CHINA SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
SEMINAR
Empire of the Written Symbol
Cecilia Lindqvist
In this presentation, I discuss the Chinese written characters and their significance in the lives of the educated classes during three thousand years. With the help of color photos, I present the early type of characters written on oracle bones and bronzes during the Shang and Zhou dynasties and then go on to illustrate the close connection between characters, calligraphy, painting, poetry - and even music.
My own interest in the Chinese script began in the 1950s as part of my studies in the Department of Art History at Stockholm University. I went to lectures given by the great sinologist Bernhard Karlgren and got caught. He never taught a character without also explaining how they were put together. He gave them a history and made them alive and comprehensible. He was then already well over seventy but his love for the characters was still fresh and exuberant. With apparently unquenchable enthusiasm he reeled of his analyses of characters until clouds of chalk dust whirled around the blackboard.
In 1961, I left Sweden for studies in China. There I became enchanted by the complex beauty of the Chinese calligraphy, an art of which I earlier didn't have any knowledge, and tried to learn as much as I could from the great collections in the Forbidden City and in the temporary exhibitions being on display in town.
During the same years, 1961-62, trying to learn to play the Chinese string instrument qin, my studies at the Research Institute for Qin made me aware of the close connection, not only between characters, calligraphy and classical poetry, but also with qin music. The music is often written to classical poems and seals. The calligraphy and the poems that often can be found at the bottom of the instrument, clearly shows how integrated all these arts are.
DETAILS
speaker:
Cecilia Lindqvist
affiliation:
independent scholar
expertise:
Chinese culture, history, language, society, music
resume:
Cecilia Lindqvist (1932) visited China for the first time in 1961, for a two-year stay to study Chinese at Peking University and guqin (an old string instrument) at the Research Institute for Qin. She continued her Chinese studies in Stockholm with Bernhard Karlgren, legendary sinologist and scholar, and in 1970 introduced Chinese as an ordinary subject in the Swedish middle school. She has been teaching at the University of Stockholm but also made many documentary films on China for Swedish television and written several books on Chinese life and culture. Her publications include Kina inifrån (Inside China), 1963; Vad skulle Mao ha sagt? (What would Mao have said?) , 1985, Tecknens rike (Empire of the written language) , 1989; and Qin: The story of the Chinese instrument called qin, and its significance within the lives of the educated classes, the music, poets, individuals and perceptions associated with the qin - not least how to live your life - and something of what I experienced when I became deeply involved in this, 2006.
e-mail:
lindqvist.cecilia@telia.com
website:
http://www.uitgeverijbalans.nl/boekboek/show/id=105948
date and time:
Thursday, 8 November 2007, 13.15h - 15.00h *
* please note the unconventional date and time
venue:
Lipsius building, room 011 *
* please note the unconventional location
* see this website for directions:
http://www.letteren.leidenuniv.nl/organisatie/adres_faculteit.jsp
language:
English
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