‘Immanent’ Visibility and ‘Transcendental’ Vision in Japanese Calligraphy

Abstract

The premise of the approach in the present paper is the interpretation of Japanese calligraphy as an artistic act and the reception of the calligraphic work of art as the object of the aesthetic relation. By combining the theoretical analysis of the main artistic functions of calligraphy –as both a representative and an expressive art – with the practice of calligraphic art, the present endeavour aims to identify the factual and artistic poetics of this visual (pictorial) and verbal art. As such, our study focuses on the particularities of the calligraphic work of art, given by its means of existence: its object of immanence is concurrently a physical and an ideal object (through its linguistic scriptural contents). In our analysis, the Japanese calligraphic art becomes the object of a reading that exploits the Western and Eastern aesthetic poetic theories, in an attempt to explore this art’s means of existence, functioning, and reception, by revealing its calligraphicity, or its artistic-aesthetic quality. As a reflection on the relation between the image and the word, and on the coherence of the vision triggered by it, based on the characteristics of the visible, our study is an original approach that analyses and interprets the vocabulary and the formal style of a unique artistic field that begins with a linguistic expression, as a means of representation, and culminates with an abstract form of expression, as a means of presentation.

Full text

311Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
‘Immanent’ Visibility and ‘Transcendental’ Vision in Japanese Calligraphy
Rodica Frentiu1; Florina Ilis2
Recibido: 1 de noviembre de 2020 / Aceptado: 22 de enero de 2021 / Publicado: 15 de febrero de 2021.
Abstract. The premise of the approach in the present paper is the interpretation of Japanese calligraphy as an artistic act and the
reception of the calligraphic work of art as the object of the aesthetic relation. By combining the theoretical analysis of the main artistic
functions of calligraphy –as both a representative and an expressive art – with the practice of calligraphic art, the present endeavour
aims to identify the factual and artistic poetics of this visual (pictorial) and verbal art. As such, our study focuses on the particularities
of the calligraphic work of art, given by its means of existence: its object of immanence is concurrently a physical and an ideal object
(through its linguistic scriptural contents). In our analysis, the Japanese calligraphic art becomes the object of a reading that exploits
the Western and Eastern aesthetic poetic theories, in an attempt to explore this art’s means of existence, functioning, and reception,
by revealing its calligraphicity, or its artistic-aesthetic quality. As a reection on the relation between the image and the word, and on
the coherence of the vision triggered by it, based on the characteristics of the visible, our study is an original approach that analyses
and interprets the vocabulary and the formal style of a unique artistic eld that begins with a linguistic expression, as a means of
representation, and culminates with an abstract form of expression, as a means of presentation.
Keywords: Japanese Calligraphy, Autographic and Allographic Art, Calligraphicity, Immanence, Transcendence.
[es] Lo visible inmanente y la visión trascendente en la caligrafía japonesa
Resumen. La premisa de investigación en el trabajo Lo visible inmanente y la visión trascendente en la caligrafía japonesa es la
interpretación de la caligrafía japonesa como acto artístico y la recepción de la obra caligráca como objeto de relación estética.
Combinando un análisis teórico de las principales funciones artísticas de la caligrafía en su calidad de arte representativo y expresivo
con la práctica del arte de la caligrafía, el presente enfoque tiene como objetivo identicar la poética fáctica y artística de este arte
visual y verbal. Por consiguiente, nuestro estudio pone énfasis en la particularidad de la obra caligráca manifestada a través de sus
modos de existencia: su objeto de inmanencia es tanto un objeto físico como un ideal (por su contenido lingüístico-escritural). En
nuestro análisis, el arte caligráco japonés se convierte en objeto de una lectura que valora las teorías estético-poéticas occidentales y
orientales, en un intento de explorar las formas de existencia, funcionamiento y recepción de este arte, revelando su caligracidad o
calidad artístico-estética. Reexión sobre la relación entre imagen y palabra y sobre la coherencia de la visión que ésta desencadena en
torno a las propiedades de lo visible, nuestro trabajo es una investigación inédita sobre el análisis y la interpretación del vocabulario y
del estilo formal de un entorno artístico único, que parte de una expresión lingüística como modo de representación y culmina en una
forma abstracta de expresión como modo de presentación.
Palabras clave: caligrafía japonesa, arte autógrafo y alógrafo, caligracidad, inmanencia, trascendencia.
Summary. 1. Introduction. 2. Japanese calligraphy as an artistic act. 3. Conclusions. 4. Written sources and bibliographical references.
How to cite: Frentiu, Rodica; Ilis, F.. “Immanent Visibility and Transcendental Vision in Japanese Calligraphy”. Eikón Imago 10
(2021): 311-322.
1 Babes-Bolyai University
E-mail: rfrentiu@hotmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4336-3859
2 Babes-Bolyai University
E-mail: ilisorina@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4633-4279
1. Introduction
Having entered the third millennium, humanity is go-
ing through an era in which experiencing great speeds
(with respect to transportation, information, etc.) has
become vital to everyday life. The century of veloci-
ty, however, by imposing speed as a measurable value,
whose records mark not only the history of the evolution
MISCELÁNEA
Eikón Imago
ISSN-e: 2254-8718
https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/eiko.74154

312 Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
perceived writing from a bivalent stance: on the one
hand, with joy for the fact that the cure for oblivion was
discovered, as well as that for ignorance and, on the oth-
er hand, with certain reservations, considering it a bad
omen for humankind, through the forgetfulness that it
would instil into the souls of those who would learn it,
thus weakening their ability to remember. In the centu-
ries that followed, the attitude continued to be dual in
the European space. By identifying, in the alphabetical
combinatorial capacities, a possibility for immediate
communication, established between all existing or pos-
sible things, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), for instance,
in Saggiatore (1623), expressed his superlative appreci-
ation for the alphabet, considering it the greatest human
invention8, namely an unequalled means of making dif-
ferent combinations out of only twenty measly charac-
ters on a sheet of paper that can communicate to anyone,
no matter how far in time and space, one’s most hidden
thoughts. However, to the antipode, in an irreconcila-
ble parallelism, the trend generated by the idea of the
arbitrariness of the linguistic sign noted the innite gap
between the linguistic experience and the sensory ex-
perience, the word’s impossibility to contain the visual
image.
The gift of writing was received by the Eastern cul-
ture in a completely different way. In its desire to take
part in the inner nature of things, in the belief that the
exterior characteristics of objects and phenomena are
merely obstacles that hinder the immediate discernment
of the truth, it considered writing and, more precisely,
calligraphy, to be an active philosophy, a sacred prac-
tice, “an integral art” (un art complet)9 through which
humans can become completely fullled. As opposed
to the alphabet, which developed a linear form of rep-
resentation, the writing system proposed by the Chinese
logographic characters, since they are not convention-
alised signs, represents a unique balance in the history
of writing10: the Chinese characters can easily trans-
form into “a means of transmission and registration of
thought”11, at the same time remaining graphic signs
with a very high imagistic potential. The history of the
Chinese writing begins in 1400 BC, in East Asia (during
the Shang Dynasty, 1600-1046 BC), in the form of orac-
ular inscriptions on turtle shells or on animal bones12,
which, according to the legend13, were created by a
mysterious four-eyed person named Cang Jie (Thang-
Hsieh) and, which, according to the same legend, were
inspired by the traces left by the birds in the sand. In this
geographic space, the strong link between writing and
8 Galileo Galilei, Saggiatore (1623), quoted in: Calvino, Six Mem-
os…, 36.
9 François Cheng, Vide et plein. Le langage pictural chinois (Paris:
Éditions du Seuil, 1991), 76.
10 Shutaro Mukai, “Characters that Represent, Reect, and Translate
Culture – in the Context of the Revolution in Modern Art”, 57-84,
in The Empire of Signs: Semiotic Essays on Japanese Culture, ed.
Yoshihiko Ikegami (Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1991), 72.
11 Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (London-Boston: Faber and Faber,
1979), 19.
12 Kyunoh Ishikawa, Taction. The drama of the stylus in Oriental Cal-
ligraphy, trans. Waku Miller (Tokyo: International House of Japan,
2011), 22.
13 H. E. Davey, Brush Meditation. A Japanese Way to Mind & Body
(Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1999), 15.
of the machine, but also that of the human3, has inevi-
tably brought forth the problematics characteristic to a
horizon of existence dened by misleading technology:
language seems to have lost its force of utterance, of-
ten transformed into an automatism that seeks to atten
the expression, and the image seems to have forgotten
how to stand out as a force, as an abundance of possible
meanings. In the “civilisation of the image”, in a con-
text in which the contemporary individual is bombard-
ed with so many images that one nds oneself unable
to distinguish between the direct experience and what
one sees on the television or on the computer screen,
the future of the individual imagination becomes truly
problematic, by legitimising the fear pertaining to the
way in which the power to evoke images in absentia,
in the human mind, will continue to develop. In a so-
ciety ooded by prefabricated images, in the cycle of
conferences planned for the Charles Eliot Norton Poetry
Lectures at Harvard University, during the 1985/1986
academic year4, Italo Calvino (1923-1985), justly moves
visibility5, together with lightness, quickness, exactitude,
multiplicity, to the list of values that need to be salvaged
for the third millennium. As he openly states, he does so
in order to provide a warning regarding the danger of
losing a fundamental human faculty that resides in the
strength to focus vision with one’s eyes closed, to un-
shackle colours and shapes from the black alphabetical
characters (emphasis ours) on a blank page, to think in
images (emphasis ours).
As a cultural object, the alphabet has always been
(and forever will be?) the support of a reading that acti-
vates the visible (through sight) and the vision (through
interpretation), imposing a certain reception that is trib-
utary to the combination of experiences and informa-
tion, to different readings and to the imaginative pow-
er of each receptive viewer. Concurrently embodying
knowledge and action, the use of alphabetical characters
or of logographic characters becomes a permanent tes-
timony to the remembrance of a seminal moment in the
history of humanity, when writing served certain magi-
cal practices. Writing, one of the most important forms
of human communication that, through convention, re-
lates a set of visible marks to certain levels of language,
contains, in its history, two great directions: the Sumeri-
an and the Chinese writing. The Sumerian writing, also
known as the Cuneiform script, a symbolic writing used
in the eighth millennium BCE, gradually transformed,
from a pictorial form, into an increasingly conventional
one, and it reached the pinnacle in the invention of the
Greek alphabet, which is considered the great accom-
plishment of the logical and scientic Western culture6.
At the dawn of its civilisation, as Plato (427-347 BC)
mentioned in the Dialogue Phaidros7, Western culture
3 Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The Charles El-
iot Norton Lectures 1985-86 (Harvard: Harvard University Press,
1988), 37.
4 Italo Calvino died suddenly in September 1985, before holding the
public conferences, which were published posthumously.
5 Calvino, Six Memos…, 74.
6 The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 29 (Chicago: Encyclopae-
dia Britannica Inc., 1993), 1025-1075.
7 Plato, Phaidros, trans., preliminary clarications and notes Gabriel
Liiceanu (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1993), 143.

313Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
and used exclusively phonetically. Moreover, the kanji
further represented the basis on which, in the Heian pe-
riod (794-1185), the most simplied characters from the
kana syllabaries were created22, obtained from the graph-
ic deformation of the current Chinese characters.
If, in the West, writing became synonymous with
memory, with the ght against oblivion, in the East
Asian culture, writing, in its calligraphic form, was
transformed into an attempt to know the world and thus,
at the same time, it became an antidote for the ruthless
passing of time, freezing the moment. Moreover, in the
East-Asian cultural space, calligraphic writing occu-
pied the place held by music in the Western culture of
the alphabet23; calligraphy works, seen as open musical
phrases, were interpreted as “music for the eyes”. A Chi-
nese character, through its graphic quality, activates a
rhythmic form24 that bears its own signicance, becom-
ing a visual sign that, while representing a concept, also
allows for the direct recognition of a symbolic thought25.
This is a graphic quality that the art of calligraphy gen-
erously exploits, revitalising the functions of the sign,
liberated from its object.
The calligraphy of East Asia is considered one of the
ne arts26, the twin sister of painting, through the mi-
raculous origins of both in the olden times: the painter
and the calligrapher use the same materials (rice paper,
a round brush made out of animal hair and black coal
dissolved in water in the form of ink), the brush tech-
nique has, in both cases, many common aspects and, last
but not least, they are both judged based on the same
criteria of the strong or subtle emphasis in the rhythm of
the brushstrokes27. The black brushstroke and the white
space, the two formal elements of the calligraphic art
that has, for centuries, held the imagination of East Asia
captive28, create a simple, yet profound and subtle art,
tributary to tradition without obstructing originality.
As a means of expression, like other visual arts,
calligraphy could be part of the category of the type of
communication that uses instruments as extensions of
the body, giving birth to a particular type of expression:
the brush is the instrument that, directly and indirectly,
establishes the connection between the calligraphers and
their environment, as the paper offers them the “space”
necessary for the act of creation to occur. Due to the
fact that it presents spiritual and philosophical aspects
that are quite difcult to be truly understood, East Asian
calligraphy has always been seen by the West as an “es-
oteric” subject rather than a graphic art, but the birth of
avant-garde calligraphy (zan’ei shodō) in post-World
War II, a genre in itself, comes close to some aspects of
twentieth century Western pictorial art 29.
22 Christopher Seely, A History of Writing in Japan (Honolulu: Univer-
sity of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 59-80.
23 Ishikawa, Taction, 3.
24 Mukai, “Characters that Represent…”, 77.
25 Mukai, 65.
26 Shigeto Tsuru and Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan. An Illustrated Ency-
clopedia (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1995), 155.
27 Michael Sullivan, The Book of Art. Chinese and Japanese Art, Vol.9
(Bergamo: Groliev, 1994), 266.
28 Christine Flint Sato, Japanese Calligraphy. The Art of Line & Space
(Osaka: Kaifusha, 1998), 1.
29 Tsuru and Reischauer, Japan, 157.
religion seems incontestable; it is believed that writing
appeared when human beings felt the need to communi-
cate with the divine: “They served largely as means of
expressing queries to a deity on high.”14
If, in Egypt, abbreviated paintings were used to rep-
resent sounds, the Egyptian hieroglyphs having later
been transformed into the alphabet through an “acoustic
(aural) transliteration” 15, in East Asia, the Chinese char-
acters still mean stylized paintings used as paintings16,
or, in other words, stylized paintings of things or the
concepts they represent, while remaining paintings of
sounds17. This is an eloquent case in the history of hu-
manity that hinders the understanding of a language in
the absence of writing, the particular inuence between
the two thus changing the usual referent-signier-signi-
ed relation18. In the absence of a complete hierarchy,
the meaning, the sound and the object, behaving as func-
tional actors in a “spatial theatre”, overlap and, in such a
language, can be juxtaposed into a single feature trans-
formed into logographic characters.
The unity between painting (image) and writing is
a feature that is common to all civilisations, from the
dawn of their existence, a fact that the East developed,
rened, and conserved; even today, the Chinese charac-
ters constitute not only a support, but also an opportu-
nity for spiritual meditation. The Chinese writing was
then borrowed by other East-Asian cultures; in fact, for
the aforementioned civilisations, it is a type of “graphic
thought”19. Being less close to the represented objects,
as is the case of the Egyptian writing, since it is a rather
simplied image whose signicance is shown through
suggestion or imagination, the logographic writing, al-
though seemingly derived from painting20, is more and
more widely believed to have downright founded it.
2. Japanese calligraphy as an artistic act
The birth of Japanese calligraphy is connected to the
sixth century, when this art, which had appeared from the
deconstruction and reconstruction of the Chinese char-
acters, gained its own style, strongly stylized, its most
beautiful accomplishment being the creation of the kana
syllabaries. By the seventh century, in the Japanese lan-
guage, the Manyogana21 syllabary had been compiled, its
name given after the most famous use connected to the
collection of Manyōshū poems, from the eighth century;
the syllabary represents an inventory of kanji (the Japa-
nese denomination of the Chinese characters), selected
14 Davey, Brush Meditation..., 24.
15 Davey, 249.
16 Pound, ABC of Reading, 19.
17 Recent research in the eld shows that the Chinese characters are
merely associated with a phonetic basis and do not express ideas
through their visual form. See Yuehping Yen, Calligraphy and
Power in Contemporary Chinese Society (London-New York: Rout-
ledge, 2005).
18 Julia Kristeva, Le language, cet inconu. Une initiation à la linguis-
tique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1981), 79.
19 Roland Barthes, L’empire des signes (Genève: Editions d’Art Albert
Skira, 1970), 117.
20 In the beginning, the East Asian painting was monochromatic, using
the same black ink as the art of calligraphy.
21 Ishikawa, Taction, 158.

314 Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
ner in the study of calligraphy is required to follow the
rules (shūji), while the initiate is encouraged to surpass
them (shodō). In other words, the former must focus on
the representative phase (shūji) of this art, while to the
latter, the land of the expressive (shodō) is revealed. Ex-
pressivity, among other things, also implies nding the
right face for the logographic sign and giving it the cor-
rect shape through a brushstroke that can either breathe
life into the character, or poison and kill it36. The relation
between the two terms, shūji and shodō, is nothing more
than the representation of a forked signicance: while
shūji would call upon learning, shodō would designate
the act of creation in itself37. Each graphic sign bears
the load of an entire literary and legendary patrimony,
which the calligraphers can oppose, but could never ig-
nore, because this heritage remains present both in their
spirit, and in that of the viewer, as an indirect imagi-
nary38, offered by the culture, be it mass culture or any
other form of tradition.
Although the calligraphed linguistic scriptural ele-
ment initially corresponds to a real element, it is consid-
ered39 that, before the graphic writing itself, there was,
in the East Asian cultural space, a marking system based
on strings that were carved and encrusted with stones;
this type of writing was, undoubtedly, in the beginning,
part of the magic rituals in which the signs were seen
as talismans that proved humans’ reign over the uni-
verse. Somehow becoming a practice that activates the
sacred, writing, particularly writing with a brush, re-
ceives specic attributes, narrating or translating reality
in an individual way, since the Chinese pictorial sign is,
at the same time, a textual one – its decoding requires
the viewer to comply with a process in which different
forces converge. The sinuous kana courses, which draw,
brushstroke by brushstroke, their seething or soft curves,
or the strength of the kanji, which, even reduced to the
symbol of their own logographic characters, always
keep something of their original vitality, animate the rice
paper in an artistic search. A sudden change, accompa-
nied by a variation in the size of the character or in the
dimensions of the brushstroke of the logographic sign
generates a unique calligraphic work of art. The brush-
stroke, as a base unit of calligraphy, becomes a part of a
composition in which all brushstrokes, following a syn-
tax specic to this art, form phrases that converge into a
text that tells a story. The motion of the brush that leaves
dense and hollow traces in its path in a calligraphic work
of art can be analysed based on several criteria: depth
(characteristic to the clerical script), speed (characteris-
tic to the cursive script) or brush angle (characteristic to
the semi-cursive script)40. Hence, the aesthetic dimen-
sion of calligraphy is created, which, historically speak-
ing, begins from the cursive script – free and impulsive
36 Ojio Yūshō, Hitsudō Hiden Shō [The Secrets of Calligraphy], quoted
in Makoto Ueda, Literary and Art Theories in Japan (Center for Jap-
anese Studies, Michigan: The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
1991), 182.
37 Makoto Ueda, Literary and Art…, 173.
38 Jean Starobinski, L’Œil vivant II. La Relation Critique (Paris: Édi-
tions Gallimard, 1970), 194-195.
39 Kristeva, Le language…, 84.
40 Ishikawa, Taction, 10.
In the European ne arts, the search for forms that
would “induce” the intimate substance of a thing began
with Kazimir Severínovich Malévich (1879-1935) who,
in a religious upsurge meant to reveal a hidden world,
found the supreme intensity in “absence”30. The search
continued in this cultural space with Wassily Kandinsky
(1866-1944)’s “cosmosophy of colours”, in which, if
white is “absence and absolute silence”, black is “noth-
ingness”31, and with Pierre Soulages (1919)’ “calligra-
phy”, in which black is a colour that is overowing with
strength32. One important conquest of the Western ab-
stract art is, in fact, the discovery of black, which had,
until then, been rejected by traditional painting, being
viewed as noncolour. The richness and the varieties of
expression which black holds were, however, for East
Asia, a “discovery” that had occurred millennia before,
due to the representation practice of the logographic
characters made with a brush, a practice that was seen as
a union between humans, nature and divinity, between
the world of matter and the world of the spirit33. As a
monochromatic art, the East Asian calligraphy scrutiniz-
es and explores the experience through a motion from
the exterior inwards, becoming a direct revelation of the
abstract nature of the cosmos, seen in terms of certain
fundamental essences:
Literary composition needs several characters to com-
plete the meaning [of a line], whereas calligraphy can
reveal the mind with only one character. This is cer-
tainly the ultimate attainment of economy and simplic-
ity [in art].34
An attempt to translate the Japanese words shosha (
書写) or shūji (習字) and shodō (書道) into a Western
language would result in one and the same term: ‘callig-
raphy’. The shosha or shūji calligraphy implies learning
to write the Chinese characters and the kana syllabaries
with a brush, as a subject included in the school curricu-
lum; the calligraphy class is integrated in a tradition ac-
cording to which every Japanese person must write with
a brush throughout their school education35. However,
the shodō calligraphy is, as the logographic characters
that make up the word show, ‘the path/ way of writing’ (
書 = to write + 道 = path, way), or, freely translated, ‘the
path/ way of writing towards writing as an art’. A begin-
30 Paul Evdokimov, The art of the icon: a theology of beauty, trans. Fr.
Steven Bigham (Pasadena: Oakwood, 1996), 65.
31 Alain Besançon, The forbidden image: an intellectual history of
iconoclasm, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Chicago-London: The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2009), 346.
32 Marcel Brion, Arta abstractă [Art abstrait], trans. Florin Chiriţescu,
pref. Balcica Măciucă (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1972), 241.
33 Brion, Arta abstractă, 241.
34 Chang Huai-kuan (Hsü Chen-e et al. eds., Li-tai shu-fa lun-wen
hsüan [Anthology of essays on calligraphic art], Shanghai: Shanghai
Shu-hua, 1979), 209, quoted in Yu-kung Kao, “Chinese Lyrics
Aesthetics”, in Words and Images. Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy and
Painting, ed. Alfreda Murk and Wen C. Fong, 47-90 (Princeton-New
York: Princeton University Press-The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
1991), 75.
35 Rodolphe Diot, “Calligraphie et enseignement scolaire – autour de
l’ère Taishô”, in Japon Pluriel 10 L’Ère Taishô (1912-1926): genèse
du Japon contemporain? Actes du dixième colloque de la Société
françise des études japonaises, ed. Yves Cadot et al. (Arles: Editions
Philippe Picquier, 2014), 135-144.

315Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
Since aesthetic or taste-based judgement is necessarily
subjective (affective-psychological, but not individual),
and assessment is constitutively objective, the taste is
objectivised through assessment in the form of aesthet-
ic predicates, such as, for instance, gracious, elegant,
fade, vulgar, supercial, classic, etc. However, the same
object can also be an artefact with an intentional aes-
thetic function, and the work of art quality is offered to
the reader by the feeling (be it well founded or not) that
this object has been produced with an intention that is at
least partially aesthetic. In other words, from an objec-
tive-ontological interpretive perspective, a calligraphic
work is a work of art if it is the result of an aesthetic in-
tention, since, from a subjective-functional perspective,
it can function as a work of art if it were received as
having resulted from an aesthetic intention.
The calligraphic work of art imposes a reception that
is, in each occurrence, always partial, since no contem-
plation or reading is sufciently long or scrupulous45
to exhaust the features of a work of art because the
functional (attentional or receptive) plurality can nev-
er produce the same effect and it cannot bear the same
meaning. Moreover, this attentional or receptive plurali-
ty stimulates a latent state which later acts through sym-
bolic relevance, the calligraphic art becoming the object
of a reading that activates the visible (through sight) and
the vision (through interpretation). The poetics of the
factual and the artistic, in the case of Japanese callig-
raphy, can be understood as the active meeting between
attention and intention that accommodates a pragmatic
function with an aesthetic one, causing the shift from the
embedded class to the embedding class. Regarding the
calligraphic work as a work of art, the aesthetic com-
ponent must be completed by the technical component.
Speaking of rhythm46, for instance, if, on the one hand,
the depth focuses on the size of the character and on
the darkness, or density of ink, (the longer a brushstroke
is, the deeper its cut), emphasizing, like two extremes,
the force and the brevity of its execution, on the other
hand, quickness shows the freedom a calligrapher gains
with the help of the brush and the creative expression to
which it can give rise, restoring the expressive, cognitive
and imaginative possibilities to the calligraphic work
of art. Moreover, the depth points to the profoundness,
understood as the experience of the reversibility of the
dimensions to the means by which the third dimension
is created within a two-dimensional calligraphic work
of art.
As a mixed case47, the calligraphic work of art is con-
comitantly a material work, as an autographic matter,
and an ideal one, as an allographic matter, combining
the materiality of the graphics with the ideality of the
text. Autographic in some of its parts and allographic
in others, one and the same calligraphic work of art is
a graphic work that involves a verbal inscription which
exploits the paratextual elements that are untransmis-
sible in diction, at the same time appealing to the re-
45 Genette, L’Œvre de l’art. Immanence…, 239.
46 Ojio Yūshō, Hitsudō Hiden Shō [The Secrets of Calligraphy], quoted
in Makoto Ueda, Literary and Art Theories in Japan, 180-181.
47 Yūshō, Hitsudō Hiden Shō, 32.
– , passes through the semi-cursive script – natural and
rhythmic –, and becomes architectural, equable (block
script), covering a time interval from the beginning
of the third millennium BC to the third century AD.41
Through a language of images that can, at any point,
turn into a story, the calligraphic imaginary, provoked
by a black brushstroke in motion, sees the world through
a specic optic and logic that constantly open, through
different styles, new paths to explore and new shapes
that can modify the image of the world.
As graphic forms that somewhat advert to geometric
shapes, with a solidity that can be dened by the law of
internal construction, the kanji are, in the end, a way of
seeing the world, a subtle connection between the mi-
crocosm and the macrocosm. Regarded as an object of
reception and aesthetic relation, the calligraphic work of
art invites to universal contemplation through visionary
intuition. Furthermore, considering the fact that any art
is a form of human practice, the attempt to explore the
means of existence of calligraphy leads to highlighting
the calligraphicity of the calligraphic work of art or, in
other words, the aesthetic artisticity of calligraphy, with
an emphasis on the distinction between to make and to
create. Naturally, as a theme subjected to variations, the
calligrapher, just like a potter, can also produce objects
for which the practical function trumps the aesthetic
function, but, given the multiplicity of applications, they
rather fall into the category of artistic products, if the
distinction between aesthetic and artistic is of a func-
tional nature42.
The defence and portrayal of calligraphy as an art
and of the calligraphic work of art as an object of re-
lation and aesthetic reception are based on the consid-
eration that here, in the argumentative lines formulated
by Gerard Genette43, one can identify an attention and
an intention. If, in the reproduction of the kanji, there
are conventions that must be followed, the calligraphic
brushstroke is unique to each calligrapher. This brush-
stroke is an expression that is energetic, dynamic and
sensitive, complementary and, in a way, dened by the
white space. Moreover, the relation between the brush-
stroke and the space describes a state of profound artis-
tic intimacy, bringing it somewhat closer to the relation
of expressive contingence between matter and air ex-
plored, in a particular way, by sculpture. Since aesthetic
objects are, above all, focus-based attentional objects,
the aesthetic attention – the term attention is used by
Genette in symmetry with intention –, addresses the
visual appearance, the aspect of this object, given that
attention is aspectual, oriented towards appreciation44.
The symptoms of aesthetic attention represent, among
other things, the multiple and complex references that
reunite distinctive means of semantic plurality, as well
as ambiguity (multiple denotations coexist) and the g-
ural trans-notation (the denoted is, in its turn, denoted).
41 Kuiseko, Brush Writing, 24; Flint Sato, Japanese Calligraphy, 13-
14.
42 Gérard Genette, L’Œvre de l’art. Immanence et transcendence (Par-
is: Seuil, 1994), 246.
43 Genette, L’Œvre de l’art. Immanence…, 10.
44 Gérard Genette, L’Œvre de l’art. La Relation esthétique (Paris: Se-
uil, 1997), 8-9.

316 Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
characters invoke concrete images, a source of inspira-
tion and a possible source of energy for a new type of
poetry. A logographic sign, interpreted as a “moving pic-
ture”54 that, at the same time, combines “the vividness
of painting” and “the mobility of sounds”, can become
a “medium” characteristic to poetry. Fenollosa’s attempt
to present the East Asian logographic characters– a pic-
torial sign seen by Fenollosa as a drawing that is similar
to a lm – to the Western metaphysics and poetic the-
ories tributary to the logos was considered by Jacques
Derrida the moment that launched the twentieth centu-
ry’s “great adventure” known as “deconstructivism”:
That is the signicance of Fenollosa’s work. As is well
known, he inuenced the poetry of Ezra Pound. This
absolute-graphic poetry, together with Mallarmé’s po-
etry, was the rst break with the most fundamental of
western traditions. And the attractive force with Chi-
nese ideograms acquired from Pound’s writing gained
intellectual-historical signicance.55
By analysing a work’s means of existence, Genette56
identies two categories: immanent and transcendent.
As the rst means of existence of a work of art, imma-
nence regards the object of which the work consists and,
in its turn, it can be divided into a material object (au-
tographic) or an ideal one (allographic). As a second
means of existence, transcendence (a term etymologi-
cally understood as the overtaking of a limit, as exit-
ing an enclosure) regards all the means through which a
work of art surpasses, overows or plays with its object.
Furthermore, the transcendence relation between the
work of art and its object of immanence can be dened
in functional terms: the work of art is the action made by
an object of immanence. In other words, if immanence
denes the motionless work of art, transcendence ush-
ers the work of art in action57. The relation between the
two means of existence is evidently “in a loop”, each
willing to shed light on the other, in a complementarity
of the problematics of the statute of a work of art and of
its function. As an autographic work, the calligraphic
work of art, a result of a manual transformation practice,
guided by spirit and aided by instruments, is a unique
object of immanence58. However, the particularity of
the calligraphic work of art resides in the fact that its
object of immanence is, concomitantly, both a physical
and an ideal one; calligraphic works of art, through their
scriptural-linguistic contents, are capable of expressing
thoughts and emotions through themselves. In the case
of the calligraphic work of art, transcendence, condi-
tioned by immanence (the texture of the manual rice pa-
per, the materiality of silk scroll mandrel), tries to speak
of the calligraphicity of the product, of what could be
regarded as “the process of becoming” in calligraphy,
obtained in two stages (shūji and shodō), of the mélange
of the black and white (non)colours that create the differ-
54 Fenollosa and Pound, The Chinese Written..., 63-64.
55 Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit,
1967), quoted in Mukai, “Characters that Represent...”, 72.
56 Genette, L’Œvre de l’art, 17.
57 Genette, 288.
58 Genette, 40.
sources of the graphic arts (gurative, decorative,
connotative) and to resources of the language48. When
he invokes the characteristics of the mixed works, by
giving the illustrative example of the term “calligram”,
we believe that Genette refers to the French symbolists,
although he does not do so explicitly. They were follow-
ers of a neoCratylian poetics49 that supports mimologism
(placed in a direct relation with the imaginary), or the
adequacy and the effort to imitate the world by language
on different levels, beginning with the letter, the script,
the sound and, in the end, the word, morphology and
syntax. Mallarmé (1842-1898), Valéry (1871-1945), or
Apollinaire (1880-1918) openly admit an inadequacy of
language and of the world, and they attempt to elabo-
rate a reformation project, as part of a logic of correction
and compensation, through which language can regain
its original function of signication. Written between
1913-1916 and published in 1918, not long before his
death, the volume entitled Calligrammes (Poèmes de la
paix et de la guerre [Poems of Peace and War]) by Guil-
laume Apollinaire was considered, even at the time of its
publication, one of the most remarkable works that had
appeared during the war50. The poems, proposing a new
poetic form that experiments, among other things, with
vertical writing, similar to Japanese writing, as the au-
thor himself confesses, are “ideograms” that he “loves”
as he would a “novelty of his spirit”, rejecting the accu-
sation of being a “destroyer”. The attempt of creating
something new, proposed by the French poet, was not
based on the destruction of the traditional verse, nor was
it based on the destruction of the old schools of ne arts.
It was based on “building” the new by “revitalizing” the
old51. His characterization of calligrams in terms of ide-
alizing free verse poetry (“une idéalisation de la poésie
vers-libriste”)52, shows that the French poet always en-
visioned himself as a “creator” that tried to keep up with
his time, in the dawn of a new technological revolution
that placed machines of reproduction, like the cinema or
the phonograph, in the foreground. The calligram, for
Appolinaire, seems to be not only a reection on the re-
lation between the image and the word, on the way in
which they emphasise and overshadow each other, but
also an analysis of the coherence of this view.
By bringing together different elds of knowledge
and different codes of interpreting the world in a mul-
ti-faceted worldview, the calligraphic work of art calls
forth a communication between the image and the word,
in the search for meaning, through the logographic sign.
Ernst Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908) interpreted the
Chinese characters that held the energy of the original
language as a medium for poetry53, while Ezra Pound
(1885-1972) saw, in the force with which these Chinese
48 Yūshō, 146.
49 The myth of the mimetic motivation of language was approached,
for the rst time, by Plato in the Dialogue Cratylos.
50 Guillaume Apollinaire, Scrieri alese [Selected Works], ed. Virgil
Teodorescu (Bucharest: Univers, 1971), 564.
51 Apollinaire, Scrieri alese, 565.
52 Guillaume Apollinaire, Œuvres poétiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1965),
1078.
53 Ernst Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, The Chinese Written Character as
a Medium for Poetry, ed. by Haun Saussy, Jonathan Stalling, and
Lucas Klein (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 59-80.

317Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
es actually constitutes the fastest system of connecting
and choosing between the innite forms of the possible
and of the impossible. By exploiting the imagination as
a repertoire of the potential, of the hypothetical, of what
is not, what never was, and what perhaps never will be,
but what could have been, the calligrapher, with the help
of four treasures (brush, paper, ink and ink stone)61 cre-
ates a weave between vision and motion, the resulting
calligraphic work of art being a personal representation
of the world: a world of immanence and ideality. The
calligraphers enter the visible universe with their visible
body, which they draw near through sight, in order to
offer it to the world through a calligraphic work of art.
The body that sees becomes seen, it is touched by touch-
ing; aware of their corporality, the calligraphers will try
to transcend it through a personal vision, made in the
midst of things, where a visible lets itself be seen62. The
white of the rice paper, the six black colours, and the
brush made of animal hair become the echo of an in-
ner wince of the calligraphers, transferred to the moving
brushstroke, in which the viewing eye probably wishes
to recognise the similarity with the outside world.
As the painting celebrates no enigma other than that
of visibility63, the calligraphic work of art bears within
itself the vision that gives the receptor the impression
of an immanent visibility. The calligraphic work of art
makes visible what the profane vision believed to be in-
visible. Although it would appear to be two-dimension-
al, through ink bleeding (nijimi) or dry line (kasure), the
world is recovered in its voluminous tridimensionality.
The height and width of a calligraphic work of art are
the diacritic signs64 from which the third dimension, that
of depth, will derivate. A two-dimensional calligraphic
work of art becomes a window opened to another uni-
verse that guides, polarises the viewing eye towards a
vision which it overies, without a compulsory view-
point, sharing the contents of an imaginary65.
The visible, in a narrow and prosaic sense, shows that,
while writing, the calligrapher practices a specic theory
of vision: the spirit strolls in between things, in a person-
al, concentrated vision of the universe. As if through a
form-performance, the kanji (Chinese character), which
was at the heart of things, is now at the heart of the vision,
creating “something complementary” (une chose sembla-
ble) 66, in an adequate similitude, related with respect to
genesis and metamorphosis. The logographic sign “crane”
is the one that interrogates the calligraphers through
glances. The visible is claimed through visible means that
make the crane bird appear in front of the viewing eye as
light and shadows through the colours white and black,
although they are more visual, rather than real. However,
the calligraphers live in their fascination, and the gesture
of tracing the brushstroke becomes a true revelation, as
61 Son’en, Jubokushō (1352), quoted in Gary DeCoker, “Secret Teach-
ings in Medieval Calligraphy : Jubokushō and Saiyōshō, 2”, Monu-
menta Nipponica 43, no. 2 (1988): 223.
62 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964),
19.
63 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit, 26.
64 Merleau-Ponty, 45.
65 Merleau-Ponty, 23.
66 Merleau-Ponty, 28.
ences, of the size of the six black colours (dry, diluted,
white; wet, concentrated, black)59, of the silent thought
of calligraphy. Similar to painting, both being elements
of the art of space, calligraphy, in its turn, shares the
same principle of harmony and visual balance, since the
kanji is a copy of nature, the harmony of the logographic
sign being, in the end, the harmony of nature. Without
overlooking the difculty of the instituted tradition, cal-
ligraphy, as an art of time and space, transforms into a
complex pictorial and verbal art, synthesising the func-
tions of a representative and expressive art, through the
point, line, surface, light, space, sound, rhythm, motion,
time60, the calligraphed logographic character thus man-
aging to stimulate not only the sense of sight, but also
the tactile sense, by direct touch. The art of calligraphy
is, therefore, a pictorial science whose expressive means
are the graphic line and the word; it is the science that
comes from the eye and that addresses the eye, revealing
the path of the invisible doubled by the visible.
Concomitantly image and word, the Japanese cal-
ligraphic work of art appeals to the language given by
the meeting between visual art and verbal art in order to
retrieve the natural simplicity (soboku) through sought
simplicity (tanjun), with the help of two types of im-
aginative processes: the one which, beginning from the
word, reaches the visual image, and the one which, be-
ginning from the visual image, reaches the verbal ex-
pression. As knowledge and creation, Japanese callig-
raphy attempts to bring the surrounding universe closer,
through the calligraphic motion of the brush: what is
visible becomes the equivalent of what is felt by the cal-
ligrapher who thinks in and through calligraphy. Hidden
visible and revealed invisible, inexpressible visible and
tangible invisible, Japanese calligraphy, through some-
what particular manifestations, reclaims its own imagi-
nary. Through the embedded space and light, the black
calligraphic brushstroke on a white paper can make the
logographic signs “crane”, “ight” or “spring” visible,
while remaining faithful to nature, without copying it: it
transcends the apparent opacity of objects or things and,
as a body assigned to the eye of the calligrapher, gives a
voice to the silence of the thoughts and ideas.
The calligraphic work of art accomplishes the para-
dox of making two divergent paths meet, paths that each
correspond to a different type of knowledge: one that
belongs to the mental state of a dematerialised rationali-
ty, with projected lines and points, and another that tries
to create a verbal equivalent of that space. The rst is
materialised through the image or the visible that gives
way to the expression of the senses, in order for them to
transmit the imaginative power of the visual language,
and the second is fullled through the word or the vi-
sion, the visible trace connected to the invisible, absent
thing. The visible and the vision complete each other
through the space left to the imagination, the visual part
of phantasy that coexists with the inventive-linguistic
rationality. Being an instrument of knowledge, imagi-
nation leaves the eld of analogies, symmetries, and
counterbalances open; the process of associating imag-
59 Cheng, Vide et plein, 90.
60 Mukai, “Characters that Represent…”, 74.

318 Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
Nothingness surrounds the individuals, the latter being
thus able to connect with their own selves71. The tension
between being (Yu) and not-being (Mu), which governs
the human existence, is surpassed by Mu, and the Noth-
ingness is the transcendence of the opposition existence
/ non-existence. Mu must not be read as the negation of
U. Since it is the counter-concept of Yu, Mu is a stronger
form of negation than the simple not to be. Absolutized,
it transcends both Yu and Mu in their relative meanings72.
In other words, life no longer differs from death, nor does
good from evil. In Buddhism, it is believed that life is not
superior to death, since life and death are two antagonis-
tic processes that exclude each other, becoming insepa-
rably linked to one another. What Buddhism regards as
samsara (‘transmigration’), or the wheel of life and death,
is nothing other than the eternal cycle of life and death,
with no beginning and no end, through which the past and
the future become present, the only moment that can be
accepted per se. The present, in which one lives, is an
essential principle in Buddhism, which concerns each and
every individual, and the seekers of consummation must
discover, within their own lives, the reection of the inner
light.
Because of the meeting between the writing hand and
the reading eye, the calligraphic art proposes a visual re-
ception of the act of reading, the image that is inserted
in the linguistic sphere installs an intermediate level be-
tween the word and the thing, between the abstract and
the sensible73. There are numerous experiences which
a calligraphic work can trigger. It is a certain type of
search for spiritual perfection, through which human be-
ings, in their desire to communicate with the divine, aim
for the revelation of a hidden meaning, within a destiny
of a continuous exorcism of death. This very “love for
the abstract” compelled (and still does so today) the Zen
Buddhist monks to prefer the black and white painting
to the ones in colour, since the art of calligraphy is both
a support and an opportunity to meditate for a follower
of Zen Buddhism on the way to enlightenment. Satori,
enlightenment or the awakening of Buddha’s conscious-
ness, occurs during an unexpected event, an event that
takes place by accident, by chance, only when the spirit
is ready to receive it74. In and through calligraphy, the
attempt to accede the essential is permitted, since life
and death have become close, and the human existence
is assimilated by the universe. Through contemplation,
one can open the secret gate that leads to the absolute
path of karma, the Buddhist law of causes and effects,
the ensemble of physical and mental human acts, and
everything they generate. This is an inner reality to
which human beings have access through Zen medita-
tion, which brings them closer to the hidden divinity and
to innity. A content that was initially occulted and dis-
71 Stephen Addiss, Obaku: Zen Painting and Calligraphy, Introduction
and Catalogue by Stephen Addiss with the assistance of Kwan S.
Wong (Lawrence: Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, 1978),
31.
72 Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Ha-
waii Press, 1989), 94.
73 Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, L’imaginaire (Paris: Presses universitai-
res de France, 2016), 30-55.
74 Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Boston: Tuttle Pub-
lishing, 1988), 220-221.
if it were to exit the object itself. It would appear that the
relation between the calligrapher and the visible things
thus becomes reversed, the calligraphers ending up with
the impression that they are the ones being seen by the
things. Actually, in this case, inspiration must be taken
literally, like the inspiration of the visible and the expi-
ration of the vision, a passionate action that continuously
changes the roles in the act of calligraphy. Moreover, the
virtual visible that was waiting in the shadows becomes
visible through the vision of a brushstroke. Like a type
of mirror of this viewed invisible and visible unseen, the
calligraphic brushstroke reveals the reexivity of the sen-
sory it translates and doubles it. As essence and existence,
imaginary and real, visible and invisible, the calligraphic
work of art unravels its own oneiric universe of essences
and similarities through silent meanings. It can deceive
the eye, instituting a perception in the absence of an ob-
ject. It excites the imagination of the art consumer, turn-
ing something that was absent into something that is pres-
ent. The vision becomes a conditioned thought (pensée
conditionnée)67, which arises from an occasion created
by the calligraphic brushstroke. Calligraphy’s means of
expression are in the service of a moving brushstroke that
subjects the objects to a vision that morphs the world.
Nothing is ornamented, since everything tries to recover
the perspective in order to recreate the world in the view-
ing eye, without being conditioned by reexivity.
The calligraphic gesture embodies technique and in-
spiration, and the outside world at the end of the hand68
is seen through visionary imagination, stored in a cal-
ligraphic work of art. The calligrapher’s vision is not
tantamount to a gaze outwards towards a world seen in
its physical-optic coordinates, but rather to a cracking of
the skin of things69 towards a nothing that is, concomi-
tantly, the performance of something that makes things
be things and makes the world be a world. Calligraphy
is not a construction or an artice in an industrial rela-
tion with the outside world, but an articulated outcry
through which things and ideas are given voice. Once
uttered, it awakens the dormant vision from the phase of
their pre-existence, recovering lively and active essences.
This internal animation, this glimpse of the visible is what
the calligrapher seeks in the name of profoundness. The
liberation of the brushstroke, its awakening through the
motion of the brush makes way for the vision, the dream
of the brushstroke that creates its own space, outside and
within the common one. This way, the logos of the brush-
strokes70, supported by the captured light and the gained
stereoscopic relief, leads to the non-conceptual presenta-
tion of the universal being. The brushstroke is no longer
a simple positive attribute and a feature of the object it-
self, but its generating axis continuously doubled by an
invisible brushstroke that descends into the visible from
that certain Mu or Zen nothingness. In Zen, the Absolute
is identied with Mu, the limitless Nothingness which
is entirely non-substantial, and that is why, paradoxical-
ly, the individuals can be identical to this Absolute. The
67 Merleau-Ponty, 51.
68 Merleau-Ponty, 58.
69 Merleau-Ponty, 69.
70 Merleau-Ponty, 71.

319Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
ing line involves a dynamic meaning that is continuously
reassessed, completed, and renewed. The moving line,
captured in its advance, multiplies, with each second, the
visions that can resonate in the viewing eye, long after the
calligraphic work of art disappeared from the retina. The
calligraphic work of art relentlessly conjugates the verb
“to see”, it makes the motion visible, and, simultaneously,
it makes the metamorphosis of time visible. The vision
it brings to life is not only a certain way of thinking, but
also the means through which the viewers, guided by the
calligrapher, can come out of themselves, in order to pas-
sively or actively take part in the emergence of the spirit.
The visible addresses the eye through vision. The image
embraces the word and offers to the eye, for contempla-
tion, the moving line that will open the spirit towards the
world of objects and ideas. It is as if the calligraphic work
of art tries to exit the limited perspective of an individual
self, in an attempt to offer a word to the word-less (crane,
ight, spring), reaching a point of arrival that could test
the continuity of forms77 and the identication of the self
with the nature that is common to all things. Through vi-
sion, the contemplating spirit opens the window towards
understanding the crane, the ight, the spring, or, in other
words, the mystery of (not) to be, whose agency allows
for the interpretation of an expressive art as a representa-
tive one as well, and the calligraphy work below (Fig.1)
illustrates this process:
Figure 1. Rodica Frentiu, 鶴舞 (The dance of the crane),
Ink on paper, 83.5 x 34 cm, 2007.78
Source: Rodica Frentiu. Une leçon de calligraphie
japonaise. A Lesson in Japanese Calligraphy
(Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2010), 14.
77 Calvino, Six Memos…, 98.
78 When I rst showed my calligraphy work to master Nishida Senshū
(1936-2015), the very rst reaction of sensei disclosed utter surpri-
se: I can see the crane! About Senshu Nishida see 書―戦後六十
年の軌跡 Sho. Developments in the Art of Japanese Calligraphy
Over the Last Six Decades 1945-2005, ed. Tamiya Bunpei (Tokyo:
Bijutsu-Nenkansha, 2005), 205, 850. The present study is a tribute to
the memory of my sensei.
tant tries to manifest itself by traversing the path from
within towards the outside, from the invisible towards
the visible, borrowing the form of calligraphic art. The
calligraphic work multiplies the system of equivalenc-
es that surpasses the gurative and the non-gurative,
in order to break the shell of things, from which, in the
end, what Buddhism calls enlightenment will erupt. And,
since enlightenment is meant to be immediate and direct,
and the imposed path to follow is practice, the exercise of
calligraphy becomes a practice and a Zen meditation on
the meandering path of seeking enlightenment, on which
one tests one’s knowledge and surpasses one’s own self:
Zen masters never considered their painting to be either
abstract or ‘art for art’s sake’, as it is the Zen masters’
spiritual zeal which is expressed in their brushstrokes.
Reecting the unique Zen Buddhist vision, spontane-
ous brushwork can be a path to enlightenment.75
The calligraphic work of art, in the end, can be inter-
preted as a poem of the invisible, of the innite unpre-
dictable potentialities, a poem of nothingness given by a
calligrapher who has no doubt regarding the visible con-
creteness of the world. The pulverised reality extends
upon the visible aspects and everything can transform
into new forms through the calligraphic brushstroke.
However, the dissolution of the compact structure
leads to a relation of parity between the existent and
the non-existent, abolishing any hierarchy of powers or
values. Moreover, as no calligraphic work closes cal-
ligraphy and, in fact, probably no calligraphic work is
denitively nished, each calligraphic work of art can
create, change, alter, enlighten, deepen or recreate an-
other. Therefore, the titles of calligraphic works of art
generally testify to their linguistic contents, as an addi-
tion to the image, making way for the dreaming brush-
stroke to traverse from its own space towards that of the
immediate reality and, in the end, the planes intertwine:
the visible becomes vision and the vision becomes vis-
ible. If, usually, the title, as a paratextual element76 that
is eminently pragmatic, will attempt to seduce the po-
tential buyers by drawing them towards reading, in the
case of the calligraphic work of art, it receives not only a
function of designation or identication and description,
but also a thematic one, as if to avoid overlooking the
area of transition or transaction between the text and the
image. Although the title can, through a rst reading, of-
fer a declared auctorial intention, the physical trajectory
to which it invites contains a univocal syntactic com-
ponent, and the semantic description is plural, inviting
interpretation: what could this calligraphic work repre-
sent/mean to the viewer?
The calligrapher guides the receptive eye through the
prosaic-brushstroke and the vision-brushstroke, which the
latter interprets as an axis in a system of activity and pas-
sivity. Although it would appear to be immobile, the mov-
75 John Stevens, Zenga. Brushstrokes of Enlightenment, Catalog Selec-
tions, Entries and Essay by John Stevens, Catalog Essay and Organi-
zation by Alice Rae Yelen (New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of
Art, 1990), 19.
76 Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), 73.

320 Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
Considering the fact that the context determines not
only the type of artistic function, but also its absence84,
will calligraphy lose its cultural importance in the
post-industrial technological era? Will it manage to
think the world through images and words?
However, if science manipulates things, art un-
doubtedly replaces them85. As a writing instrument,
the quill has continuously been anthropomorphised
by writers in the European cultural space. At the end
of Miguel de Cervantes’s (1547-1616) Don Quijote,
through the author’s good will, although it had already
been hung on the wall, the quill receives (indirectly)
the nal words of the novel: Para mi sola nasció don
Quijote, y yo para él; el supo obrar y yo escribir...86
[For me alone don Quixote was born, and I for him.
He knew how to act and I how to write.], and the Ro-
manian poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), a Romantic
seeking the spirit, rhetorically asked De ce pana mea
rămâne în cerneală...?87 [Why does my quill remain
in the ink?]. The two writers show that the traces of
the black letters left by the quill on the white sheet of
paper had, in the end, given birth to a ctional uni-
verse. In the Japanese culture, Murasaki Shikibu (978?
– 1016?), in the novel The Tale of Genji (源氏物語
Genji monogatari, 1008), considered the world’s
rst novel, naturally placed the brush in the hand of
Genji, who was seeking his words for an epistle-poem:
筆を休め休め考えていた。Fude o yasume yasume
kangaete ita. [He was thinking while resting and rest-
ing the brush.]88 Be it a quill or a brush, quill ink or
calligraphy ink, all of these utility objects point to the
search for an inner energy, for a motion of the mind
through handwriting or through the calligraphic brush-
stroke, which somewhat meets the feeling of unlim-
ited time. In the contemporary culture of the image,
although the computer keyboard is at the end of the
hand daily, and the computer screen replaces the paper,
perhaps condoning speed does not negate the pleasures
of dalliance that could be taken from handwriting or
calligraphic writing. Counting on the image and on the
motion that naturally derives from it, on the ow of
the imagination that becomes the word, regardless of
the European or the East Asian meaning of the term,
the imaginary created by the calligraphic brushstroke
probably inclines not so much towards multiplying the
possibilities of expression, but, paradoxically, towards
approaching that unicum that is the self of the calligra-
pher that transmits its inner sincerity directly and that
spontaneously discovers its own truth. The calligraphy
work below (Fig.2) demonstrates this, in its search for
the perfect depiction of the instant moment conducted
by blending four kanji (Chinese characters), integrated
by a harmony that betrays, through one brush stroke,
the transience of the moment:
84 Genette, L’Œvre de l’art, 287.
85 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit, 9.
86 Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Man-
cha, vol. 2, ed. John Joy Allen (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991), 577.
87 Mihai Eminescu, Poezii. Proză literară [Poems. Literary prose], vol.
I, ed. Petru Creţia, (Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1984), 107.
88 Shikibu Murasaki, Genji monogatari (Tokyo: Kawadeshobo, 1965),
92.
What is revealed is not a simple self, but a self in
cohesion with the full void, since any visual something
is separated and reunited with the universal spirit. Any
visual something is doubled by an invisible something
and it is precisely the depth of this hidden dimension
of the world that the calligrapher tries to reveal through
the motion of the black brushstroke. Calligraphy does
not seek the frontal features of the visible, but it tries
to reach the immemorial background (le fond immémo-
rial)79, in which something moved, lit up, and the cal-
ligraphic work of art is the calligrapher’s response to
this stimulus: the visible returned to the eye, in order to
go beyond it. The visible, that which exists, which can
be seen and which makes the calligraphers see them-
selves, morphs into the vision itself. Being aware of the
fact that, in the end, nothing is gained, and that depth,
colour, shape, line, motion are all frames of being that
work together so as to release the possibility through
which all that has already been said may be restated in
a different way, the calligrapher offers the moving line
as a support for the speaking thought (la pensée par-
lante)80. Given that the hand of the calligrapher is “the
degree zero of spatiality” (degré zéro de la spatialité)81
and the universe encompasses the writing hand, vision
gains the fundamental power of manifesting itself, of
showing more than itself: space and light communi-
cate with each other, creating their own imaginary. The
calligrapher’s vision becomes taste and the meaning
becomes metaphysical.
3. Conclusions
You’re never too old to learn [六十の手習い Roku jū
no tenarai], states an idiomatic Japanese saying, its lit-
eral translation being ‘writing practice [calligraphy] at
the age of sixty’. Having been regarded as more than
a mere cultural heritage, and justiably so, until today,
calligraphy has found its role in contemporary Japa-
nese society, as a continuously rediscovered art, never
having been forgotten. As a traditional art, a “social
grace”82 and the object of academic research in its
homeland, calligraphy is considered an integral part of
the Japanese spirit (大和魂 yamato damashii). Capa-
ble of adapting to the course of the world, calligraphy
has, until now, translated the sensitivity of the epoch,
since the calligraphic scroll, beyond its ornamental
role, preserves a statute and a meaning translated into
images and words, while always remaining the same
spiritual testimony of another metaphysics. However,
in an epoch in which other forms of media overwhelm-
ingly triumph, forms of media that are faster and faster
and with a growing range of action, could calligraphy
ensure its survival, or will it perhaps be resurrected?83
79 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’Esprit, 86.
80 Merleau-Ponty, 91.
81 Merleau-Ponty, 59.
82 Cecil H. Uyehara, Japanese Calligraphy. A Bibliographic Study
(New York: University Press of America, 1991), 11.
83 Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and
American Artists in the Early Postwar Years (Honolulu: University
of Hawaiʻi Press, 2001), 66-110.

321Frentiu, R.; Ilis, F. Eikón Imago 10 (2021): 311-322
Figure 2. Rodica Frentiu, 瞬間記憶 (The Memory of an Instant), Ink on paper, 112.5 x 52.5 cm, 201489
Source: Rodica Frentiu.
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