Polyphony embodied: Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian's Writings [selected papers presented at the International Conference "Gao Xingjian: Freedom, Fate, and Prognostication"

Like artists, important writers defy unequivocal interpretations. Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, is a cosmopolitan writer, deeply rooted in the Chinese past while influenced by paragons of Western Modernity. The present volume is less interested in a general discussion on the multitude of aspects in Gao's works and even less in controversies concerning their aesthetic value than in obtaining a response to the crucial issues of freedom and fate from a clearly defined angle. The very nature of the answer to the question of freedom and fate within Gao Xingjian's works can be called a polyphonic one: there are affirmative as well as skeptical voices. But polyphony, as embodied by Gao, is an even more multifaceted phenomenon. Most important for our contention is the fact that Gao Xingjian's aesthetic experience embodies prose, theater, painting, and film. Taken together, they form a __Gesamtkunstwerk__ whose diversity of voices characterizes every single one of them.

Like artists, important writers defy unequivocal interpretations. Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, is a cosmopolitan writer, deeply rooted in the Chinese past while influenced by paragons of Western Modernity. The present volume is less interested in a general discussion on the multitude of aspects in Gao's works and even less in controversies concerning their aesthetic value than in obtaining a response to the crucial issues of freedom and fate from a clearly defined angle. The very nature of the answer to the question of freedom and fate within Gao Xingjian's works can be called a polyphonic one: thereare affirmative as well as skeptical voices. But polyphony, as embodied by Gao, is an even more multifaceted phenomenon. Most important for our contention is the fact that Gao Xingjian's aesthetic experience embodies prose, theater, painting, and film. Taken together, they form a Gesamtkunstwerk whose diversity of voices characterizes every single one of them.

Acknowledgments Content Illustrations Introduction Freedom and Literature Gao Xingjian’s Transcultural Aesthetics in Fiction, Theater, Art, and Film The Aesthete as Revolutionary: Saving Art from Politics The Silence of Buddha: Triangulating Gao Xingjian, Brecht, and Beckett Gao Xingjian’s Notion of Freedom Reading Gao Xingjian’s Treatment of Freedom in Soul Mountain and One Man’s Bible in the Sartrean Framework The Concept of Freedom in Gao Xingjian’s Novel One Man’s Bible Sex, Freedom, and Escape in Gao Xingjian’s One Man’s Bible Wild Man and the Idea of Freedom Toward an Aesthetics of Freedom Gao Xingjian Carefree: Of Mountains and Seas and Carefree as a Bird Tradition and Freedom: The Artistic World of Gao Xingjian and His Play Hades Multivocality as Critique of Reality: Fate and Freedom in Gao Xingjian’s The Man Who Questions Death Between Memory and Forgetting: Ten Years after Gao Xingjian’s Winning of the Nobel Finding Freedom and Reshaping Fate: An Exile’s Disentanglement from Obsession in Gao Xingjian’s Novels Fate as (Re)Visioning of the Self in Soul Mountain Trap Revisited: The Man Who Questions Death and the Tragedy of Modern Man Index of Works by Gao Xingjian Name Index Like artists, important writers defy unequivocal interpretations. Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, is a cosmopolitan writer, deeply rooted in the Chinese past while influenced by paragons of Western modernity. The present volume brings together for the first time a collection of essays on the themes of freedom and fate in the creative works of Gao Xingjian