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

INTRODUCTION

success of the Exhibition held in London in 1935-6, showed that a widespread desire exists to investigate intelligently the significance of Chinese art. One small room in the Exhibition was given over entirely to calligraphy, and I always saw numbers of people looking at the pieces with keen interest. Presumably they could not interpret them, but I imagine they must have been impressed by their decorative qualities—strokes, splashes and blobs woven together to form the happiest patterns.

One of my incentives in writing this book is to help such people to an enjoyment of our calligraphy without putting them to the labour of learning the language. If the student can understand the literal meaning of the words, so much the better : for an aesthetic appreciation it is not essential. You will understand my meaning if you think of a landscape painting in which the familiar forms of the scenery of your native land touch a chord of memory. You have a different and more pleasurable sensation from such a picture than from a painting of an unfamiliar scene. But I do feel that, without this sense of recognition, it is possible, provided one has a sense of line-movement and a knowledge of the frame structure of the matter, to appreciate the beauty of lines.

Before I go on to a summary discussion of our language in general, let me mention two things which touch my subject only indirectly, but which should, I think, prove illuminating. The first is a comparison of Chinese with Western calligraphy. I have paid many visits to the Department of Manuscripts and the Grenville Library at the British Museum and examined the old manuscripts from Bacchylides to the Articles of Magna Carta. Each piece has its own elegant arrangement of letters and words, but the effect of the whole seems to me to lack

[3]