Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation By Gao Xingjian

living human feelings, then the impulse to create fiction as well as interest in reading it is lost, and this can only be the end of the road for fiction.

Fiction can evolve, and the possibilities for artistic expression can be continually explored, although there is an indispensable precondition, and that is the narration of fiction. Whether it was the traditional omnipotent narrator or a specific character narrating, as soon as the narrative language is activated, there must be a subject. An interesting phenomenon is that in any language of the world there are three basic pronouns, I, you, and he, so in other words, is the narrator “I” or “you” or “he”? And there is no other option. These three pronouns do indeed have the plural forms we, you, they. However, these are public words or a form of political speech within a collective, and the fiction writer does not assume the role of public spokesperson and does not have to speak on behalf of a certain collective, political party, class, race, or nation. The writer of fiction must return to the voice of the individual, so both plural pronouns and the absence of pronouns are of no practical use. For example, what is the subject in the sentence Xiayu le? Clearly, it is the sky that is raining, but in Chinese the subject is dispensed with, and in English or French the subject becomes a neuter general word. Furthermore, dou shuo such and such means “everyone says such and such,” so naturally it is impossible for unspecified individuals and general words to undertake the narration. In fiction there must be a choice amongst the pronouns I, you, he, even if the narration is from the perspective of a specific character. This is an additional limitation in the narration of fiction.

For the first-person pronoun I to be used in narration is a common narrative method. Fiction is not autobiography, although autobiographical fiction today is fairly popular. However, generally the first-person pronoun in fiction is not the author but a fictional character.

In the 1950s the French nouveau roman writer Michel Butor wrote a novel in the second-person pronoun you, and at the time it was a pioneering work. The second-person pronoun you could be either the protagonist or the reader. Having been placed in the situation of