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

ABSTRACT BEAUTY

and at the same time to form an aesthetically pleasing composition. Compare, for example, the hieroglyph for ‘ worship ° in ancient Egyptian script, §, with the ancient Chinese char-

acter for the same word, ¥. The Egyptian is a “ straight’

picture of a kneeling person. The Chinese, though it captures the attitude and essential shape of a kneeling person, is not an exact imitation of it. We claim that it is ‘above the real’. But obviously many more primitive and hesitating forms of the character, of which we have no record, must have preceded the one shown, which is the product of a long evolution. Thus the deliberate neglect of realistic representation is in no way strange to the Chinese. The ‘line’ of the ancient character for ‘ worship ’ is, to us, as powerful and beautiful as any linear form can be.

The Surrealists—to return to our rather illuminating comparison—have expressed the desire ‘to deepen the foundations of the real, to bring about an ever clearer and at the same time ever more passionate consciousness of the world perceived by the sense’. I think it is just this which the Chinese, in their ancient script, accomplished. They perceived reality with clear eyes, and, in simplified and astonishingly significant forms, rendered the essentials visible and memorable.

The Surrealists are also said to ‘ have attempted to present interior reality and exterior reality as two elements in process of unification’.t This, too, I think, is sometimes achieved in the composition of Chinese characters, especially those in the category called Logical Combinations : complex characters compounded of two or more simpler characters, each of which

1° What 1s Surrealism?’ by André Breton. [ 109 ]