L’érotisme comme oubli dans Le Livre d’un homme seul de Gao Xingjian

Abstract

Forgetfulness is not necessarily a lapse of memory. There exists a type of forgetfulness which has to do with a quest of knowledge. It is a happy or voluntary forgetfulness. Individuals or human beings are in quest of this type of forgetfulness when they find themselves “threatened” either by a sorrowful or atrocious past, when they feel pains to brood over a past event. This therefore creates in the mind of individuals a state of depression, making their conscience stricken with unhappiness and painfulness. The narrator in Gao Xingjian’s Le Livre d’un homme seul shows a strong willingness to forget about Chinese Industrial Revolution. In his determination to forget about the past, the narrator resorts to erotism and the company of women as an outlet. The following question can therefore be asked: what relationship does the writer establish between these two notions which are apparently distinct? How does he move from erotism to forgetfulness? This paper attempts to provide answers to these questions while questioning the notions of erotism and forgetfulness in order to bring out the relationship that the novelist establishes between these two worlds where everything seems to be opposed, one being psychic and spiritual; the other being sensual and physical.