published
25 March 2009
tagged
life

I am generally aware that the advent of computers has rendered penmanship, as a disciplined study or concern, effectively obsolete. There are precious few people I know today who much concern themselves with the way they set their words to paper. I pay this a great deal of attention--indeed, I am quite obsessed with handwriting. It did not come easily. In first grade my teacher found my scrawl so inscrutable she had me do my spelling assignments by typewriter. My mother put me on calligraphy lessons and I learned the basic wide-nib hands: the elegant, flowing Florentine, the rigid Gothic, and the rounded, ancient Uncial. This worked; by high school I'd perfected a miniscule printing so tiny I had to use the thinnest pens I could find for it to be legible at all. I've since made a hobby of experimenting with my handwriting: trying to work in more cursive elements, stretching out the letters, adding and removing the hooks on my a's, and so on. Last weekend I had the opportunity to see a beautiful exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the National Gallery. Unlike, I am sure, nearly all of the other visitors, I spent at least as much time looking at the plain (by medieval standards) writing they accompanied as I did on the illuminations themselves. The precision of medieval scribes is astonishing. Their letters are perfectly arranged into neat, short lines with unerring justification, filled by rigid, angular gothic script. The planning involved in setting out text of that nature--by hand!--is staggering. I've clearly accomplished nothing near so elegant in my writing.My favorite piece of the show, however, was a great tome at the center of the room, documenting the history of a German noble family. It is not set in a Gothic hand at all, but instead was done in a fantastic looping, interwoven cursive that I've been trying to imitate (without the slightest success) all week. It, too, was perfectly set out in justified lines, narrow and close together. Such a marvel, to fill a book three inches thick that way! Penmanship, today, is merely another way to express beauty. It is no longer the crucial science it was to those medieval scribes, nor even the rather utilitarian means of extemporaneous printing it was to my parents. It has been reduced to pure, delightful anachronism. I think that's reason enough to love it, don't you? I am generally aware that the advent of computers has rendered penmanship, as a disciplined study or concern, effectively obsolete. There are precious few people I know today who much concern themselves with the way they set their words to paper.