L’io, il sé, l’altro: essenza, esperienza e conoscenza secondo Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian is a Chinese-born (1940) exile writer, a French citizen since 1998, and a Nobel Prize winner for Literature (2000), but also a multifaceted contemporary artist and essay writer who stands as a globally respected intellectual. This paper aims to shed light on a specific part of his critical thinking, primarily expressed through the essays, that is the reflection on the “self”, as an ontological entity, as a gnoseological experience, and as an aesthetic phenomenon. Moreover, it attempts at showing the consistency of the polyphony in the texts, namely the explicit or concealed relationship with the Chinese heritage and with other linguistic and cultural codes.