Dear Angel, 

I miss you. What are some books you’ve been reading lately, if any? 

I’m curious, have you ever read the Lantingji Xu (Orchid Pavilion Preface)? I’m confident that you must have, since it's one of the most famous works of Chinese calligraphy. It’s still widely circulated, but due to the loss of the original piece, there are debates amongst scholars as to whether the surviving copies are authentic or a sad reconstruction unfaithful to the original. I came across Wang Xizhi’s work while studying the different script types and was most drawn to grass script because visually, it’s striking and abstract. But it appears that the most highly coveted script by scholars is semi-cursive, which the Lantingji Xu was written in. Here’s the image I was looking at! 

 In observing it, I couldn’t help but notice the red stamps that appeared to accessorize the work. I wondered, what is their purpose? With some research, I learned that they’re called a collector’s seal, a tradition that began in the Tang Dynasty. From the China Online Museum, I read that “Owners or collectors of paintings or books will often add their personal or studio seals to pieces they have collected. This practice is an act of appreciation towards the work.” What stood out to me is this: “A seal of a famous collector or connoisseur would become an integral part of a work of art and could substantially raise its value.” Isn’t that fascinating? I don’t tend to see this practice in Western art where most people aspire to obtain a work of art in its initial, purest form, denouncing changes that alter the original. However, the principle of the collector’s seal is not to destroy the original painting balance, its composition. In spite of this ideal, it has proved challenging since everyone seeks to leave their own stamp on the art, thereby breaking its carefully constructed balance. 

I reflected on the tradition of the collector’s seal at length. Do you think it’s fundamentally rooted in greed? Is it not to display one's economic prestige as well as taste and knowledge in the arts? I figured such seals indicate that the collector’s attitude has less to do with the art itself and more about making their reputation brilliant and enviable. This is especially true when I observe calligraphy where stamps are carelessly placed, obscuring characters or design and disrupting the overall composition. Perhaps I’m developing a cynical perspective, but I believe that through the act of stamping their seal, collectors extend a work of art into part of their identity. 

On the other side, a more sentimental one, I asked myself: Is the collector’s seal a tradition of sharing and appreciation, a practice of love and learning? This, I believe, captures the spirit of a genre called creative criticism that I’m studying in class. We’ve conducted artistic criticism many times throughout our friendship, no? More than the times we’ve seen each other in person, I can trace the memories and shifts of our relationship through the different authors and artists we’ve discussed and written about, investigating their creative process through our own. 

Personally, I don’t think criticism can be defined solely as judgment or interpretation because I view them as products of the act itself. In my class it was defined as a “personal mediation on art that defamiliarizes it.” I agree with this, but if I were to summarize it myself, I would suggest that criticism is an act of cultivating a relationship with another and a practice of exploration through language. It must be realized in some form from the imagination and heart. Criticism must be actualized while to be critical is different. Creative sensibility is the lens formed by our private ideologies, lived experiences, and aesthetic judgments that we apply to situations; it is malleable, changing form with whatever we engage with. Criticism often assumes a physical form, a marked engagement with a creation that indicates one's beliefs and attitudes at the time. 

Most scholarly critics, especially the ones I’ve read in my class, don’t attempt to impose their revisions on texts, unlike reviews on Goodreads which are criticism in their own right, but celebrate them. Their opinions may not be all positive, but they are indeed investing in it, thereby deepening and making it more enamoring as you said. One of the best examples I can think of is Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s bicentennial translation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Do you remember the art we created together imagining Ivan’s character? 

I recall many moments from last summer, fragments of hazy memories. I remember the long, winding path that led from your doorstep down to the black lakes, the framed Gustav Klimt paintings above your parents’ bed, and that small desert scene where it felt like all the uncertainties between us converged. However, the clearest memories were the times we spent sitting down, reading and discussing at the little table in your kitchen. You introduced me to Dostoevsky, just as I introduced you to Dazai and Woolf, and it truly transformed my life. 

I’m sure we both agree that Pevear and Volokohnsky’s introductions can stand alone, captivating with their meditative prose and distinct style that differ greatly from the authors they preface. Are prefaces not an exemplar of criticism, in which authors impart their impressions of another for everyone to see, similar to a collector’s seal? Although Pevear and Volokohnsky are translators by trade, they are, to me, cherished critics, capable of interpreting Dostoevsky’s vision through the lens of their own experiences and understanding of the Russian and English languages. They write in their introduction, “The Brothers Karamazov is based on the spoken, not the written, word. Dostoevsky composed in voices. All the oddities of his prose are deliberate; they are a sort of “learned ignorance,” a willed imperfection of artistic means that is essential to his vision.” This particular comment was more on the technical side, but I believe it is essential to trusting the language and should be included in every edition. However, the line we both highlighted and underlined was this: “It is a comedy of style which, again paradoxically, in no way detracts from the realism “in the highest sense” that Dostoevsky claimed as the principle of his art. The seriousness of art is not the same as the seriousness of philosophy, or the seriousness of injustice. The difference, which Dostoevsky understood very well, has sometimes escaped his commentators.” Here, we see Pevear and Volokhonsky actually disagree with other critics which was interesting because they rarely do so explicitly. As such, this comment helped guide my reading of the book and greatly influenced my understanding of it. 

I find that memoirs or works resembling memoirs often pose a challenge for critics. In my concept of literary criticism, which relies on cultivating a relationship with the author, critics presented with fictionalized accounts initially face the conflict of whom they are forging this connection with— who, exactly, is the author they are befriending through the text? Can they genuinely invest and believe in the language presented? Susan Howe in My Emily Dickinson demonstrated a remarkably strong belief in Dickinson’s writing, a conviction so persuasive that it greatly altered people’s perception and reading of Dickinson. However, what about writers who themselves are uncertain about their narratives? I wouldn’t say that Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer is uncertain, but it certainly is diversified in form, lending itself to contradictions. I don’t think criticism necessarily entails wholeheartedly agreeing or disagreeing with the author but rather believing in something intrinsic to one's reading experience and the exploration of that experience through various artistic means, be it on the page or other forms of art. 

When we delved into No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, it seemed as if we possessed incomplete portraits of ourselves, perhaps something only each other could help complete at the time. Did it feel like that for you? I remember you expressed similar sentiments earlier this year. In the introduction to his translation, Donald Keene noted, “The temptation is strong to consider the book a barely fictionalized autobiography, but this would be a mistake, I am sure. Even if each scene of No Longer Human were the exact reproduction of an incident from Dazai’s life — of course this is not the case — his technique would qualify the whole of the work as one of original fiction.” Creative criticism often faces the risk of being perceived as unoriginal, extraction from the accomplishments of others. However, as Hayes explores in Watch Your Language, there exists a “style of styles” that distinguishes and recognizes a work through its technique. Hence, when we ponder the nature of criticism, it becomes difficult to regard it as a lens or a thought process. Instead, it emerges as the embodiment of thought, characterized by realization through technique and active engagement.

Here’s something I've been working on.

I hope to hear from you soon.

With all my love,

Hayley