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Contents » Cover |
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Essays
To pair another of my favorite French writers, Michaux, with one of our most interesting prose writers and translators, Gustaf Sobin, makes for a useful and inspired contribution to the study of Chinese ideograms. In this prose poem, originally written as an introduction to Leon Chang's La calligraphie chinoise, Sobin has captured Michaux's personal fascination with calligraphy's spatial meaning. One feels Michaux's enthusiasm for the possibilities of poetic communication through visual image and the delight he took in developing an understanding of the Chinese written form as contrasted with our own: "Any written page, any surface covered with characters turns into something crammed and seething . . . full of lives and objects, of everything found in the world . . . full of thieves carrying stolen goods off under their arms . . . full of children born with a caul / and holes in the earth / and of navels in the body . . . clustered that they might end in ideas / or unravel as poetry." He discovers that "the destiny that awaited Chinese writing was utter weightlessness." He perceives the speedy quiet that permeates the work and the meditative energy the calligrapher requires. Like Jabès, Michaux finds answers: "The hand should be empty, should in no way hinder what's flowing into it. Should be ready for the least sensation as well as the most violent." Ultimately, Michaux celebrates calligraphy's is-ness, a Taoist way, its ineffablity. The book closes with a fine critical essay on Michaux, Pound, Fellonosa's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, and the meaning of signs. For anyone interested in how to bring silence into poetry, Michaux's prose poems should not be missed.
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