Europe and its Dance Partners

Du Fu’s exile, Dante’s exile, and my own, comparatively modest, exile are all part of the same syntax: using a poem to convey extreme human suffering through extreme creative beauty.

The people of modern-day China need to learn from the relics of their past culture. If they are to breathe fresh life into Chinese culture they have to learn to push the boundaries, as this is where the opportunities and fountains of rebirth will be found. And it is to be hoped that the high price that China has paid will be worth it in the end.

In the ‘brave new world’ it is no longer enough for cultures to simply stretch as far as their historical and geographical conditions permit. Today it is necessary to have an active capacity for understanding another culture. I believe the driving force behind this understanding should not be curiosity, but the knowledge of one’s own needs in times of crisis.

The people of modern-day China need to learn from the relics of their past culture.

If it is true that China has still not emerged from the bloody shadows of Mao Zedong and the ineptitude of its nouveau riche has inevitably led to the country acting like a clown on the international stage, then it would be an absolute tragedy if Europe were to be pressurised by money to give up its own ways of thinking and get embroiled in this egotistical and cynical competition. As long as all the talk of human rights and democracy is nothing more than political correctness and is totally divorced from concrete actions, then we are facing a very sad reality. These empty phrases hide a yawning chasm which represents perhaps the biggest crisis of human civilisation.

Of course history has always also been a history of lies, but I have the impression that the liars have become even more cynical in their desire for profits and a fast buck. They not only feel no remorse about lying, they actually think it’s quite normal. Their logic is simple – if I don’t make a profit then someone else will. If we take the example of foreign firms who have invested in China, it is clear that they are profiting from the fact that China has cheap labour with no social security benefits, no union representation and no right to strike. It would be something of an exaggeration to talk about double standards here, because in truth there is only one standard – ruthless competition.

These empty phrases hide a yawning chasm which represents perhaps the biggest crisis of human civilisation.

In this respect, China has become a symbol of the crisis in international thinking which is much more serious than the economic crisis. Nowadays, everyone feels they are simply at its mercy. We stand and watch the decline without being able to do anything about it. It is not hard to recognise the extent of the problem, and one thing we can be sure of is that it is neither superficial nor temporary.

It breeds anger and hate, as has been shown all too clearly in the shootings carried out by Andres Brevik on the Norwegian island of Ytteroy and in the Molotov cocktails thrown by black children in the Tottenham area of London. If lies and profits mean that everything else is mere window-dressing (including most of what is considered to be art), then what is the point of our existence? And is there any point to literature?

As part of these discussions, there was also an exchange of views on history and traditions, such as the role of national consciousness or the Church during the Cold War and their influence on the present day. We agreed that the idea that the Cold War ended on a particular date is totally absurd, as I had already argued in my essay “Was uns der Kalte Krieg heute noch sagt“ ( “What the Cold War still has to teach us today”). Its significance goes way beyond just being a label for a historical era.

It stands for a situation which changes human character, so the fall of the communist parties does not automatically mean an end to this situation. Today’s global cynicism is also character-changing and we, as intellectuals, should not overlook the ideological consequences of this. I believe that, as writers, we would have been unable to have this kind of profound cross-cultural dialogue without our experiences of present-day crises.

Drinking without memory or speech from the bitter cup of history.

In a much wider context, I had a similar experience in 2002 when I led a series of discussions with the Arab poet Adonis. The result was quite fascinating. We were amazed to discover that the fate of creative people and thinkers was basically one and the same within both the Arab and Chinese cultures, despite the geographical distance between the two. On the inside, these countries are going through a complex process of cultural transformation, while on the outside their politics is becoming increasingly schematic. Whether in China’s ideological battles or the Palestinian conflict, moral concepts are being constantly reduced to mere slogans.

While the rapidly changing “brave new world” of the 21st century seems to be falling apart outwardly, it is somehow coming together again inwardly. Faced with the uncertainties of an ever-changing world, each culture is thinking first and foremost about how to redefine its own position. Indeed, it is right and proper that they should be aware of their own limitations when taking part in meaningful intercultural dialogue and should become an “active other” amongst the countless others. For me, active simply means being sensitive and aware.

I have learned from personal experience that I have not inherited anything from old China in a historically linear way. I can only create my idea of a living Chinese cultural tradition by developing my own thinking from a synthesis of different times and places and reinventing them in a creative way. This invisible “Chinese other” is certainly the biggest challenge that I face. In this respect, Europe should also be aware that the times of one culture having a claim to universality are long gone. The vocabulary of Europe and America which dominates the world is now little more than a spectre consisting of empty phrases that are often misused.

Today the problems of the world are also Europe’s problems; global reality is the very flesh and blood of its thinking. One could even say that the world has penetrated Europe and quietly gone about replacing Europe’s identity with its own. This hybridisation is going to continue, whether we like it or not. The difference is that only an “active other” can generate fruitful dialogue, while remaining passive will achieve nothing. The brave new world is a super-sized reality and evokes a new tradition made up of all-encompassing and independent thought.

Ideas are only of benefit to the whole of humanity if they are removed from the self-adulation of their own culture.

Literature would call it the “revolt of individual aesthetics”. It has to be individual because there are no groups. On a political level there are no longer rigid social models as was the case during the Cold War. And on a cultural level there is no longer one, universal culture. Here some people might talk of an unprecedented impoverishment of thought, but I personally believe that it is actually very rich! No-one needs to give up their own benchmarks for making judgements and decisions; they just have to test them against their knowledge and understanding of other cultures and then either revise or expand them. Our ideas are our convergence. They represent the lowest common denominator of various traditions, levels of culture and methods of expression.

It is not important what kind of art, politics or philosophy forms the object of our reflections or whether it is a question of accepting a particular religion. Ideas are only of benefit to the whole of humanity if they are removed from the self-adulation of their own culture and dare to go out and put their validity to the test. When I talk about individualism in thought I probably sound very “European”, but this could just as easily refer to one of the wonderful characteristics of the golden age of Chinese philosophy: of Laozi, Confuscius and Qu Yuan, who all lived long before the unification of China.