Alice Li

The calligram is thus tautological. But in op­position to rhetoric. The latter toys with the fullness of language. It uses the possibility of repeating the same thing in different words, and profits from the extra richness of language that allows us to say differ­ent things with a single word. The essence of rhetoric is in allegory. The calligram uses that capacity of let­ters to signify both as linear elements that can be arranged in space and as signs that must unroll accord­ing to a unique chain of sound. As a sign, the letter permits us to fix words; as line, it lets us give shape to things. Thus the calligram aspires playfully to efface the oldest oppositions of our alphabetical civilization: to show and to name; to shape and to say; to re­produce and to articulate; to imitate and to signify; to look and to read…Pursuing its quarry by two paths, the calligram sets the most perfect trap. By its double function, it guar­antees capture, as neither discourse alone nor a pure drawing could do.