Literary Friends
According to Xiao's autobiography, he met the English novelist E.M. Forster, on 9 May 1941 at the Tagore Memorial Meeting. The event was organized by the English PEN Club. The two became very close friends and often exchanged letters. They disagreed with each other over the issue of homosexuality (Xiao was opposed to legalization).
The friendship, however, did not last. Xiao, fearing for the safety of his family during the Cultural Revolution, destroyed all the letters he had received from Forster and asked Forster not to contact him again. Because Forster might have assumed that Xiao was ignoring him, he burned some of the letters he had kept as a memento of their friendship.
Read more about this topic: Xiao Qian
Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or friends:
“Carlyle, to adopt his own classification, is himself the hero as literary man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other’s presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)