“I regard literary creation as the individual’s challenge to society for the right to exist”

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It is no easy task to go through life without attaching oneself to any doctrine of religion, politics, or worldview, but the personal benefits of living as a multifaceted and self-contradictory individual outweighed the pressure to fall in line for our playwright Gao Xingjian. The philosophy that humans cannot and should not be filed into categories and therefore commodified is held tightly by Gao who, in his essay ‘Without Isms’, explains why in his opinion creating is the best way to combat this cultural phenomenon of needing people to fit into boxes. In China, the refusal to conform had very real consequences, and “by failing to conform, one is consigned to the ranks of those to be criticized, banned, exterminated, purged, killed, or destroyed’.  This was a lasting effect of the Cultural Revolution's suppression of deviant thinking which might spur creative work out of line with the communist ideals that were in place. Gao regards the end of creative freedom as death itself for art-makers, and chooses to exist as “a form of resistance against death by a life that is full of vitality”.

 

This detachment does not come without a deep reverence for aspects of existence that lie beyond human understanding, particularly language and religion. The exploration of the intersection of language and religion in Gao's writing bring to attention the ways that humans futilely strive to pin down concepts we cannot hope to understand. Linguistics as a study attempts to provide analysis to the concept of turning thoughts into sounds and sounds into meaning, when it is doubtful that any words can capture people's actual perceptions. This is why Gao deliberately breaks apart language in The Other Shore, and at the same time uses words from Buddhist scripture which transcend meaning and refuse to be defined altogether.

 

In accepting the limit of knowledge, and acknowledging the folly of letting one's actions be dictated by constructs of man, the catharsis of writing can be more holistically explored. I believe in writing Gao found himself able to introspect and reflect in ways that everyone should find a way to achieve for themselves in order to fuel constructive outlets.