'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print.
As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by Hesse's work, Lindqvist lived in China for two years, learning classical calligraphy from a master teacher. There he was drawn deeper into the idea of a life of artistic perfectionism and retreat from the world. But when he left China for India and then Afghanistan, and saw the grotesque effects of poverty and extreme inequality, Lindqvist suffered a crisis of confidence and started to question his ideas about complete immersion in art at the expense of a proper engagement with life.
The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu takes us on a fascinating journey through a young man's moral awakening and his grappling with profound questions of aesthetics. It contains the bracing moral anger, and poetic, intensely atmospheric travel writing Lindqvist's readers have come to love.
'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print.
As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by Hesse's work, Lindqvist lived in China for two years, learning classical calligraphy from a master teacher. There he was drawn deeper into the idea of a life of artistic perfectionism and retreat from the world. But when he left China for India and then Afghanistan, and saw the grotesque effects of poverty and extreme inequality, Lindqvist suffered a crisis of confidence and started to question his ideas about complete immersion in art at the expense of a proper engagement with life.
The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu takes us on a fascinating journey through a young man's moral awakening and his grappling with profound questions of aesthetics. It contains the bracing moral anger, and poetic, intensely atmospheric travel writing Lindqvist's readers have come to love.
The long overdue first UK publication of one of Sven Lindqvist's best-loved books - and the one for which he is most famous in his home country - an exquisitely written meditation on the author's relationship with art.
Sven Lindqvist was born in Stockholm in 1932. He has published essays, aphorisms, autobiography, documentary prose, travel and reportage, including: Bench Press, Desert Divers, Exterminate All the Brutes, A History of Bombing and Terra Nullius, all available from Granta Books. Lindqvist lives in Stockholm.
Turn to his depiction of the great Buddhist statues of Longmen and
you encounter some of the most graphic, original and sophisticated
descriptive writing on China. His visit to a Beijing bathhouse is a
small jewel of empathy. Just as you feel he is wandering too
convoluted a mystical labyrinth, he introduces a statement of cool
critical force... complex, shifting and endlessly self-reflexive -
Colin Thubron, The Times
Lindqvist has developed a literary form flexible enough for him to
travel in time as much as space, combining the personal and the
political, mingling historical investigation, travel and literary
reportage and - increasingly - fierce polemic - Stuart Jeffries,
Guardian
A writer of rare political engagement, [who], in order to convey
the complexity and urgency of his beliefs, created a wholly new
form of non-fiction. Philosophy, travel, memoir, essay, aphorism
and polemic are all interwoven in his works - Stuart Kelly,
Scotsman
This accessible mix of travel-writing and memoir takes Lindqvist
from Sweden to China to pay homage to the Chinese artist who legend
has it stepped into the very mural he had just painted and
disappeared - Lesley McDowell, Sunday Herald
Necessary and transformative... Lindqvist is a master-conjurer,
creating a world in which dreams and reality are intermingled and
where the line between fantasy and fate is blurred. His prose is
spare, flinty, but beautifully balanced and packed with detail...
Once you've stepped into Lindqvist's world, things will never look
the same again - Gavin Francis, author, Empire Antarctica
A lyrical, but hard-hitting, examination of the ways in which we
use art as escapism - Arminta Wallace, Irish Times
It smoulders with fury at man's inhumanity... Flinty, direct and
utterly original - Gavin Francis, Books of the Year, Scotland on
Sunday
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