Chinese calligraphy : an introduction to its aesthetic and technique : with 6 plates and 155 text illustratons

CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY

variety. The cause of this is, I suppose, the restricted nature of the alphabetical forms. All twenty-six letters are composed of circles, curves, and straight and inclined lines, and this severely limits the forms of the various words. Looking at a manuscript as a whole I see only repeated circles, curves and perpendicular and horizontal lines, all with similar movements in relation to each other (though I must admit that the Magna Carta MS. shows some development of the inclined lines). Some of the initial letters at the opening of paragraphs are decorated with flowers or ornamental lines, but these embellishments are not part of the lettering, and are, moreover, painted, not written. Chinese characters, on the other hand, display a handsome variety in the shapes of the strokes, and each stroke may contain an individual variation of form, passing from the slender to the bold. English words, again, are limited mechanically as to length by the number of letters, and all must be written regularly from left to right; whereas every Chinese character is constructed in an imaginary square, which it can fill in a variety of beautiful ways. This is a matter which I shall discuss and expand in a later chapter.

My second point is the close connexion of Chinese calligraphy with the daily life of Chinese people. I walk the London streets without any sensation of surprise at the shop-signs or advertisements in the windows, for they are almost all stylistically identical. ‘They are neat, regular and symmetrical, but they are collections of lifeless letters—a criticism we have always applied to the printed forms of our own characters. Calligraphy is everywhere evident in China. The streets are hung with hand-written shop-signs and banners, done with the brush or painted on boards in large characters. Every establishment

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