The Myth of Wu Tao Tzu – Sven Lindqvist

Lindqvist has long been one of the more interesting of the crop of modern travel writers covering the East and this book, The Myth of Wu Tao Tzu, is no exception so I thought it worth mentioning here as it’s recently been reprinted by Granta. It’s a fascinating meditation on the meaning of art and its link/separateness from the wider world. I have shared Lindqvist’s experience of feeling almost able to step into a piece of Tang Dynasty art. A couple of years ago I visited the National Palace Museum Digital exhibition at Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park where several works, similar to Wu Tao Tzu, were reproduced on plasma screens with touch screen technology allowing you to zoom in and out – the effect was to amplify the experience Lindqvist experienced of being able to step into a world through a work of art (I blogged about that here). However, of course, ultimately reality intrudes….

‘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.