Balancing Brookner and Gao

Think of these as segmented proofs, through the use of auxiliary lines, literary lines that is, as I try to absorb the colloidal suspension of literature: or how I balance my love of Anita Brookner with my complete and utter confusion with Gao Xingjian, and what difference does it make? I still think you should read both, although one means far more to me than the other.  Just read them.  Read others.  Read on.


From Anita Brookner's The Bay of Angels:

I had seen the relief on the faces of those visitors as they left, the smile fading, the nod of recognition to others in the same boat.  Only the following day would restore them to themselves. 

The company of the able-bodied would reassure them once again that nature was on their side, and if nature needed a little help from time to time, needed to be postponed, or relegated to a dark corner, there was no harm intended. Surely it was more honourable to joke and to encourage than to case oneself, weeping, at the feet of a parent now in ruins?

From Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain:

The flying eaves curling upwards are lines of pure simplicity and the majestic forests on the mountain behind soundlessly sway in the night breeze.  Suddenly the myriad things turn silent and the sound of pure pipes can be heard, serene and flowing, then abruptly vanishing.  Then, beyond the gates of the temple complex,the noisy surging of the river under the stone bridge and the soughing of the night wind all seem to be flowing from my heart.

 From Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac:

He was a man of few words, but those few words were judiciously selected, weighed for quality, and delivered with expertise.  Edith, used to the ruminative monologues that most people consider to be adequate for the purposes of rational discourse, used, moreover, to concocting the cunning and even learned periods which the characters in her books so spontaneously uttered, leaned back in her chair and smiled.  The sensation of being entertained by words was one which she encountered all too rarely.  People expect writers to entertain them, she reflected.  They consider that writers should be gratified simply by performing their task to the audience’s satisfaction.

   “This life you advocate,” she queried, “with its low moral standards.  Can you recommend it?  For others I mean.”
   Mr. Neville’s smile deepened.

   “I daresay my wife could.  And that is what you are getting at, isn’t it?  Do I tolerate low moral standards in other people?”
   Edith nodded.
   He took a sip of his wine.
   “I have come to understand them very well,” he replied.
   Well done, thought Edith.  That was a faultless performance.

    “You cannot live someone else’s life.  You can only live your own.  And remember, there are no punishments.  Whatever they told you about unselfishness being good and wickedness being bad was entirely inaccurate.  It is a lesson for serfs and it leads to resignation.  People feel at home with low moral standards. It is scruples that put them off.”

   “You are a good woman,” he said.  “That is all too obvious.”
   “How is that obvious?” she asked.
   “Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive.   Bad women never take the blame for anything.”

From Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain:

   You realize that the childhood you have been searching for doesn’t necessarily have a definite location.  And isn’t it the same with one’s so-called hometown?  It’s no wonder that blue chimney smoke drifting over roof-tiles of houses in little towns, bellows groaning in front of wood stoves, those translucent rice-coloured little insects with short forelegs and long hind-legs, the campfires and the mud-sealed wood pail beehives hanging on the walls of the houses of mountain people, all evoke this homesickness of yours and have become the hometown of your dreams.
   Although you were born in the city, grew up in cities and spent the larger part of your life in some huge urban metropolis, you can’t make that huge urban metropolis the hometown of your heart.

   Perhaps because it is so huge that within it at most you can only find in a particular place, in a particular corner, in a particular room, in a particular instant, some memories which belong purely to yourself, and it is only in such memories that you can preserve yourself fully.  In the end, in this vast ocean of humanity you are at most only a spoonful of green seawater, insignificant and fragile.

Brookner, Anita.  The Bay of Angels, New York: Random House, 2001.

Brookner, Anita.  Hotel du Lac, New York: Random House, 1984.

Gao, Xingjian.  Soul Mountain, New York: Perennial Books, 2001.