NP Nobel laureate's speech online

[Doug Millison]

Gao Xingjian's Nobel Lecture may be of interest to some of you.

"[...] It is not the writer's duty to preach morality and while 
striving to portray various people in the world he also 
unscrupulously exposes his self, even the secrets of his inner mind. 
[...] Literature does not simply make a replica of reality but 
penetrates the surface layers and reaches deep into the inner 
workings of reality; it removes false illusions, looks down from 
great heights at ordinary happenings, and with a broad perspective 
reveals happenings in their entirety. [...]  As with a curse or a 
blessing language has the power to stir body and mind. The art of 
language lies in the presenter being able to convey his feelings to 
others, it is not some sign system or semantic structure requiring 
nothing more than grammatical structures. If the living person behind 
language is forgotten, semantic expositions easily turn into games of 
the intellect.  Language is not merely concepts and the carrier of 
concepts, it simultaneously activates the feelings and the senses and 
this is why signs and signals cannot replace the language of living 
people. The will, motives, tone and emotions behind what someone says 
cannot be fully expressed by semantics and rhetoric alone. The 
connotations of the language of literature must be voiced, spoken by 
living people, to be fully expressed. So as well as serving as a 
carrier of thought literature must also appeal to the auditory 
senses. The human need for language is not simply for the 
transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and 
affirming a person's existence.  Borrowing from Descartes, it could 
be said of the writer: I say and therefore I am. However, the I of 
the writer can be the writer himself, can be equated to the narrator, 
or become the characters of a work. As the narrator-subject can also 
be he and you, it is tripartite. The fixing of a key-speaker pronoun 
is the starting point for portraying perceptions and from this 
various narrative patterns take shape. It is during the process of 
searching for his own narrative method that the writer gives concrete 
form to his perceptions. [...]  To subvert literature was Cultural 
Revolution rhetoric. Literature did not die and writers were not 
destroyed. Every writer has his place on the bookshelf and he has 
life as long as he has readers. There is no greater consolation for a 
writer than to be able to leave a book in humankind's vast treasury 
of literature that will continue to be read in future times. [...] 
When writing is not a livelihood or when one is so engrossed in 
writing that one forgets why one is writing and for whom one is 
writing it becomes a necessity and one will write compulsively and 
give birth to literature. It is this non-utilitarian aspect of 
literature that is fundamental to literature. That the writing of 
literature has become a profession is an ugly outcome of the division 
of labour in modern society and a very bitter fruit for the writer. 
[...]

The entire lecture  is at 
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/2000/xingjian-lecture-e.html, 
also available in Swedish and Chinese.
-- 
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