The Calligrapher — Sū Shì 苏轼

Song literatus whose spontaneous running script shaped the literati ideal.

Song calligrapher (1037–1101), master of running script/regular script — Song poet-statesman and polymath whose expressive running script made personality, not rules, the point. Song dynasty

Cultural Story

骢 sets 马 beside 悤 and is glossed in the 《説文解字》 马青白杂毛也, "a horse with mixed blue-white hair." Its dappled grey coat made it a favorite mount for young officers in poetry.

Common words & phrases

• 青骢 gray horse
• 骢马 piebald horse
• 玉骢 fine horse

Read the story behind the character

A 骢马 is a piebald or grey horse; 青骢 the classic grey steed of knights, and 玉骢 a fine one fit for a lady's window. Historical dramas love the 骢 for its elegance. The word paints a horse both noble and gently colored.

Why this character belongs on skin

Some horses are painted rather than born—blue-white 骢, the piebald steed of Tang poetry, its coat mottled like moonlight through leaves. The horse radical gallops through the character; the rest of it is that specific, dappled glory. Poets loved this horse because its coloring made it a metaphor that rode: Du Fu and his contemporaries put the 骢 in verses about young officials riding out at dawn, frost on the saddle, the whole day unspent. There is something about a two-toned animal that speaks to anyone who has never been one thing—the dark patches and light patches of a real life, no color apologizing for another. The horse doesn't experience its own pattern as contradiction. It experiences it as speed. Ink this character for the piebald in you—the mixtures, the boths, the past you thought was a flaw and is actually a coat worth painting. Then mount up. Mottled, magnificent, entirely yourself, you were made for the long road that runs out ahead of you, shining.