Cynthia Cruz on Hanne Darboven's Handwritten Prayers

At Hyperallergic, Cynthia Cruz explores German artist Hanne Darboven's handwritten, prayer-like work. Although rooted in visual art, Darboven "considered herself, first and foremost, a writer."

[...] In an interview with Miriam Schoofs in Flash Art, Darboven said, “I see myself as a writer, which I am, regardless of what other visual materials I may use. I am a writer first and a visual artist second.” This is apparent in her work which features, over and over, her own handwriting in which she transcribes the writing of others, including Homer’s Odysse, as well as work by Sartre and Heine. This project is reminiscent of the scribing of God’s words by monks. Performed in a dimly lit scriptorium in a monastery, this work was done for the sole purpose of creating an imprint of God’s words upon the soul of the writer. In his book Cassiodorus (1979), James J. O’Donnell writes:

[E]ach Psalm would have to be recited at least once a week all through the period of study. In turn, each Psalm studied separately would have to be read slowly and prayerfully, then gone through with the text in one hand (or preferably committed to memory) and the commentary in the other; the process of study would have to continue until virtually everything in the commentary has been absorbed by the student and mnemonically keyed to the individual verses of scripture, so that when the verses are recited again the whole phalanx of Cassiodorian erudition springs up in support of the content of the sacred text.

The very act of scribing, of copying down the words written by someone else, is devoid of interpretation. When writing by hand the words imagined and created by someone else, the monk must trust implicitly the work he is transcribing. The act can be likened to prayer; each word, when transcribed from the Bible, becomes, as he writes it, inscribed inside his own psyche: his own psyche becoming, in fact, another empty book upon which the words are being transcribed. Darboven’s practice was to scribe every day for hours — just as a monk would, as if in silent prayer. This act of scribing might also be likened to a Book of Hours, of making one’s own private Book of Hours. According to Phaidon Press’s Book of Hours (London: 1996):

The name “Book of Hours” derives from practice of reading certain prayers and devotions at the different hours of the day. An “hour” in the Middle Ages was defined as an inexact space of time to be allotted either to religious or business duties. The monastic orders specified certain prayers and rituals which were observed eight times a day and the purpose of a Book of Hours was to enable ordinary people to follow a similar program of daily devotion.

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