People have emotions such as joy, anger, sadness, desire, love, disgust, fear, etc. Short-lived emotions, such as ecstasy, rage, and sorrow, are called "passion." More lasting emotions, such as happiness, sadness, resentment, boredom, longing, and depression, are called "state of mind." All these emotions can affect the writing style and posture of the calligrapher.
Emotions can be divided into two categories: positive and negative. Calligraphy works written under positive emotions can be taken as an example of cursive calligraphy master Huai Su's "Self-narrative Tie". He lived in the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century AD. He was a monk, but he did not abide by the rules and was addicted to alcohol. He would get drunk several times a day, so he was known as the Drunken Monk. This piece of wild cursive has 126 lines. It is a masterpiece in which he revealed his life experience and showed off his calligraphy skills when his brushwork was at its peak. The article lists verses praising his calligraphy skills by contemporary poets and celebrities, and conveys his bold and self-satisfied mood with romantic and unrestrained lines. The strokes are jagged and slanted, hooks and loops are coiled, and there are dangers and dangers. It is full of movement, rhythm and integrity. It is like a wonderful symphony. After listening to it, people can't calm down for a long time.
The poet Lu You (1125-1210) of the Song Dynasty has 9,300 poems, some of which have been handed down to this day in Huaisu Kuangcao's "Autobiographic Notes". There is a song called "Cursive Script Song", which talks about his experience of writing in a sad and depressed mood. Throughout his life, he was enthusiastic about serving the country and calling for resistance to foreign enemies. In his youth, he joined the army and went to the front lines of the resistance many times. However, his ambition was difficult to realize, and he was persecuted and ostracized by the capitulationists. When he was 57 years old, he lived idle in his hometown, feeling worried and angry. One day, he drank alcohol to eliminate the barriers in his heart. The main idea of ??this poem is: "I brew a lot of wine at home, but it can't eliminate my depression. Today, I took advantage of the wine to write cursive script. Suddenly, the world suddenly became narrow. The pen swept across the paper as I wanted, It's like receiving the power of wind and clouds. The flying posture of the grass characters is like a dragon fighting in the countryside, raising a bloody dust mist; it is also like a strange demon pushing down the mountain peaks and covering up the moon. I finished writing the words. The sorrow dissipated. I was so excited that I beat the bed and screamed, and my headscarf fell to the ground. At this time, I felt that writing on paper was not fun enough. It was best to write on the three-foot-high wall of the high hall to express the passion in my heart. and his interest in writing. "It is a pity that this cursive script has not been handed down. Thinking about it, it must be a masterpiece with flying and unpredictable strokes.
The above two calligraphers expressed their passion in cursive or wild cursive writing under the urging of Dionysus, and wrote wonderful works. Someone has explained this magical effect of Dionysus. It turns out that after people drink alcohol, the cerebral cortex is stimulated and mental stress disappears. He wants to break through the secular and artistic conventions, enter the freest, most open and most expressive state of his creative personality, and write artistic styles that he has never tried before.
Now let’s analyze the characteristics of cursive script. Cursive script is different from other calligraphy styles. The strokes are often broken and connected, or seem to be broken and connected. They are often uneven, scattered, intertwined with hooks and loops, and mixed with dry and wet strokes. The character shapes are upright and slanted as desired, and the characters are often connected, swayed, and intertwined. The lines are wide and narrow, curved and straight, parallel or non-parallel, creating an unstable and restless situation. These often correspond to the excited and restless mental rhythm of people under the control of passion or inspiration.
Cursive script (especially cursive script) is the freest of all calligraphy styles, and the rules of calligraphy and calligraphy of other calligraphy styles cannot restrict it. This situation can be compared with the situation of painting. The least freedom in painting is to paint portraits, because the most important requirement for painting portraits is physical resemblance; while painting landscapes, flowers and plants has less strict requirements for physical resemblance, and the painter can paint as he pleases. The former is equivalent to writing various other calligraphy styles. The latter is equivalent to writing cursive script. Although it also requires the written characters to be legible, it does not abide by the norms of various traditional Chinese characters and can change their line combinations. Therefore, it is extremely arbitrary and romantic. Sex, freedom. With this kind of liberation in cursive script, we can try our best to pursue novelty and beauty, and vent the author's passion and artistic courage.
Finally, among various calligraphy styles, cursive script is the one that best adds the characteristics of time art to the spatial art of calligraphy. The temporal artistic characteristics of other calligraphy styles are caused by the stroke order of the characters, that is, the direction in which the strokes advance and the order of the strokes when writing.
Therefore, a person who appreciates calligraphy cannot intuitively perceive this temporal characteristic at a glance. It can even be said that he does not pay attention to this temporal sequence at all and is not interested. The time artistic feature of cursive script is mainly caused by the connecting strokes that appear between the strokes within the characters and between the connecting words. Therefore, the viewers can immediately intuitively understand this time feature and arouse great interest. This obvious feature of time art is of course very popular with authors who write books driven by passion and inspiration, because they are in urgent need of using fast-moving pen and ink to express their extremely high-frequency souls.
At this point, it needs to be pointed out that although calligraphy works can express and vent the author's emotions when writing, they cannot be "all written in the heart". He cannot use certain dots, certain glyphs or other characters in his pen. The arrangement of a line of words directly expresses this emotion. The reason for this is that one stroke, one word, and one line cannot be the materialized form of a specific emotion. For example, what kind of strokes, what kind of glyphs, or a line of Chinese characters express happiness and the degree of happiness. Another stroke or Each word and line expresses sadness and the degree of sadness. If the author is feeling proud when writing, the works he writes will appear to be in a state of joy; if he is depressed, the works will appear to be frowning. This will never happen! Calligraphy is different from poetry. The so-called expression or catharsis of a calligrapher cannot be like that of a poet who uses a title like "Written because of..." or "Feeling because of..." and then expresses his thoughts in the poem. and emotions, poetry can do this, but calligraphy cannot.
For calligraphy creators, emotions are just a way to help them participate in the creative process, add interest to them, and achieve smooth and smooth writing. He will not try to express or record the specific feelings at that time on paper. That is not important and cannot be done. What appears in calligraphy works are at most fast-paced, obvious ups and downs, weird shapes and other formal changes that are difficult to accurately measure. This was satisfactory enough for him, because he understood very well that although calligraphy is not mute, it is slow in speaking. It is like "noble people speak less". It is good at using obscure artistic language to reflect people's soul. This kind of refraction is sometimes more moving than speaking outright.