Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjianis a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity.” He is also a noted translator, screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter. In 1998, Gao was granted French citizenship...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 January 1940
CountryChina
both chinese close grand link literature painting western
In the grand tradition, both Chinese and Western painting have a close link with literature,
beautiful spiritual literature
Literary revolution and revolutionary literature did not create a beautiful new world but instead divested literature of its basic nature, promoted violence, and, by resorting to linguistic violence, made a battlefield of this domain of spiritual freedom.
literature subservient
Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
views literature bitterness
In my view the time for rousing revolutionary literature has passed, because the revolution has already revolutionised itself to death and has left behind only bitterness and a sort of weariness, listlessness and even nausea.
literature moral ethical
Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.
art literature trends
When I came overseas, I realized that there are many ideologies and many trends, and it's also very hard to produce honest art and honest literature. I decided that I didn't want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because that's also a kind of pressure that doesn't allow absolute freedom. So I decided that I was only going to produce works that were satisfactory to me, and that meant not following any trends and being anti-ideological.
writing self literature
In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?
true-life literature fiction
It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.
yield literature starting
Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
mind
When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.
crushes experience grouping mass taught
Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass that crushes the individual.
Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.
lying trying alive
With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.
eye men names
If literature is to transcend political interference and return to being a testimony of man and his existential predicament, it needs first to break away from ideology. To be without "isms," is to return to the individual and to return to viewing the world through the eyes of the writer, an individual who relies on his own perceptions and does not act as a spokesman for the people. The people already have rulers and election campaigners speaking in their name.