GraphologyOldandNew

Today sciencific graphology is a good thirty years old.I With certain reser-
vations, it can undoubtedly be descri bed as a German achievement; and
1897,when theGermanGraphologicalSocietywas foundedin Munich,can
be deemed t he year of its birth. It is a striking fact t hat academjc science
still withholds recognition, even though this technique has been providing
p ~ s of the precision of its principles for the past three decades. To this
ay, no' German LUli versity has establi shed_a_chair for the interpretation of
handwriting. But it is worthy of nofe that one of die free coUeges, the
tessmg:Hochschule in Berlin, has now taken the step of adopti ng the
Central Institute for Scientific Graphology (under the direction of Anja
Mendelssohn).Evidently this fact has a lso been acknowledged abroad as a
mi lestone in the historyofgraphology. At any rate, theoldest living repre-
sentati veoft hisscience,Jules Cn' pieux-Jarnin,arri vedfromRouentoattend
t he openi ng of the institute.
2
We found him to be an elder ly, somewhat
unworl dlygentlemanwhoatfirstglancelookedlike a doctor. An important
practicaldoctor,thatis,rather thana pioneeringresearchcL And thiswould
also be anapt description ofCrepieux-Jami n and his disciples' position in
graphology. He inherited the mantle of bis teacher, Michon, who in 1872
had published his Geheimnis der Handschrift lSecret of Handwriting!, in
which the concept of graphology appears fOf the first time.
J
What teacher
and pupil have in common is a sharp eye for handwriting and a large dose
ofhealthycommonsense, in conjunctionwitha giftforingenious inference.
All of this shows to advantage in their analyses, which for theif part do
moreto satisfy the requirements ofpractical li fe than those ofa science of
character.The demandsofthe latterwere firstarticulated byLudwig Klages
in his fundamental worksPrinzipien de,. Charakterologie [ThePrinciples of
Characterology] and Handschrift lmd Charakter lHandwriting and Char-
Graphology Old and New . 9 ~
acterV Klages takes aim atthe so-called sign theory of the French school
whoseproponentslinked qualitiesofcharactertoquitespecific writtensigns
that they used as stereotypeson which toconstructtheir interpretations. In
contrast, Klages inter prets handwriting basically as gest ure, as expressive
movement. 10 hiswritings, there is no talk ofspecific signs; he speaksonly
of the general characteristics of wri ting, which are not restricted to the
particularformofindividualletters. Aspecialrole is assignedtotheanalysis
of the so-called for mal level-amode of i nterpretation in which all the
characteristic featuresofa specimen ofhandwritingaresusceptible toadual
evaluation--either a positive or a negat ive interpretation- and where it is
the formaJ level of the script that decides which of the two evaluations
should be applied in each case.Thehistory ofmodern German graphology
can be defin edessentiallybythedebatessurroundi.ngKlages' tlleories.These
debates have beenini tiated attwofocal points.RobertSaudekcriticized the
lack ofprecisionin Klages' findingsconcerningthephysiological featuresof
handwriting,as well as hi<; arbitrary preoccupationwithGerman handwrit-
ing style. 5 He himself has attempted to produce a more differentiated
graphological analysisofthe vari ous nationalscripts,onthe basis ofexact
measurements of handwriting moti on. In Saudek, characterological prob-
lems recede into tbe background; whereas in a second trend, which has
recentl y taken issue Witll Klages, theystandatthe center ofattention. This
view objects to hisdefinitionofhandwritingasexpressive movement. Max
Pulver and Anja 'tviendelssohn, its leading representati ves, are seeking to
create a space for an ideographic" imcrpretation of handwriting-that is
to say, a graphology [hat interprets script in tenns of the unconsciolls
graphic elements, the unconscious image fantasies, that it contains.
6
The
background to Klages' graphology is the philosopby of life of the George
circle, andbehindSaudek'sapproach wecandiscernWundt'spsychophysics'
whereas in Pulver's endeavors the influence ofFreud's theory ofthe uncon-
scious is undeniable. -
Published in the Siidrvestdetltsche RWldfunkzeilllng, November 1930. Gesamme[te
Sclniften, IV, 596- 598.Translated by Rodney Livingstone.
Notes
I. Benjamin was nimselfan amateur graphologist. See also his review ofthe Men-
delssohns' Der Mensch in der Hal1dsciJ ri(t, in this volume.
2.Jules Crepieux-Jamin (1858-1940)was tbe author of many graphological trea-
ti ses, incl uding L'ecriture et Ie uzractere (Handwriting and Character; 1892) ,
which wentt hrough numerouseditions and wasrransla red into many languages.
3.The abbe Jeall Hippol yte Michon (1806- 1861) published several studi es of
graphology, as well as work in other " borderzones" such as the psychology of
banditry.
ExcavationandMemory
'- I\,

has unmistakably pIau, that m' mo.yisnot an inSlmm, nt
forexploring the past, butrather a medi um.It is themediumofthat which
is experienced, just as the earth is the medi um in which ancient citi es lie
buried. Hewhoseeksto approachhisownburiedpastmustconducthimself
like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to ret urn again and
again to tb e same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over
as one turns over soil. For the "matter itself" is no more than the strata
whi ch yield their long-sought secrets onlyto the most meticulous investiga-
tion. That is to say, they yield those images that, severed from all earli er
associations, resideastreasuresin thesoberroomsofourlaterinsights-Lke
torsos in a collector's gallery. It is undoubtedly useful to plan excavations
methodically. Yet no less indispensable is thecautiousprobing ofthespade
in the dark loam. And the man who merel y makes an inventory of his
findings, while failing to establ ish the exact location of where in today's
ground the ancient treasures have been stored li p, cheats himself of his
richest prize. In this sense, for authentic memories, it is far less important
that the investigatorreport on them than that he ruark, quite precisely, the
site where he gained possession ofthem. Epic andrhapsodic in thestrictest
sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who
remembers, in thesamewayagood archaeologicalreportnotonly informs
LI S about the strata from which its fin dings originate, but also gives an
account of the strata which fi rst had to be broken through.
Writtenca.1932;unpu blishedin Benjamin'slifetime.Gesammelte Schriftetl, IV, 400-401.
Translated by RodneyLiVIngstone, ont he basis of a prior versio n byEdmund Jephcon.
OediPUS,orRationalMyth
It must have been shortly after the war that we heard about the English
stage experimentHamlet in Tails. Atthe ti me,thiswashighlycontroversial.
Here it perhaps suffices to note the paradox that the play is too modem to
be moderni zed. Of course, there have always been periods when similar
thingscoul d be donewithoutaconscious purpose in mind.It iswell known
that in the mystery plays of the Middle Ages, the characters appeared
wearingtheclothingoftheirtime, justas theydid incontemporarypictures. '
But we can be sure that in modern times such an approach must be the
product ofvery precise artistic reflection if it is to be anything morethan a
snobbish joke. And in fact it has been possibl e to observe how, in recent
years, major-or atleast thinking-artists have undertaken such "modern-
izations," in music and painting as well as in literature. The trend repre-
sented by Picasso's pictures around 1927, Stravil1Sky's Oedipus Rex, and
Cocteau's Orphee has beengiven thename"Neoclassicism. " Now,we have
mentionedthisnameherenotin ordertolinkGidewithtrus trend(hewould
undoubtedly object to an)' such procedure, and rightlyso), but to indicate
howartists ofvery differenr kinds came to divest Greek characters oftheif
aditi.onal clothing, or rather todisguise them by clothing them in modern
dress. In the first place, they could derive an advantage from harnessing
fi gures for their experiments who were at once familiar to their audience
and also remote from contempora ry concerns. For all these cases are in-
stancesofoutspokenconstructi vistexperiments-studioworks, so to speak.
In thesecondplace,nothingcould suit the agendaofconstructivism so well
as to set up in competition with the worksofthe Greeks, whosecanonical
authority as embodiments of the narural and organic had endured for