The Art of Poetry
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
A language expressed in ideograms results in a poetry that is more art than music.
--Fosco Maraini. Meeting With Japan. p 255.In our written language we are principally concerned with meaning and pronunciation. The quintessence of language is poetry, which approaches song, music; western poetry is composed essentially to be recited. But a language written ideographically is concerned with three things: meaning, sound, and appearance. When it ascends to poetry it tends to become rather the sister of painting or architecture, the latter being understood as the art of spatial relations. Chinese poetry is written essentially to be seen; it penetrates to the mind by way of the eyes.
