The Dao of writing: transcultural literary identity in Gao Xingjian's novel Soul Mountain

Abstract The act of choosing the language(s) in which one expresses oneself, or the decision to cross  boundaries between  languages, is closely related to  one’s identity. If this is considered in the context of Japanese literature, Japanese authors like Kyoko Mori and Yoko Tawada started writing in other languages in the 1990s. Around the same time, non-Japanese writers, such as Levy Hideo and Arthur Binard, started publishing works written in Japanese. While this crossing of the Japanese language boundary in both directions has been taking place, one could also find some authors who chose not to use one language, but decided to mix several. This is called bilingual literature, where the authors use more than one language within the same text, often without translation, such as in the case of Shishosetsu from left to right by Minae Mizumura (1995) or Chorus of Mushrooms (1994) by Hiromi Goto. Both these writers mix English and Japanese languages in the text, the former novel having been published in Japan and the latter in Canada.  This type of work is unique, since what is transmitted, which could be considered a gap between two languages or cultures, or the disturbing sense of not being able to understand the complete text, prevents translation, at least into the “second” language used in these novels. It might also suggest what these authors consider to be  untranslatable due to either linguistic or cultural distance or both.  In the current study, the language and cultural hybridity of the above-mentioned works of Mizumura and Goto will be analysed partly in relation to the concept of translatability in translation studies

World Humanism(s), the Divine Comedy, Lao She\u27s 灵的文学与佛教 ( Literature of the Soul and Buddhism ), and Gao\u27s Soul Mountain

In her article World Humanism(s), the Divine Comedy, Lao She\u27s 灵的文学与佛教 ( Literature of the Soul and Buddhism ), and Gao\u27s Soul Mountain Letizia Fusini analyzes the Lao She\u27s and Xingjian Gao\u27s conceptions of literature as an activity concerning the realm of the spirit. Fusini utilizes Dante\u27s Divine Comedy for comparison between the literary ideals pursued by the two Chinese writers and regards Lao She\u27s and Gao\u27s humanist and non-political approach underlying their respective notions. Considering Lao She\u27s call for the emergence of a Chinese Dante (1941), Fusini contends that China might have found its own Dante in Gao who seems to have shared the same destiny of the exiled Florentine poet. Although Lao She ascribed to the Buddhist clergy the task of creating a Chinese literature of the soul modeled on the Divine Comedy, Fusini argues that Gao might have fulfilled this task without resorting to any religious frameworks, but to a personal, intense, and profoundly Chinese spirituality