Walter Pall Bonsai Adventures: December 2017

The importance of proper handwriting

In Germany we have this Institute of Adult Education in every town. Regardless of age or former education one can study such things as languages, music, painting, pottery, astronomy, philosophy – endless offers of education for very little money but with qualified teachers.

I took a class called „Poetry“. The instructor was a man who came from Italy where he was a poetry legend. In the beginning the man spoke five minutes about the history and importance of poetry and the immense importance of proper technique. Then he handed out a blank piece of paper and a pencil to everyone. „Write a poem of twelve lines“ he said. There were a couple dozen folks in the room, female and male, old and young beginners advanced – all sorts. After 30 minutes the poems were collected. The master took the first one and said „I cannot read this terrible handwriting, do it again.“ Then about the next one he said „very bad handwriting you have, again“. After glancing over the rest he decided to teach proper writing for the rest of the lesson.

In the following week I cam back only to find that abut a third of the original students were present. Same thing - „Write a poem of twelve lines“. We all tried very hard to concentrate on handwriting. I had practiced my writing over the weekend and thought that it was pretty good. Anyway, the master found many faults again on my handwriting and, of course, also on the rest of the class. Only once he was kind of happy and briefly spoke about content – he changed some word, but we could not understand why.

In the third week I came back and found myself to be the only student of poetry left. Same procedure. I wrote my twelve lines and concentrated a lot on my writing. He looked at it for a while, changed a few words, shuffled a bit and indeed the poem seemed to be better to me, at least different. He said „Now you have started to master the most important thing necessary to write good poems“. Then he went on to criticize my spelling and syntax skills. He made it clear to me that he planned to concentrate on this for the rest of the term.

I never went back and the master, I heard, left town disappointed and vowed never to come back to these ignorants who had no talent for poetry and no will to achieve.

I gave up poetry after this.

What has this to do with bonsai?