Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation By Gao Xingjian

transcends practical benefit. The writer uses a third eye that overrides the self, and it can be called an intelligent eye. In other words, it is awareness, a form of lucid cognition. It is of course subjective, but it does possess an aesthetic filter. Through such a viewing, what emerges is beautiful or ugly, noble or poetic, tragic or comic, ridiculous or absurd, lofty or despicable, laughable or hateful, and gives rise to sentiments such as pity or sympathy, grief or happiness, and even scorn and humour. The conditions of human existence are viewed differently from writer to writer, and a myriad of portrayals is possible, ranging from Balzac’s human comedies to Kafka’s modern allegories and Beckett’s absurdist plays, or written as Proust’s paradise lost or Eliot’s waste land. This subjective aesthetics is also manifested as an artistic form that is totally the writer’s creation; it is sublimated by passing through the writer’s subjective filtering lens.

Literary creation is actualised during the aesthetic process. Aesthetic feelings differ from person to person, and each writer brings unique colourings that are related to family background and life experiences, upbringing, personality, and temperament, as well as to psychological state during creation, all of which are infused into the work.

The writer converts subjective experiences of an individual into a work, although critics of later generations may often refer to him or her as a mirror of the times or as a spokesperson for the national culture. However, what is interesting about the writer and the work itself is not the characteristics of the times or the imprints of a race. The works left by writers of any age are unique, being the works of the individual. Moreover, the works cannot be duplicated because the creation of literary works is highly serendipitous. That such works are widely referred to as the products of an age or a race is grossly inaccurate; they can only be referred to as special cases that occurred by chance in a particular race at a particular time. It is fortuitous that a particular nation in a particular age actually produces such writers and such works, that a solitary traveller has left a series of indelible imprints for that particular race at that