Illumination

For those of you who either came into contact with me over the past week, or happened to visit my facebook page, you will have known that this week I embarked on the ambitious (read: suicidally idiotic) task of starting and completing my calligraphy entry to the Royal Arts Show.

I started on Wednesday, I finished on Thursday. I delivered it today.

It was a somewhat intense process. To say the least.

First, the lines I had traced onto tracing paper to transfer onto the cardboard I would be using so that my lines of writing would be straight didn't actually transfer.

Then my frame was too narrow because the word 'legs' in the 11th line of the excerpt made that line too long. As it turns out, cutting 4mm of cardboard off of a frame using a Stanley knife is somewhat difficult.

And then I spent four hours on the first letter (look at the photos in the link http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=112812&id=1040680302&l=3d2a9c3c7c).

All this made me realise just how much it must have sucked to be one of the monks in the middle ages whose job it was to do this kind of thing all the time. If nothing else, they all needed girlfriends.

Although I must say, the text itself was rather fun. It's from Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

I rather admire Coleridge's style. Anyone who can be stoned off their face all the time and still manage to write good (if somewhat left-field) poetry must be doing somethign right. He used the word 'eftsoon', which immediately raised my regard for his writing.

Here are the first three stanzas:
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin ;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon !"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

Behold one of my favourite phrases: 'grey-beard loon'. Say it out loud a few times. It just sounds good.

Also from the first section, my favourite stanza, due to its rhyming pattern.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon-"
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.

I can picture Coleridge sitting in his opium den, pipe in one hand, pen in the other, in a bit of stupor going "Hmmm. Noon. Soon. Spoon. Balloon. Croon. Oh! I know: Bassoon!!!"

And then Coleridge uses my second favourite word (after 'propitious'). He writes 'Spake'.

For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, 'spake' is the intransitive perfect from of the verb 'to speak' which was was popular with the middle english poets (Chaucer uses it as if he had Tourrettes).

The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on the ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner,
"And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

There were also times when Coleridge was a touch uninspired when it came to rhymes, but we should probably cut him some slack, after all, he was stoned at the time.

Case in point:
"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-
Why look'st thou so?" -With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS

Thus...Albatross... I suppose it's the thought that counts.