Watch out… Tibullus is screeching!

... Leterme opening our eyes and ears

1. ‘Calligraphic hermeneutics’: a layman’s attempt
2. Yves Leterme, Litterae (2014)
3. The musician’s touch in gestural writing

1. ‘Calligraphic hermeneutics’: a layman’s attempt

After displaying the card, I allow myself five seconds for a first impression. I see: contrast. From top right to bottom left: foreground, order, capitals, print-like typeface. Colouring: likewise. A struggle for supremacy between ominous black and repulsive brown against an ashen and salty background. General impression: This is bad news! From seeing to watching: must be possible within 10 seconds. I am looking at… two distinct letter worlds. Visually dominant, the black field forces me to start from the upper-right corner. Opposite to the natural reading order, that is. Vertically downwards, an arrow directs my eye along different kinds of fonts. I eventually arrive at what might be a word, in a dark brown colour. In one and the same font this time. For sure, this letter group wants to make something clear! Whatever it may be, the message certainly exceeds the 21” x 15” margins. 

Let’s take a deeper look at the smaller characters. This takes much more time. What seemed to be merely background, appears to be full text, emerging, as it were, to the reading surface from from the writing paper’s deep: pale grey shades turning into dark sharp shapes. Three overlapping layers, partly across the capitals. Again, the margins are unable to control the writer’s hand, which indeed looks agitated. The ductus betrays suppressed fury. Distress rather than despair. As if something has to be said, no matter how torturing… As if something has to be repeated, no matter how tormenting.

These lines: are they rising up from the bottom? Or, on the contrary, the fall-out of that ‘aeschrographic’ vandalism smudging the upper half of the card? Streaks, blots, spasmodic scribbles: rage has got hold of the calligrapher the paper being carved by his murderous pen. Repeatedly, back and forth, more and more powerful and profound. Superficially covered by faint, shallow scars, the white paper skin eventually pours earth-brown ink, like blood from a wound, like gore. 

Switching from watching to reading we experience the ‘freehand’ and ‘print-like’ letter worlds as mutually contrasting yet interactive spheres. On the one hand we ‘see’ cries & whispers. To the best of his abilities, a man of flesh and blood, tossed between anger and distress, tries to channel his emotions and to ventilate feelings, he no longer controls. On the other there is the altogether cold, hard and threatening impersonality by which this human suffering is objectified into a matter of paramount importance; into a ‘capital’ issue: rage institutionalised as a declaration of war. 

This requires some close reading. Hazardous though that may be. On closer inspection, the black field and white arrow appear to be an upside-down ‘E’. Which brings along ‘e-x-s’, a nonsensical letter formation. Freewheeling we pass along several other possibilities. In the opposite direction we encounter the straight edge symbol ‘s-X-e’. Further, one can make the ‘gestalt psychological’ association with ‘S-E-X’. More obvious, however, is the association with the remaining capitals, which leads us towards the Latin word ‘EXSECRATIO’. The lexical meaning of this notion is: 

Exsecratio, -ionis, f. 

1. execration, malediction, curse 

2. transf. A solemn oath with an imprecation (if broken) 

This explains the character of its communication: formulative, in charge, ‘from above’ and, at the same time enigmatic! No doubt this is the context clue, since it clarifies what we have experienced on an aesthetic level: fury and helplessness ‘ironed out’ into a exercise of revenge.

In its fragmentary presentation, the text itself is quite a palaeographic challenge. Patchwork of some readable words and phrases, however, guide us into a mindblowing phantasm, very physical, and full of animal imagery: tristia (miseries) / dapes (banquet)/ sanguinea (bloody)/ felle (gall(bladder)) / furens (delirious) / strix (nightowl/vampire) / fame (hunger) / asper (bitter) / nudis (nude). Less recognizable is the last word: ‘canum’ (dogs). What is going on, here? Apparently, this is a highly personal issue. This is about heartache. And the person who broke the oath, is obviously someone important. However, the man with the calamus has decided that details are superfluous, here. You ‘hear’ what you ‘see’; so ‘listen to’ what you ‘read’: the demonic ritual of malediction, uttered by a tormented soul. One does no need to know more.

For those who are nevertheless intrigued by the literary and historical background of this text, there’s adequate information on the flipside of this art card. Four couplets (disticha) have been taken from an elegy of the Roman poet Tibullus (1st century AD). Though there’s no mention of ‘exsecratio’, you will find allusions to Hecate, goddess of sorcery. This wonderful reversion of the hierarchy between literary theory and aesthetic experience, is, I think, an important clue to the intermediary position of the lettering artist. Therefore, I will conclude my all in all amateurish exercise in ‘calligraphic hermeneutics’ with some loose thoughts on this matter.

On the pathway from (re)reading, along (re)contemplation back to aesthetic experience, I eventually find myself in the domain of indeterminacy (see: the Intro – L of my blog). In this field of interpretation, it does not matter whether or not the calligrapher has understood the author, and whether or not the perceiving reader has understood the lettering artist. ‘Contemplation’ turns into ‘speculation’ when I let myself be towed along by two conceptual considerations about this eccentric treatment of Tibullus’s poetry. 

The first one is about the experience of time Let us begin with following question: what was, according to the calligrapher, the author’s basic idea? What was the latter’s starting-point: the curse, the tantrum or the distress? The beauty of this specific graphic representation lies in the fact that its multi-layered print is almost completely inconclusive as regards the relation between ‘chronological time’ and ‘lived time’ (i.e. as time is experienced). Was this all about a delirious cursing ritual that got out of hand and emanated into weary muttering? Or did monotonous self-piteous sighing degenerate into hysteric obscenity and, ultimately, verbal voodoo? The second consideration is about the black square, almost certainly intended as the initial perceptive point of reference, meant to catch our attention already in the first instance. Why is it so obtrusive? Why not in the upper left corner, the area from where one normally starts to read? And, what about that reversed letter ‘E’? Does it ‘look’ downwards only to form an arrow with the ‘x’ and lead the eye in the desired direction? 
I decide to stand back – literally –  from the art work and unleash my imag-ination. It’s not difficult to interpret this black corner as an ominous threat hanging above someone’s head, ready to be put into practice. Further, the more I look and the less I read, the firmer my intuition that there is not only a graphic but also a pictural dimension to the anatomy of the 'E'. Sure, its arms initiate a downward reading direction, but they also resemble the open gate of a dark cavern. Given its upper position, it may well be some godly venue, the residence – who knows – of the mighty sorcerer Hecabe. Or the kennel of her ghost dogs, mentioned in the poem. According to the legend, their howling and barking announced the arrival of their mistress. If so, should the ‘deafening’ scratches, splashes and the spastic scribbles not be associated with the terrible sound of these terrible beasts? From their heavenly lair they rush down to us… its dark brown fur becoming more and more recognizable... their sound becoming increasingly mad and frantic: a barely legible ‘exsecratio’… 
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Again and again I saw, I red and I fancied something else.

2. Yves Leterme, Litterae (2014)

On the corner of my desk there is always some picture book, a poetry collection or a block-calendar with verses, fine quotes or random thoughts. Opened on the same page for several days. Or art cards like this (see: photo). A good habit I copied from a colleague: just another way to de-stress after the daily routines. As a matter of fact the same can be said of this essay, which is the English adaptation of an earlier blog post in Dutch. Just to take my mind off after a long weekend of marking exam papers. Teaching aesthetics besides ancient Greek and Latin, I was triggered by the motto of my chapter about analysis, Whitehead’s famous statement: “Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience and our aesthetic enjoyment is the recognition of the pattern.” My students had to answer the following two-part question: on the one hand, to what extent is this a statement on conception and perception by a speculative pragmatist; on the other, why does full aesthetic experience go far beyond this definition, how valuable and useful the latter may be? I’m personally convinced that sensory pleasure turns into aesthetic experience through the unpredictable, the undecided, the unexpected, the uncertain. And, that’s what I experienced in this calligraphic exsecratio and what I want to uncover in my interpretation. (Consequently, there’s every chance I will integrate it in my future classes.) 
The particular art work we examined, is part of Litterae (2014), the most recent project of Yves Leterme, who studied classical philology but is now an artistic as well as commercial calligrapher, well-known in the international world of lettering. In Litterae, a collection of 24 art cards (four-colour print, format 21x15), he embraces an old love: Latin literature. On the front of each card he subjects poetry fragments or full poems to an appropriate lettering style. On the reverse side you will find, besides illustrations and a source reference, a presentation of the quote in Latin, Dutch and English. The box also contains a booklet with insightful information about the authors, their work and the fragment in question. Leterme also lifts a corner of the veil as regards the calligraphic approach of each selection. More information can be found on his website and blog.[1]

3. Gestural writing as a quasi-musical act

I have to admit that there is a personal reason why I am intrigued by Leterme’s work. Yves and I met in the late seventies at the university of Leuven. While we shared the same field of study, our artistic orientation was quite different. He was into photography and drawing; I was a keyboard player, engaged in art music as well as entertainment. Already at that time we respected and admired each other’s skills. And today, after all these years, I envy him for having taken the challenge to abandon language teaching and switch to a now career as a lettering artist. Years ago and still an apprentice, he already made me a nice transcription of the famous Catulli Carmen CIX (Iucundum, mea vita). Consequently, it shows no traces yet of the unique style for which he is known today: gestural writing.[2] 

In a way it was the particular nature of this lettering technique that brought us back in contact with each other. As a matter of fact, I was dumbfounded by the similarities between Yves’s description of the disciplinary facets of gestural writing and what my teacher learns me about the idiomatic understanding of piano playing. Apart from the artistry involved in the textual representation, gestural writing is essentially about the deconstruction and reconstruction of words and the characters by which they are commonly communicated. In an announcement of a 2-day workshop in Tacoma (WA), he writes the following: “Gestural writing of good quality is, more than anything else, a matter of premeditation, a supple mind and wrist, and a keen eye for detail.” Based on these three principles, one could argue that the calligrapher takes possession of the letter, both mentally and motorically, in order to release them, eventually, enhanced with the surplus value of his individuality. How this process is functioning, the master himself has demonstrated in several videos. As a musician and musicologist I feel obliged to recommend those, in which he builds a bridge between the visual and the auditory arts: Beethoven Re-written, [3] Ariadne, [4] and Orpheus en Euridice [5] (all of them produced in 2012).
In conclusion, the more I watch these videos, the more I’m convinced of the analogy between this kind of lettering and what I am focusing on for the moment: the correct touch in piano-playing and its connection with mental preparedness and initiatory gesture. The similarities I notice, are related not only to matters of skill or technique, but also to matters of psychomotor and aesthetic-affective behaviour. Gestural writing as a quasi musical gesture: we definitely need to have talks about this, Yves and I.

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[1] The Calligraphy of Yves Leterme: http://www.yleterme.be/ 

Animal scribax: http://yvesleterme.wordpress.com/ 

[2] An international break-through came along with Thoughtful Gestures. The Calligraphy of Yves Leterme (2011). Unfortunately, the book which is currently sold out. 

[3] ‘Beethoven herschreven’. A film featuring Yves Leterme's calligraphy with Beethoven's 'Pathétique' (first movement) as musical score. Made for the calligraphy exhibition at Heist-op-den-Berg (B) in April 2012. 

[4] Project in association with the harpist Andrea Voets on The Crown of Ariadne written by the composer Raymond Murray Schafer (°1933). 

[5] Project in association with the harpist Andrea Voets on both this popular legend and Pour le tombeau d'Orphée (1955), a work for harp solo by the Dutch composer Marius Flothuis 1951.