CALLIGRAPHY

Skilful Fingers

The skilful Penman's unseen finger wrote

His swift intuitive calligraphy; ….

Sri Aurobindo

29: 232

Curve And Line

A conscious power has drawn the plan of life,

There is a meaning in each curve and line.

Sri Aurobindo

29: 460

Conscious Hand

If you want to play, if you want to work, if you want to do anything at all with your hand, unless you push consciousness into the cells of your hand you will never do anything good – how many times have I told you that? And this is felt. You feel it. You can acquire it. All sorts of exercises may be done to make the hand conscious and there comes a moment when it becomes so conscious that you can leave it to do things; it does them by itself without your little mind having to intervene.

The Mother

4: 404

Calligraphy

Keshav: … Let us try the plan we have already adopted with such success, when we discovered the nature of beauty. We will take some form of harmony and inquire how regularity enters into it; and it occurs to me that the art of calligraphy will be useful for the purpose, for a beautifully written sentence has many letters just as the universe has many types and it seems that proportion is just as necessary to it.

Wilson: Yes, calligraphy will do very well.

Keshav: I recollect that we supposed beauty to have three elements, of which every type must possess at least one, better two, and as a counsel of perfection all three. If we inquire, we shall find that form is absolutely imperative, seeing that if the form of the letters is not beautiful or the arrangement of the lines not harmonious, then the sentence is not beautifully written. Colour too may be an element of calligraphy, for we all know what different effects we can produce by using inks of various colours. And if the art is to be perfect, I think that perfume will have to enter very largely into it. Let us write the word “beautiful". Here you see the letters are beautifully formed, their arrangement is beautiful, this bright green ink I am using harmonizes well with the word, and moreover, the sight of this peculiar combination of letters written in this peculiar way brings to my mind a peculiar association of ideas, which I call the perfume of the written word.

Wilson: But is it not the combination, not of letters but of sounds, which lingers in your mind and calls up the idea?

Keshav: I do not think so, for I often find sentences that seem to me beautiful in writing or in print, but once I utter them aloud, become harsh and unmusical; and sometimes the reverse happens, especially in Meredith, in whom I have often at first sight condemned a sentence as harsh and ugly, which, when I read it aloud, I was surprised to find apt and harmonious. From this I infer that if a writer’s works appear beautiful in print or manuscript, but not beautiful when read aloud, he may be set down as a good artist in calligraphy, but a bad artist in literature, since suggestion to the eye is the perfume of the written, but suggestion to the ear the perfume of the spoken word. In this however I seem to have been digressing to no purpose; for whatever else is uncertain, this much is certain, that form is essential to calligraphy, and this is really all that concerns us. Now if the form is to be beautiful it must be harmonious in effect, and to be harmonious in effect it must be proportionate in detail, and to be proportionate in detail, the words and letters of which it is made must exhibit a regular variety.

Sri Aurobindo

3:34

Write Beautifully

Mother, I always write to You about the same things: sleep, work and talk. Mother, do You like reading the same thing every day?

Why not, my little smile? You can learn to say the same things in different ways; this is an excellent exercise to learn how to write and mould your style. It seems that at the moment you are practising calligraphy! Who has taught you to write so beautifully?

Your affectionate Mother.

The Mother

16: 76

Your Hand

My dear mother, I want to be like the lion on the envelope I am sending you this evening.

My dear little lion,

I am in your heart that it may be happy, in your head that it may be peaceful, and in your hand that it may be skilful.

With all my love.

The Mother

16: 125

Handwriting

The children do not sit up straight and their handwriting is bad.

Mother wrote:

It is no more tiring to hold yourself straight than to hold yourself badly. When you hold yourself straight, the body grows harmoniously. When you hold yourself badly, the body becomes misshapen and ugly.

It is no more tiring to write neatly than to scrawl. When your work is neatly written, it is read with pleasure. When it is too badly written, it cannot be read at all.

To do with care all that one does is the basis of all progress.

The Mother

12: 341