#66: The Calligraphy Pen
What happens to a word when it is drawn in ink?
As I write this my fingers, the paper, the pen, probably soon the coffee cup, are covered in ink and I am tempted to return to the quick clean tap of keys, but the process is becoming easier, the scratch of the nib more satisfying, and the determination of my half-stuck out tongue stronger. Perhaps one day I will write a novel in ink. Perhaps not.
I write a lot about writing (see below), but today my subject is a calligraphy pen, an object which transforms writing from a method of conferring information to a visual aesthetic expression, from medium to image.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the word ‘calligraphy’ may derive from the Greek words for ‘beauty’ (kallos) and ‘to write’ (graphein). It is indeed ‘beautiful writing’ and creates an interesting relationship between the content and its presentation. Calligraphy shifts the emphasis away from what is being written towards how it is being written, with Encyclopaedia Britannica going so far as to suggest:
Calligraphic work, as art, need not be legible in the usual sense of the word.
For someone who so values expression through words, this is a jarring concept to grasp. Letters merely become shapes, lines which can be expanded, curled, and curved into a piece of art. They lose a little of their meaning. The words are part of something bigger than a simple sentence. No wonder so many examples of calligraphy found on the internet (most likely on Instagram) are short, usually motivating phrases, abounding in clichés and swimming in sentiment.
Picking up a calligraphy pen myself, I understand how the act of drawing words alters the emphasis. I constructed each letter individually, each stroke was thought-out. There was more effort put into a single line than any of the sentences I have typed here. This is why a single word, perhaps something like ‘Breathe’, acquires a new significance, swirling across a page in ink. The calligrapher has breathed with that word, inhabited all of its letters one by one. The word slows down and suddenly we can appreciate it as an entity in itself, something more than the semantic building block of a clause.
Soon the word ‘calligraphy’ sat, a little wonkily perhaps, across my page, representing visually something the mere word alone could not.
But when I changed the nib and attempted to write coherent sentences, the value of a biro revealed itself in the shiny splodges of ink littering my page. My brain moved too fast for my hand. It wanted to make images in words not ink. There was a clash of interests and the pen became frustrated, staining my fingers, begging me to slow down, asking me to look at the page and not into my head.
Calligraphy transforms words into objects of beauty, paradoxically increasing the importance of each individual word, while shrinking the importance of words in general. Perhaps this is why we now most commonly find calligraphy in titles, on shop fronts, and on packaging, places where a few words — a brand name or a slogan — need elevating above any particular meaning they might hold.
Calligraphy slows down and alters perceptions. It makes us look at overused words in new ways. But I challenge anyone to write a novel so stained with ink.
