Sweet calligraphy expends its operose cloud
And wafts the mists to envelope a lull,
But claws rush in all bloodied mouth and loud;
Beauty’s no match for the intelligible.
Weak cries convey the death of something pathetic,
And up on the branch where decryptions begin,
Legibility’s readily eaten the aesthetic;
Senses posed non-disembodied win;
The cat’s disappeared, but gleams the grin.
Operose – (Pronounced OP-ǝ-rōs, “op” as in “pop”) 1) involving great labor, laborious; 2) industrious, diligent; 3) tedious, wearisome.
The cat’s disappeared, but gleams the grin. – A reference to a famous image of a disappearing Cheshire cat by English artist John Tenniel (1820-1914) to illustrate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Despite its connection with the Cheshire Cat, a figure from English literature, this poem may refer not to the calligraphic tradition of the Latin‑based English alphabet, but to Japanese calligraphy originally derived from the Chinese writing tradition. In marginal notes to draft versions of “Cheshire Cat Letters,” L. G. Hertz remarked that legibility was not necessarily the goal of Japanese calligraphy. He expressed amazement at the conjecture that historically, the less intelligible the Japanese character was, the more beautiful it was deemed, and that decreasing legibility was intended as a mark of exclusivity for an increasingly limited elite audience. It seemed that the higher forms of calligraphy were intended to be read only by a small group of connoisseurs. This was not, in Hertz’s view, the case with Western calligraphy where in the contest between “high‑class” aesthetic obscurity and “low‑class” readability (such as street signs), legibility won out.
Here are some examples of the difference between standard Japanese handwriting and the calligraphic style.
Standard
Handwriting
Semi‑Cursive (Calligraphic)
Full Cursive
(“More” Calligraphic)
KAI
unravel, solve
GAN
request
KOKU
country
Source: A Reader of Handwritten Japanese
by P. G. O’Neill, Kodansha International Ltd., 1984