreter of the visible and invisible things; judgment and reasoning as intellectual operations have been removed, as no speculative or pragmatic purpose is pursued. Being considered here as the image of the image, calligraphy can appear as the pure image. If the icon encompasses the connection between the visible and the invisible, calligraphic art confirms the same combination of the seen and the unseen. The information specific to an image is not immediately legible; it is hidden in the form of the calligraphic character, as if this image-artefact were subordinated to a necessity of a diverse nature: expressive, communicative, religious. The calligraphic work, through an iconic and linguistic transposition, tries to express and master something immeasurable like faith. The work of calligraphy as an image proposes a unity between the immediately tangible and contemplative meditation: “When we are one with the universe, all of nature becomes our meditation hall.” (Stevens, 1990, 56). Something initially hidden and distant tries to manifest itself, traveling from the inside to the outside, from the invisible to the visible, lending the form of a calligraphic work. Something similar to a painting is proposed to the viewer to read, but the message that everyone can see directly into his

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or her own nature is neither to be accepted, nor to be refused, neither to be understood, nor to be misunderstood, but to be overcome. The image offered by a calligraphic work is a combination of several images created by projecting the perception of the world proposed by the calligrapher, reflecting a vision given by the imitation of a model, as a similar duplication, but also as a deviation from the model. The calligraphic work, two-dimensional in appearance, becomes three-dimensional in interpretation, being, in fact, a cultural sign that never fully reveals its intuitive content. The calligrapher managed to create, with the help of his or her brush, an object that does not exist as an object in itself, but whose image allows us to inaugurate a new vision of the world. The image impregnated with the word has become the bearer of an imprint that is, at the same time, expression and meditation, oscillating between the fullness of being and the void of nothingness. The calligraphic image cannot, therefore, be considered a symbolic super-reality of its own consistency, which allows human beings to live in reality alongside it – although the revelation offered by the harmony of all the elements that make up a calligraphic work cannot be justified, only contemplated. Just as art is “dephenomenalised” (Evdochimov, 1992, 26), similarly, through calligraphy, the world opens up to mystery: enlightenment is attempted through meditation, not evidence. One of the most famous Zen works belongs to the master Sengai Gibon ௝ཇ⩏Კ (1750-1837), a Buddhist monk of the Rinzai school. Without an original title, the work is often called Maru-Sankaku-Shikaku (୸࣭୕ゅ࣭ ᅄゅ) or Circle, Triangle and Square (Universe) and consists of three geometric figures written in the form of “ࠐᶭ□”. About his brushwork and ink the author confessed that it is neither calligraphy nor painting. The interpretations given to the symbolism of this work, which can be considered a true mandala, are numerous, but two of them caught my attention. A possible interpretative reading in the Zen code of this work in ink would consist of a suggested analysis according to which the circle would represent the enlightened mind, the triangle would refer to the zazen meditative posture, and the square could suggest the walls of the temple where the “awakening” could happen. It seems, however, that the Zen master Sengai had visited the churches in Nagasaki and thus would have been familiar with the Christian faith. That is why, in another interpretation

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that would be allowed by the symbolism of the geometric shapes in his work, done, this time, in a Christian code, the circle would suggest the perfect and eternal existence of the divinity, the triangle would remind of the Holy Trinity, and the square would refer to the symbolism of terrestrial existence (Stevens, 1990, 18). Regardless of the interpretation given to the content of the work, it becomes clear that the work in ink of the Zen master ensures a visible presence for something that remains in the invisible, a manifestation whose preservation depends on a singular sacredness. It is an ideal reality, which calligraphy makes accessible only through acts of intuitive knowledge. Expressed in metaphysical terms, an intuitive content can turn into a representation (Wunenburger, 2004, 103) even before humans are affected by the structure of the world that they carry within themselves. In the calligrapher’s attempt to give shape to the hidden dimensions of faith, the relationship between the image and the unrepresentable is a particular one, in which the image resonates on the self, on the emotion, on the out-of-spirit state through the relationship of the black and white. Black is thought to contain all colours, while it actually blocks out all other colours (Ishikawa, 2011, 41). Moreover, black also plays the role of shadow in a calligraphic work, so that the art of calligraphy is, in the end, a game of light and shadow. The black of the ink and the white of the rice paper generate an image similar to monochrome photography, which emphasises not only the subtleties of facial expression and physical gestures, but also the emotional charge of the scene. Writing with black ink on white paper is like writing on black paper with white light. The calligraphic work turned into a “negative space” (Addiss, 1978, 12), similar to the photographic negative: the white paper became the subject, and the black ink became the background for the manifestation of the white space.

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Fig. 4-10 Ensō – Zen Circle (negative)

For the calligrapher there is no other reality than that of the spirit or of a will that wishes to participate in the gesture of creation through the dot, line and layer of the paper, through their ability to combine with each other. Oftentimes, at the end of the calligraphic work, the brush slides in a “dry” manner, producing the so-called flying white effect, with its impression of speed and energy. The wet charge of the brush's first contact with the paper to the “dry” finish is a dramatic route, accomplished by the calligrapher’s hand in a moment. The white background is brought back to consciousness, and the shape of the character and the white surface, through the techniques of “wet brush” or “dry brush” (Addiss, 2006, 10) that can appear in a single work, become more and more significant, adding variety to the base rhythm of the work, while the calligraphic characters materialise as an object in themselves. In the Byzantine icon, in order to directly capture the transcendent (Evdochimov, 1992, 67), a sensible content is objectified on a material support, without any direct connection with the visual experience offered

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by the world of the surrounding reality. The eye as an organ and vision as a biological function of the human being are transformed into a privileged axis for the constitution of images (Wunenburger, 2004, 13), to which, for a true understanding of them, the movement of the line and the gesture of the brush would be added – which contribute to the harmonisation of the component elements of the icon’s image into a whole. In its turn, Japanese calligraphy is, at the same time, a pictorial image, but also a scriptural one, which requires, similar to the Byzantine icon, a spiritual contemplation. To know indicates, in both cases, an attitude of some adoration. Beyond a philosophy of essence, over which the law of causality reigns, beyond an existentialist type of thinking with transcendences without ontological depth, calligraphy proposes the disappearance of forms and the dissolution of contours, activating the principle of movement. As there are states that transcend thought and word, the ineffable of calligraphy tends to sink into spiritual darkness without ever exhausting the secrets of the created world that come from intuition and the subconscious. Developed in terms of the Eastern Patristic Platonism and the philosophy of transcendence (Evdochimov, 1992, 147), the icon is a tool of contemplation through which the soul is torn from the sensible world and enters the world of divine illumination (Besançon, 1996, 146). A path to divinity is created through the icon, it is the image that tries to fix a vision, through a pictorial-scriptural image, with singular particularities. From the eyes it goes to the voice and vice versa, and the testimony of the optical and rhetorical bipolarity is given by the fact that it was never referred to as “painting” an icon, but as “writing” an icon, where writing does not refer only to the inscription of the name, but also to any teaching of the icon (Besançon, 1996, 146), conforming to the teachings of the holy books. The name, once uttered, manifests itself, makes itself present directly by its naming. However, when it comes to mystery, the revelation of meaning cannot be achieved directly, but indirectly, through a mediator like the icon as symbolic knowledge, always indirect, which resorts to contemplation (Evdochimov, 1992, 148) to decipher the presence of the transcendent. The theological definition of the image goes beyond the utilitarian, becoming a sacred art. The mysterious, irrational reality of the world is revealed indirectly through the two-dimensional surface where the inspiration of the artisan approached the miracle. The spoken and heard word of the holy

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books offers itself to contemplation in the form of the icon, defined as “the liturgical vision of the mystery turned into image”31 (Evdochimov, 1992, 154). The icon is a component part of a whole, therefore, in Christians’ homes, it is placed in the dominant place of the house, guiding the gaze towards the mystery, sanctifying places and times; and it is not at all accidental that, in the past, a guest entering the house of a believer first made the Sign of the cross in front of the icon and only then greeted the host. Similarly, the scroll containing a calligraphic work is placed in the tokonoma – the alcove, which is the most important place in the traditional Japanese house or tea house (chashitsu) – so that both the host and the guest can participate in the meeting with the spirit, offered by the “painting of the mind”: Pieces of calligraphy are displayed in the alcove (tokonoma) not so much to appreciate the artist’s skill as to discern the spirit concealed in the writing... In the finest examples of Oriental calligraphy, years of experience and training are consumed in each stroke of the brush. (Ōmori, 1983, 7)

The icon has no “reality of its own” (Evdochimov, 1992, 158), since it acquires its theophanic value from participation in an epiphany. Hieratism, asceticism, the absence of volume in an icon excludes any materialisation, and the emotion provoked turns into religious feeling leading to mystical meaning (mysterium tremendum). Without copying nature, the real dimensions of reality do not appear at all reproduced in an icon, the matter itself seeming to go into silence. Broken from the immediate historical context, the icon “obeys the transcendent rules of the ecclesiastical vision”32 (Evdochimov, 1992, 160), since it does not prove, it does not demonstrate anything, but only suggests “the seen of the unseen” (Evdochimov, 1992, 161): the presence of the divine in the world. What is more, the icon purifies and transfigures the one who contemplates it, guiding them to the mystery. It elevates the spirit beyond itself, leading it into the intimacy of the divine mystery. The icon artisan organises the composition, not in depth, but in height, subordinating the flat surface, in order to remove the void – horor 31

(our transl.) In original: “viziunea liturgică a misterului făcut imagine”. (our transl.) In original: “icoana se supune regulilor transcendente ale viziunii ecleziastice”.

32

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vacui (Evdochimov, 1992, 192). The figures of the icon, whose anatomy is barely sketched by the folds of the clothes, transposed into twodimensionality, seem not to move but to slide, the juxtaposed colours and inks give rise to distances, and the chronological order is abolished. The vanishing point, chiaroscuro, and the idea of volume are facets that are refused by the icon; the perspective is often reversed, the lines do not move away from the viewers, but come towards them. The iconographic universe is oriented – in its entirety – towards the human individual (Evdochimov, 1992, 194), as the image shows what happened in time and then becomes accessible to be seen (Besançon, 1996, 133). Guided by faith, dogmas, tradition and iconographic models, the icon artisan paints for a reason, but the result belongs to another world: “The immobility of bodies, without ever being static, concentrates the whole dynamism in the gaze that reveals the spirit.”33 (Evdochimov, 1992, 195). The divine is unseen, yet reflected in the human visible. Passing the phenomenal veil, through colour and the musical consonance of lines and shapes, the icon opens to the revelatory vision. Contemplation, silent retreat and expression of the divine mystery, the icon helps to participate in that which cannot be described, where the unseen, the unheard, the unspeakable exist. In contemplation, the spirit is imbued with silence, but a silence that does not imply the absence of noise. Now and here the attempt to access the essential is permitted, life and death have come closer, and the human being’s journey through the world is assimilated to the life of the universe. Similarly, through the proposed contemplation, the calligraphic work can also open the secret gate to the absolute. Be it karma – the Buddhist law of causes and effects, the ensemble of human physical or mental acts and what they generate – or impermanence, everything is diluted, everything is erased and obliterated; all forms fade and disappear. It is an inner reality, the hidden divinities, the infinite in them, to which humans have access through the Zen meditation proposed by a calligraphic work: The moon and the paper are the same white, The pupil of the eye and the ink, both black.

33

(our transl.) In original: “Imobilitatea trupurilor, fără a fi vreodată statică, concentrează întregul dinamism în privirea ce revelează spiritul.”

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This mysterious meaning remains a circle, Beyond the possibility of understanding. (Sokuhi quoted in Addiss, 1978, 11)

The internal dynamics generated by the meeting of two types of images – graphic expression and written expression – makes a calligraphic work acquire a special power, which can create new images, be they visual or verbal, which can generate, in turn, new universes of understanding and knowledge. Calligraphy is reminiscent of the total work of art, which harmoniously combines several types of images, in which the aesthetic stirs emotions, but also opens the way to meditation, reflection on the world, beyond its objective representations. Through revelations of meaning, calligraphy offers the religious or philosophical consciousness a deep knowledge of the universe, while the spirit can manifest itself freely, both in creation and in interpretation. In the calligraphic image, there is an analysis at the surface of the image and another at its deeper level, which reaches its fullness in and through contemplation. The calligraphic image is, apparently, a visible, immediate representation that can be reduced to its surface, but the transcendent meaning that needs to be revealed facilitates the transition to its depth level. Due to the encounter between the hand that writes in a calligraphic manner and the eye that reads, calligraphic art proposes a visual reception of the act of reading, while the image is inserted into the linguistic sphere, establishing an intermediate level between word and thing, between abstract and sensible, like a unique moment of revelation, in which astonishment approaches silence (Wunenburger, 2004, 40), as only silence leaves room for revelation. Humans are not born perfect, they must have, during their lives, various spiritual births in order to get close to the state of perfection. The art of calligraphy – as a ritual that can bring the spirit closer to the original time that “no longer flows” (Eliade, 1992, 82), thus placing it in an eternal present – can offer the practitioner sacred knowledge so close to wisdom (Eliade, 1992, 184), as a result of an initiation linked to the awakening of supreme consciousness. Through the calligraphic exercise, humans will not only regenerate, but also become aware of the sacredness of this world, if the experience of calligraphy is the fixed point that creates order in the chaos of a profane world. Nevertheless, in current times, its creative and transforming power is more and more threatened by the digital world:

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Stasis is impossible in cultural development. A culture either grows and advances or recedes and decays. Handwriting has been a crucial element of the foundation that has underlain Japan’s cultural development. The enervation of handwriting bodes ill for Japan’s cultural prospect. (Ishikawa, 2011, 231)

However, it is no less true that, in the contemporary era, similar to the Byzantine icon, Japanese calligraphy seems to preserve, in an already millennial tradition, the humanity of humans, reminding them of their mysterious relationship with divinity and the surrounding world, in a religious and artistic effort through which the known spatial and temporal categories are replaced by another dimension. In the human-divinitycreation equation, humans have attained, through revelation, eternity. The story of calligraphy offered by the white rice paper, on which the brush traces the history of humanity's writing that has become a method of spiritual invocation, turns, for the modern individuals, into a possibility to rediscover the sacred dimension of their existence in the world. Moreover, even nowadays, the art of calligraphy could continue to preserve its mysterious quality of hierophany, of a possible manifestation of the sacred in an increasingly desacralised cosmos, reminding contemporary humans that, ultimately, they cannot live without an opening (Eliade, 1992, 33) towards the transcendent: La jubilation ne vient pas de la virtuosité, mais de la pratique quotidienne de cette discipline devenue une prière intérieure. La calligraphie est pour moi une manière d’atteindre la vision où les figures deviennent présences. Je travaille dans la solitude, avec toujours cette frayeur sacrée au cœur. En ce sens, on peut parler de quête spirituelle. (Cheng, 2010, 26)

Contemplative Meditation and Transcendent Vision

Fig. 4-11 ష࣭Buddha

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CHAPTER 5 THE MEMORY OF AN INSTANT: FLEETING MILESTONES ON THE PATH OF CALLIGRAPHY There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. —Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure (Hidden by the Leaves/ Hidden Leaves) 34 Understanding in a moment sees endless time. Endless time is but a moment. When you understand the endless moment You become the person who sees it. —Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki, Zen35

How did such writing come about? Is there any way to understand the written characters of the Japanese language on another level, other than mechanical repetition? These are the questions I asked myself in October 1997, as soon as I started studying Japanese at Kobe University, in the city of the same name. The research scholarship offered by Monbukagakushō (Japan's Ministry of Education and Research) changed my... destiny, opening my path to a culture whose understanding required me to be, in a certain way, born again... in a new language and a new way of speaking, in a new way of writing and reading (vertically from right to left), in a new way of thinking, and in new garments... If, in learning Japanese writing, the kana syllabaries (hiragana and katakana) seemed more accessible to me, being the graphic correspondent 34

(our transl.) In original: “Nu există nimic în afara momentului prezent. Întreaga viaţă a unui om nu este altceva decât o succesiune de asemenea momente.” 35 (our transl.) In original: “Înțelegerea dintr-o clipă vede timpul nesfârșit./ Timpul nesfârșit e cât o clipă./ Când înțelegi momentul nesfârșit/ Devii persoana care îl vede.”

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of phonetic syllables, the kanji writing system, which uses logographic characters borrowed from Chinese writing, represented for me the revelation of a boundless universe of signs, incomprehensible as meanings and interpretations. The number of kanji learned in the classes increased as I progressed in learning the language, and mechanical repetition did not help me much...

Fig. 5-1 Kobe [November 1997] (in front of a jinja ‘shintō shrine’)

I realised that there had to be another way to learn kanji, and I was looking within myself for a way to get closer – somehow from the inside – to this graphic form, word and image at the same time... This is how the desire to start the practice of calligraphy arose, from the intuition that, in the beginning, kanji must have been the reality reproduced by a line and a dot, and, afterwards, more and more stylised and abstract, by their traces... A year later, I started the calligraphy course. In the first lesson, I learned the correct position of the body, I learned how to hold the brush in my hand, how to dip the brush in ink. That's why, when sensei (‘teacher, master’), with barely contained curiosity, asked me Are you sure you’ve never done Japanese calligraphy?!, I looked somewhat surprised at my first calligraphic work. I had written the kanji ᾏ (umi) which means ‘sea, ocean’.

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I love the sea, I said to myself... And I imagined that I was writing in the sand... This is how it all began: with the sea, with a badger-hair brush, with the rice paper and with the traces of black ink...

Fig. 5-2 ᾏ࣭Sea, Ocean [1998]

On the occasion of the Closing ceremony of the academic year in March 1999, the dean-office of the faculty asked me to say the Thank You Speech on behalf of the foreign students from the Cross-Cultural Studies Faculty of Kobe University, where I also studied. I ended my speech by expressing my gratitude for the fortunate encounter with Japanese calligraphy, which I had already been practicing for several months, and I showed my first calligraphic work, Sea ( ᾏ ), written during the first class. I understood the strong impression I had on those present only a few days after the event, when, contrary to custom, the president of Kobe University, Acad. Yasutomi Nishizuka (1932-2004) – nominated for the Nobel Prize for medicine that year – invited me into his office through the secretary’s office. I had been in Japan for more than a year, and I already knew how severe and strict the Japanese codes of conduct could be, so I realised that through this invitation the rules of Japanese formalism had been set aside. Excited by the honour of the invitation, I had no idea what the deep significance of that meeting would be... If learning the Japanese language and practicing calligraphy made me be reborn... in a new culture, the meeting with Acad. Yasutomi Nishizuka

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gave me my true baptism in the art of calligraphy: he offered me a jade seal (tenkoku), in which he had inscribed my calligrapher name Roteika࣭㊰㈆ 㤶36. I needed such a seal37 to sign my calligraphic works in the future. (The engraving of seals in semi-precious stones is a branch of the art of calligraphy and was the passion of Mr. President Yasutomi Nishizuka; the art of seals is made with special knives, the characters are inscribed in a mirror image and requires extraordinary skill, because, like calligraphy, whose lines cannot be corrected, the art of engraving does not allow errors either.)

Fig. 5-3 ㏦ู఍࣭Closing ceremony of the academic year, Kobe University [March 1999] (together with Acad. Prof. Univ. Dr. Yasutomi Nishizuka, the President of Kobe University)

36

My Japanese name is composed of the logograms: RO ㊰ ‘road’ + TEI ㈆ ‘purity’ + KA 㤶 ‘perfume’, which could be translated as ‘the road on which a scent of purity is felt’; the name, chosen by sensei during the first calligraphy class, became Roteika (from Rodica) because there is no syllable “di” in the Japanese language. The calligrapher’s signature appears in a calligraphic work in the form of a seal (optically materialised through a red spot). 37 A few years later, although I had returned to my country, Acad. Yasutomi Nishizuka sent me (a few months before leaving this world) four more seals with my Japanese name, engraved in different calligraphic lines. Depending on the style in which I write a calligraphic work, I still use one of these seals...

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My initiation into the path of calligraphy continued... An initiation involving both knowledge and practice, but also the transition, as I progressed in learning, from the short badger hair brush used in the study of shūji calligraphy to the mastery of the large brush – made of horsehair – used in shodō (brushes visible in the image below)...

Fig. 5-4 Japonia în caleidoscop [Japan in Kaleidoscope], event from the International Symposium: ᪥ᮏㄒฟ᮶ࡲࡍ. 20 de ani de studii japoneze la Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai [᪥ᮏㄒฟ᮶ࡲࡍ. 20 years of Japanese studies at Babes-Bolyai University], Ethnographical Museum of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca [2018]

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But, because words cannot describe everything, as a Zen koan points out, I will continue to unfold the scroll of my memories through images, several time-markers representing exhibitions and events, testimonies of my dedication to the path of Japanese calligraphy...

Fig. 5-5 ࣟࢹ࢕࢝ࡉࢇ₎Ꮠᇶᮏ࡟⇕୰࡛ࡍ (Rodica-san is passionate about the foundations of kanji characters, noted Myōkai Junseki sensei on the back of the picture) [2003]38

I had Myōkai sensei as my master calligrapher during a research fellowship offered by The Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute Kansai, from Osaka, Japan. 38

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September 2002 International Forum. Asian Film and Multi-Cultural Art Exhibition, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe, Japan (collective exhibition, which represents my debut with Japanese calligraphic works exhibited in museums)

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Fig. 5-6 Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe (Japan) [2002]

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January 2004 Imagini-cuvinte în mişcare. Caligrafia japoneză [Moving Word-Images. Japanese Calligraphy], National Museum of Art, Cluj-Napoca (personal exhibition)

Fig. 5-7

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March 2006 Caligrafia japoneză. Metamorfozele liniei [Japanese Calligraphy. Line Metamorphoses], National Museum of Art, Cluj-Napoca (personal exhibition in memoriam of Acad. Yasutomi Nishizuka)

Fig. 5-8

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May 2006 Caligrafia japoneză. Metamorfozele liniei [Japanese Calligraphy. Line Metamorphoses], Museum of Romanian Literature, Bucharest (on the occasion of a double event: the book launch of Cinci nori colorați pe cerul de răsărit [Five Colourful Clouds on the Sunrise Sky], by Florina Ilis)

Fig. 5-9

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February 2007 㢼≀ㄒ࣭Tales of the Wind, personal exhibition at the headquarters of The Japan Foundation, Tokyo, Japan

Fig. 5-10 (from left to right) Mr. Yoshio Okubo (Vice president of the Japan Foundation), Kazuo Ogoura (President of the Japan Foundation), Prof. Univ. Dr. Emeritus Yoshihiko Ikegami (from Tokyo University), Kazuaki Kubo (Special assistant to the president)

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April 2008 Închipuirile vântului [Tales of the Wind], at the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum (personal exhibition)

Fig 5-11

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August 2010 The Japan Foundation, Japanese Language Institute Urawa, Tokyo, Japan (I started using, in the meantime, the horsehair brush...)

Fig. 5-12 ᫬✵࣭Space and Time The Japan Foundation, Japanese Language Institute Urawa, Tokyo

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July 2012 Meditaţiile pensulei [Brush Meditations], Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest (personal exhibition, dedicated to the victims of the natural and nuclear disaster from Fukushima in 2011)

Fig. 5-13 H.E.Ambassador Natsuo Amemiya (Embassy of Japan in Romania), Nobumitsu Takamatsu (Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of Japan in Romania), Virgil Nitulescu (the director of the museum)

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October 2013 ⚄ᡞ኱Ꮫ࡜⚾―␗ᩥ໬㛫஺ὶ࡟࠾ࡅࡿ⮬ᕫⓎぢ―࣭Me and Kobe University: the Discovery of the Self in a Foreign Culture, speech at the International Symposium ࣭Dai 10 kai Kobe daigaku ryūgakusei hōmu kamingu dei, Kobe University, Japan

Fig. 5-14 Kobe University [2013]

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January 2015 ▐ 㛫 グ ᠈ ࣭ Memoria Clipei [The Memory of an Instant], personal exhibition at the headquarters of The Embassy of Romania in Tokyo (Japan)

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Fig. 5-15 (from left to right) Prof. Reiko Ota (Showa Women’s University, Tokyo), H.E. Mr. Ambassador Radu Serban, Calligraphy master Nishida Senshū39

39

For details about Nishida Senshū sensei (1936-2015) see Bunpei Tamiya (ed.), ࠗ᭩―ᡓᚋභ༑ᖺࡢ㌶㊧࠘ Sho. Developments in the Art of Japanese Calligraphy Over the Last Six Decades 1945-2005 (Tokyo, Bijutsu-Nenkansha, 2005, pp. 850,

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November 2015 Luna în apă [The Moon on the Water], Ethnographical Museum of Transylvania in Cluj-Napoca (personal exhibition)

Fig. 5-16 (from left to right) Tudor Salagean (the director of the museum), Irina Petras (literary critic, the president of USR-Cluj branch), Dan Breaz (art critic), Nobumitsu Takamatsu (Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of Japan in Romania)

205) or ࠗቚ࣭᭩ࡀᴦࡋࡃ࡞ࡿ㞧ㄅ࠘ Sumi. The general guide to Japanese “Sho” (no. 206, September-October 2010, Tokyo, Geijutsu shinbunsha, pp. 120-121).

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October 2018 Amintirile pensulei [The Memories of the Brush], Casino, Centre of urban culture in the Central Park “Simion Barnutiu”, Cluj-Napoca (personal exhibition on the occasion of the event 100 Japanese Cherry Blossom Trees for the City of Cluj-Napoca from the City of Matsuyama, Japan, in the Year of the Centenary of the Great Union)

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Fig. 5-17 ᱜⰼ࣭Cherry blossom

I never thought I would ever learn Japanese calligraphy... As there are states of mind that cannot be grasped by thought and word, the ineffable of the art of calligraphy tends to dissipate in one-moment flashes. And yet, within the black ink traces, something from the call of the mysteries of the unseen world remains. Apparently, automatic writing and, inevitably, subject to the whims of inspiration, since it does not allow retouches and corrections, the art of calligraphy gives visible form to impermanence and to the moment. The trace left by the brush on the white rice paper is the rhythmic and rapid movement of the calligraphic logograms’ perception. Their experience is not interpreted, the words are not analysed, but the movement through which the fast-paced moment is revealed to the paper is visualised, so that the mystery of the present moment passes immediately into the eternity of memory...

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Fig. 5-18 ▐㛫グ᠈࣭The Memory of an Instant40

40

Platinum Prize at the Connect the World International Calligraphy Exhibition. International Japanese Calligraphy Exhibition. Global Shodo @ Yasuda, Hiroshima, Japan, 2017. [Calligraphic Character Design section] My calligraphic work tries to capture – through a black, uninterrupted line which, unexpectedly, the (mysteriously?!) split tip of the brush doubled as an echo that reverberates in time – the emotion of the transitory instant…

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