Soundless Music: The Interplay of Spatiality and Musicality in Chinese Calligraphy

Author: Po-Han Yang(Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 55, No. 2
Date：September 2010
Pages：117-136
DOI：10.3966/207451922010095502005

Abstract：

Western literary critics, such as Northrop Frye, Ezra Pound, and Andrew Welsh, have presented that there are three main organizing powers in the language of poetry and poetic creation: “melopoeia,” the making of music, “phanopoeia,” the making of the bright image, and “logopoeia,” the making of the resonant word. This theoretical framework helps the researcher re-examine the poetics of Chinese Calligraphy with a different eye. As the traditional Chinese visual art of writing, Calligraphy obviously possesses the powers of spatial image and of words of poetic creation. This present study begins by reviewing the powers of “logopoeia” and of “phanopoeia” in Calligraphy and then shifts its focus to the musicality, or “melopoeia,” of Calligraphy. Compared with the discussion on the functions, meanings and forms/spatiality of calligraphy, the power of musicality seems less discussed and more difficult for people to explain. This paper further explores the musicality of Chinese Calligraphy and proposes that Calligraphy can be regarded as soundless music whose musicality not only dwells in an essentially spatial form of the work but also creates marvelous spatiality—what Victor Zukerkandl calls the “auditory space”—by using techniques such as juxtaposition of potency and repetition of the rhythm. Reading the musicality of calligraphy along with the work’s content and form, logopoeia and phanopoeia, would further provide layered aesthetic experience.The interplay of spatiality and musicality deserves a special place in the training and learning of Chinese Calligraphy.

Keywords：Chinese Calligraphy, musicality, potency, rhythm, spatiality

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