A writing instrument is
not only a tool of writing but it is itself written
on - writes Sonja Neef in her Imprint and Trace: Handwriting in the Age of
Technology.
A writing instrument is
a tool, a device manufactured by historical processes of writing cultures, a
representative of writing technologies. It is a tool of remembrance, it writes
the past along with the future. A writing instrument describes a
history written by it as it is a
product of the history it describes.
Erasmus is portrayed by
Hans Holbein the Elder holding a reed pen: “Erasmus’s calamus is a Janus-headed
writing instrument. In a reverse direction it looks back to the ancient culture
of writing, in a forwards direction it sets its sights on a future that is in
the hands of writers to come.” Bequeathing his pen to Wilhelm Nesen, Erasmus
wrote a poem in praise of the calamus (1516):
Little reed pen I am, I
wrote so many
large volumes all by
myself, though I was
guided by the finger
joins of Erasmus.
The Nile produced me, Reuchlin
gave me to
Erasmus, and now,
honourably discharged,
I belong to Wilhelm. And
he preserves me as
sacred to the Muses and
dedicated to Apollo,
a dear token of eternal
friendship, lest I, who
made so many names known
to posterity,
names never to be wiped
out in the long
course of time, should
perish in obscurity.
“As a tool of
remembrance Erasmus’s hand draws its trace of writing in both temporal
directions, it blazes its trail for a journey through time and into the great
Western archive that as it were writes the past along with the future - or:
posterity."
From Sonja
Neef, Imprint and Trace Handwriting in
the Age of Technology, London (Reaktion Books) 2011: "The Calamus of Erasmus", pp. 81-83.