One of the forms of art that strikes me the most is calligraphy, the art of writing, which isn't, sadly, as prominent or as respected as it used to be, especially in English. Still, it's an art form that you can find in some pretty pedestrian places, in newspapers, magazines, coffee house art collections, and art exhibits (although today it can readily be done on a computer, taking away the humanity of simple handstrokes). I've always felt for the elegant curves of Roman letters, depending on context and style, of the beauty of cursive, which never fails to remind me of my great-grandfather Meulendyke, who inscribed a book from 1913 that I still have today with the handsome curliques of his last name. I've often been saddened by the loss of cursive among this generation, and much of calligraphy too, but I still handwrite whenever I can, and not just in English.
Though I can really appreciate calligraphy in Roman script, I've found I have a great appreciation also for calligraphy in Arabic script, and I'm not alone. Traditional Islamic culture believed that the creation of images in art was competition with Allah, a sign of hubris and humanism that defied the main tenet of Islam's humility before Allah. Therefore, since images were haraam (not permitted), the writing of words, particularly passages from the Qur'an, were seen to be the highest from of art, and calligraphy grew to be a main decorative aspect in Islamic culture, especially in architecture and just plain on-the-page writing. The Persians, conquered by Islam early on, developed the Nastaliq style of writing the Arabic script, which is used generally to write Urdu and Farsi (though computers today present most languages written in Arabic script through the rather plain Naskh style, which the Arabs use almost unfailingly anyway). We have so much to give credit to the Persians and their obsession with symmetry and mathematics; would it hurt to add this beautiful rendering of Arabic lettering to the list?
I hope that to my readers who can't read Nastaliq or Arabic in general that this would appear beautiful to them. But, turning philosophical here, I believe that it's hard to truly appreciate the beauty of calligraphy until you can understand what is written down. So, I hope that you can appreciate a little of the Nastaliq samples that I've put down here. And if you want to learn to read or write Arabic (or Farsi, Urdu, etc.), feel free to ask me for some sources on how to read and write. There's a realm of beauty here in the undulating curves of Arabic calligraphy.
This first sample is a line of Urdu poetry written down in a classical Nastaliq style. It reads "a life without love is like a flower without aroma." ("Zindagi beghair muhabbat aisi hai jaise beghair khushbu ke phul.")
This sample is a couplet of Urdu poetry penned by the 19th Century poet Ghalib.
This sample is another couplet of Ghalib, but this time written with a calligraphised English translation underneath.
This sample is actually not Nastaliq, but just the Arabic words "houb" ( love) and "salaam" (peace) written so make a literal word-picture in the shape of a dove:
This sample is just another word-picture, but with the Nastaliq lines replacing a man's hairdo:
Here is a final sample of the Islamic creed written in decorative calligraphy:
This is beautiful calligraphy, and you're quite right about handwriting in English. I assign a lot of in-class writing, but the students who've just emerged from high school tend to struggle with longhand. Their penmanship tends to be very childish and almost illegible. Some in-class writing assignments are hard to adapt to computers, and a lot of classrooms still don't have computers--and perhaps aren't likely to acquire them, because where will the money come from? Technology threatens to expunge handwriting from our lives. With the demise of handwriting, graphology will be swept into the dust bin of history. It'll be regarded as a superannuated pseudoscience, like phrenology.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday, Chris!
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the old problem of technology entering our lives. I remember a few years ago reading an adage by an author whose name I don't recall: "Technology giveth, and technology taketh away." If the death of calligraphy/handwriting can be measured by how many computers there are on campus, I'm afraid the SVSU campus is undergoing the plague; every year there are more and more of them in the computer labs, and though that's not bad in itself, what's bad is, like you're saying, young people don't practice handwriting, leading to loss in their lives in creativity, ways of thinking, etc. I think what we need to do is be very careful about how we incorporate technology into our lives. We need to question how technology effects us, and be wise about how we use it, why we use it, and when we use it.
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