The sublime writer and the lure of action: Malraux, Brecht, and Lu Xun on China and beyond

In this project I analyze the life and works of three writers, André Malraux, Bertolt Brecht, and Lu Xun. These writers lived and wrote during the period of the two World Wars, when their personal and national identities were in crisis. Their search for new identities brought them to the realm of the other: while the two Western writers used China in their writing, the Chinese writer Lu Xun advocated that his nation learn from the West. However, for all three writers, the divide between the self and the other had to be and was overcome. What distinguished them from a long list of writers, who dealt with the China/West encounter in their writing, is the fact that they sought, instead of pitting China against the West, to combine the two creatively and look for redemptive values beyond the binary-driven world. The conclusions in the works analyzed here suggest to us that, to varying degrees, they succeed in their transcendence. However, their choice to move away from this transcendental world (all of them stopped creative writing and devoted their energy to political work later in their lives) leads us to suspect that one must return to the world of binaries in order to live. My conclusion is that it is the combination of metaphysical detachment (contemplation) and physical attachment (action) that makes life worth living.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-194)