As published in PN Review #137, 27:3 (Jan-Feb2001) 28-32, with minor spelling corrections.

An earlier version of this essay (without footnotes & the last section on Gao Xingjian's One Man's Bible) was published in Quadrant. 44:4 (2000) 54-57.

And was anthologised in: Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol. 167, ed. Jeff Hunter, Gale Publishing, (2003) 200-204.

 

 

English translations of Gao Xingjian's works discussed in this essay include:

The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian. Translated by Gilbert C.F. Fong, The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong (1999)

Soul Mountain. Translated by Mabel Lee, HarperCollins, Sydney (2000)

One Man's Bible. Translated by Mabel Lee, HarperCollins, Sydney (2002)

 

Further resources on Gao Xingjian, including samples of Gao's ink paintings can be found online at:
The Centre for Translation and Comparitive Cultural Studies
of Warwick University.

The link below will open their page on Gao in a new window

Resources regarding Gao Xingjian

Occasionally there appears an individual who has the courage not to represent, or to identify with, any group whatsoever. Gao Xingjian has been described as the leading dramatist of avant-garde Chinese theatre, an author who has forged new paths in Chinese prose writing; and a painter of international repute; yet, although such descriptions aim to portray his activities in complimentary terms, they fail to capture the individual. The paradox of course is with the nature of language whose primary function is to categorise: once we have categorised we stop considering the individual as individual. But language is a supple medium, often a great deal more supple than our own thinking.

A writer-artist living in Paris since 1987, Gao Xingjian was born in China in 1940, although his earliest recollections are of fleeing the invading Japanese forces, his upbringing was exceptionally liberal. The son of an amateur actress and a bank employee, he was encouraged to paint, write and play the violin from an early age. At seventeen he went to the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute, majoring in French language and literature, while developing his interest in traditional Chinese theatre alongside Western modern theatre; he read Stanislavsky, Chekov and Brecht and continued to paint and study modern Western art. At the height of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Gao Xingjian had to destroy all his early writing, a trunkful of manuscripts which included several novels, articles on aesthetics and some fifteen plays. Sent to the countryside for 'rehabilitation' for six years, he continued writing in hiding, burying his texts to avoid detection. They too are irredeemably lost.

With the easing of Sino-Western relationships, he was recalled to Beijing in 1975 to work as a translator on the French edition of China Reconstructs. Then, while accompanying the Chinese writer Ba Jin to France in 1978 as interpreter, Gao Xingjian was able, for the first time, to see Western oil paintings in the original. The experience had deep repercussions.

Realising that his own work in oil painting was a pale reflection of what can be achieved in the medium, he abandoned Western techniques and returned to working with Chinese ink on rice paper. His abstract paintings exploit all the gradations that Chinese ink is capable of, suffused with an eerie luminosity that permeates into the darkest shadows. Many of the works can be read as inner landscapes that go beyond the figurative towards a vision, a state of mind. A single dab of the brush heavy with ink suggests a presence in a desolate expanse. Zen is a term often employed when describing Gao Xingjian's paintings in which the human presence is distinct but somehow detached from common reality. In a brief outline of his thoughts on painting, he concludes:

If the self-expression of an artist becomes the direct expression of self, then one's art will be a mess. As the self (or ego) is a chaotic mass, or a black hole to begin with, unless an artist exercises self-knowledge and removes himself for dispassionate observation of the world (including the self), then what is there to see?
     More than self-expression I see art as a case of self-purification --- observing with a pair of somewhat sober eyes the ever-changing world and one's own mainly unconnected self. And although he may not understand the riddles of life, the artist can leave behind a surprise or two.[i]

In his writing Gao Xingjian maintains the same stance as in his painting. Since he had been forced to destroy the literary output of some twenty years, it was not until 1980 that one of his texts was published, a novella entitled Stars on a Cold Night. This was followed in 1981 by another novella, short stories and a booklet, Preliminary Exploration into the Techniques of Modern Fiction which caused a major polemic in the Chinese literary world by challenging the social realism that was the hallmark of Chinese literature and art under Mao. The authorities condemned the work and henceforth Gao was to be under surveillance.

Rather than the Western concept of a stream of consciousness, Gao opted for a stream of language in which inner and outer realities criss-cross each other, in this way, the process-of-being is brought to the fore, not only through fantasies, dreams and emotions but also through the interaction with reality as reviewed by memories. A narrative flow is retained but without adhering to fixed plots.

In June of 1981 Gao Xingjian joined the Beijing People's Art Theatre and wrote The Bus Stop (Chenzhan[ii]). Although the play did not have an ideological stance, shifts in the political climate made its production inadvisable, and so Gao wrote Alarm Signal (Juedui xinhao) based on a story by Liu Huiyuan. The choice of the theme was probably influenced by self-censorship: as Gilbert Fong notes in his introduction to The Other Shore, the play 'is a rather didactic prodigal son story --- an attempted train robbery is thwarted by one of the villains who eventually realizes his mistaken ways'. In form, however, its use of flashbacks, disjointed time sequences and innovative lighting and sound techniques made Alarm Signal the boldest experimental play ever staged in China at the time.

Although the authorities reacted with suspicion and threats of official sanctions, the public success of the play encouraged the staging of The Bus Stop in 1983. Run as a series of 'rehearsals' for internal viewing by audiences restricted to theatrical circles, it was preceded by The Passer-by,
[end p. 28] a short play by Lu Xun, of whom Gao Xingjian wrote: 'It was a misfortune for literature that the writer Lu Xun was crushed to death by the politician Lu Xun. Clearly, for Lu Xun it was not necessarily a misfortune but it may have been a source of regret.'[iii]

The Bus Stop, subtitled A Lyrical Comedy Without Division of Acts, takes place at a suburban bus stop. Transformed into the Silent Man, the Passer-by joins the queue. The story-line is simplicity itself:

[…] while a cross-section of Beijing society waits foolishly for buses that never come or never stop, the Silent Man sets off alone on his arduous journey. Skillfully employing the liveliest Beijing slang to be heard on stage since Lao She's Teahouse, Gao Xingjian satirizes the passivity, vacillation and superficiality of key types in 1980s society, including a young hoodlum from the suburbs, a housewife preoccupied by the rising cost of food, a young woman fearful of growing too old to attract a husband, and a jovially corrupt factory boss. As the play reaches its climax, surreal effects are created by disco lights and frantic music. After endless argument (introducing the first polyphonic episode on the Chinese stage), the characters in the queue agree to walk into town, but when the stage lights darken, they are still irresolutely in place.[iv]

When news of the play reached party officials a further series of 'rehearsals' was ordered for the purpose of criticism. The attacks were virulent, with Gao being labeled as a spiritual pollutant. Fearing the worst from the 'Anti-Spiritual Pollution Movement' Gao went into exile by traveling the mountains of south-western China, an area famed in ancient times for shamans and hermits.

Once he was assured that the political climate in Beijing had changed for the better Gao returned there in late 1984 and wrote Wild Man (Yeren), a play of epic proportions that spans some eight millennia and incorporated themes from cosmology, mythology and the folk and shamanistic traditions of southern China. In his preface to the play Gao writes:

If Western-style theatre is to succeed in China, it must blend with the traditions of Chinese theatre. In Wild Man my aim is the rejuvenation of performance techniques associated with the distant roots of Chinese theatre, rather than adherence to established dramatic technique. Some modern thinkers, unduly concerned with the rationalization of art, have lost the sensitivity that originally dwelt within them. In essence, the nature of drama is not to serve society but to stimulate both audience and performers alike. The loss of its utilitarian aims will bring about the self-liberation of art.[v]

Considered politically innocuous, the play had tremendous success and, at Fong notes, 'represented the pinnacle of the development of experimental drama in China at the time'.

It is a sad irony that Gao's next play, The Other Shore (Bi'an), with which the present selection of the same title opens, was to prove, in many ways, to be prophetic

Written in early 1986, its title makes direct reference to a Buddhist metaphor, to reach the other shore is to become enlightened; or, to use Gao's words, 'It is destined that the individual will never be able to acquire the ultimate truth, which is known as God or the other shore.' The play's location is 'from the real world to the non-existent other shore', actors play in pairs with ropes, tugging and pulling, leading and being led, resisting and co-operating, soon the ropes are disregarded and the actors communicate and establish relations with imaginary ropes. Tired of the game with its conflicts, entanglements and fragmentation, the crowd of actors is spurred on to cross the river and reach the other shore. Once there they attempt in vain to speak, Woman teaches the Crowd language, while Man emerges from the Crowd to ask Woman who she is, the Crowd explores the darker side of language and in their frenzy kill Woman. As Man reprimands them and himself, the Crowd attempts to make him their leader. Notwithstanding the fact that he refuses, the crowd continues to follow him. A series of independent narrative segments ensues. The Crowd finds a leader who makes fools of them; meanwhile, Man seeks to understand and explore but is constantly harangued by the Crowd which will not admit his independence. Towards the end of the play, after Man has asked various people what they are looking for, the Crowd does not believe that he doesn't know what he is seeking or that he's not seeking anything in the first place. When he says 'I'm not going to look for anything any more. I just want to go over there', the Crowd refuses to let him go his own way.

In late 1986 yet another political shift brought about an Anti-Liberalism campaign and it became obvious that Gao would not be allowed to have his plays performed in China. Taking the unfinished manuscript of a novel he had begun working on since the summer of 1982, Gao left Beijing in late 1987 and took up residence in Paris.

Once in Paris Gao was able to earn his livelihood through writing and painting, whereas in China, as he was not designated an 'official painter', he had not been able to exhibit or sell his paintings except through unofficial channels. From then on he was able to exhibit regularly and his plays were staged in Europe, Hong Kong, Taiwan and in spring 1989 Chiang Ching directed Gao's Variations on a Slow Tune (Sheng sheng man bianzou), based on the poem 'Grief beyond belief' by Li Qingzhao (1084-c.1151), China's greatest woman poet) at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The motifs of the poem were interpreted through the movements of a dancer accompanied by a monologue set to music.

Following the brutal repression in Tiananmen Square later that same year, Gao was asked to write a play based on the events. He wrote Taowang; variously translated as Escape, Absconding or Exile. The play pleased no one. In the West, the commissioning theatre asked for the play to be partially rewritten, Gao withdrew it and paid for the translation. In China the authorities reacted by publishing the play accompanied by a caricature and a vicious attack on its author. His allotted flat in Beijing was confiscated and the security police took all the papers that were left there.

Set in the basement of a disused warehouse, the play opens with a young woman and a young man taking refuge there after the tanks were ordered into Tiananmen Square. Although total strangers they are drawn physically close. A middle-aged man, also seeking shelter, comes into the basement. Full of ideological zeal, the young man begins to
[end p. 29] discuss the situation but cannot understand the middle-aged man's refusal to belong to any faction or doctrine: that he is a bystander, free to choose whether to become involved or not become involved, that he chooses to escape from the collective will, that he has no need of any isms.

Taowang was first staged only in 1992 in Sweden and Germany and broadcast by the BBC the same year. The reaction of the Chinese authorities, of some Western academics and of pro-democracy Chinese, albeit not all to the same degree, were on a par. Like Man, the main protagonist of The Other Shore, Gao was told that he should not, could not, must not, criticise the collective will as such. To belong to no faction whatsoever is to arouse the enmity of all factions. In an essay of 1990 titled 'Bali suibi' ('Jottings From Paris') Gao gave what can be interpreted as a direct answer to many of his critics when he wrote:

The writer is not the conscience of society nor is literature the mirror of society. The writer flees to the margin of society: he is a non-participant, an observer who looks on dispassionately. There is no need for the writer to be the conscience of society for there has long been a surplus of social conscience. The writer simply uses his own conscience and knowledge to write his own works. He has responsibility only to himself.[vi]

Throughout human history, when an individual runs into opposition with the prevailing ideology, going into exile has been a real option even when it is not actually forced upon one. In China the tradition of self-exile goes back to ancient times, but living in seclusion, far away from the centers of power, not only assured one's survival, it was also a means of pursuing the path that leads to the square inch within the breast --- sublime image of the heart/mind.

In 'Without Isms' an essay outlining his opposition to any form of indoctrination, be it political, aesthetic or philosophical Gao Xingjian writes:

[…] At birth a person is without isms but after birth all sorts of isms are forced upon him and to discard these later is not a simple matter. People are permitted to convert from one ism to another but they are not permitted to be without isms […][vii]

In 'Without Isms' Gao does not advocate an eradication of isms but simply the right not to adhere to any. The brand of individuality that he seeks for himself is not an egocentric claim to superiority or god-like status for itself; his concern is primarily to delve into the inner soul, to explore what it is to be an individual human being. In his thoughts on painting he states that 'Art attempts to reach a realm that is unattainable in reality. Otherwise, why go through all the trouble?'

Ultimately, the bedrock of the individual is the individual. And it is precisely the voice of the one thrown back onto himself that pervades all Gao Xingjian's work. Unlike much of post-Mao Chinese literature, which has been called scar-literature, Gao's output is not a retrospective of the painful experiences of the past. It is a banishment of the self to find the self.

To transpose the removal of the self to observe the self into a stage language, Gao Xingjian developed a specific mode of acting that encourages actors to view their role from three standpoints. This tripartition of the actor: the self, the actor and the role, is brought to the surface and no attempt is made to disguise the fact that a play is a play. The dialogue between audience and actor is highlighted via the neutrality of the actor who must show that he is conscious that he is acting and makes the audience aware that they are watching a play. Thus the 'theatricality' of the medium is brought to the fore and no attempt is made to fool anyone regarding the illusion of the reality being acted out on the stage.

One of the means that Gao employs to implement the neutrality and purification of the self is the use of pronouns. Throughout his plays actors address their roles by referring to themselves as you or he. The use of a second or third person pronoun never fails to surprise or to remind both audience and actor that one is watching a play. The directness and simplicity of Gao Xingjian's language prevents the device from striking an artificial cord. In his novel, Ling Shan --- Soul Mountain (translated into English by Mabel Lee and published by HarperCollins Australia in July 2000), Gao employs the same idea in a narrative context with artful dexterity. The novel is boldly experimental and yet never alienates the reader. In an essay on modern Chinese and literary writing Gao comments on an experimental short story which he wrote in 1991: 'The language is the simplest possible; the more the words and phrases are simple and clear, the more the reader disposes of a vast space of imagination, the more the images that are awakened in him become alive.'[viii]

Lingshan (soul-mountain) is a quasi-mythological place 'where wonderful things can be seen, where suffering and pain can be forgotten, and where one can find freedom.' There are many Lingshans in China but 'soul-mountain' is also a Buddhist name for heaven.

Begun in 1982 when Gao returned to Beijing after a fifteen thousand kilometre journey through central and eastern China over a period of five months, the novel was finished in 1989 in Paris where Gao currently lives. Written in 81 short chapters, Soul Mountain alternates between an inner and outer journey, what begins as a search for the elusive mountain soon turns into an odyssey in the true sense of the word; a series of wanderings; a long adventurous journey where each episode creates a rhythmic unit of tension and counterpoise that gives the whole work a cohesive sense of unity.

Soul Mountain weaves together an intricate pattern of impressions, observations and dialogues. The critic of chapter 72 complains that the work isn't a novel and snarls 'You've slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk songs, added some legend-like nonsense of your own invention, and are calling it fiction!' But what the critic cannot fathom is the lack of a named protagonist; he can't accept that the I, you, she and he of the book are characters.

As in many of his plays, Gao Xingjian creates a light, almost ethereal atmosphere in the novel by alternating between first and second person pronouns. In an essay on modern Chinese and literary writing he is careful to note that 'if the narrator is truly aware of what he writes, he will realise that the changing of pronouns does not constitute a simple and skilful play of style. The three characters, I, you
[end p. 30] and he, constitute three distinctive angles of narration that procure a stable psychological base.'

In her translation of Gao's Chinese, Mabel Lee has admirably succeeded in transposing the distinctive voice in which Soul Mountain is written. Gao's is a language in which simplicity is refined to a crystalline quality. It is the total lack of artificiality or intellectual mind-games that makes Soul Mountain the kind of book that probes the human soul without any attempt to glorify or vilify. Reality and imagination are transposed into a flow of words which the reader can convincingly relate to and trust from the outset.

There are few modern novels that explore new forms of narration without alienating the reader to some extent or demanding various degrees of effort and skill in reading. The lyric quality of Soul Mountain removes such obstacles to understanding by taking a direct approach. There is no hidden meaning nor an all-seeing agent to govern our perception. Rather, we are drawn into an individual's search for meaning, an individual who realises that there may be no meaning, that he means nothing, who chooses to write a book on the human self, who realises that the gods and demons summoned are summoned from within one's own self

The 'she' invoked by 'he' so that the loneliness might be alleviated by telling tales which invoke more gods and demons; the patter of children's bare feet on cobbled lanes that echo his childhood; the tales of Daoist recluses, Buddhist nuns and shamans that interweave through the novel; the description of some of China's most inaccessible mountain forests and remote villages --- all these elements form a kaleidoscope of images and thoughts that is constantly being shifted and re-aligned. Soul Mountain offers the reader a momentary and partial view of a transient existence seen through the eyes of a painter with a keen sense of observation who relentlessly questions himself, knowing that even while he pretends to understand, he doesn't understand.

In Gao's plays, the simplicity of the language is also evident, where the actor's role is not to embody the psychological make up of the character but to present it to the audience, who becomes aware of the process free of artifice. The self, the 'I', is embodied in the 'you' of the actor who interprets the 'he' or 'she' of the role.

Apart from The Other Shore, Gao Xingjian's last play to be written in China, the collection of five plays translated from the Chinese by Gilbert Fong includes his most recent works. Between Life and Death (Shengsijie, 1991), written first in French and subsequently in Chinese, makes use of traditional Chinese theatre but is not set in China. Performed first in France and Australia in 1993 and in New York at the Theater for the New City in 1997 as well as broadcast on Radio Free Asia in the US, the play explores the agonies, memories and fantasies of Woman, the main protagonist. Between Life and Death has no specific narrative thread or plot; as the protagonist declares, at the end of the play, it is about the self.

With Dialogue and Rebuttal (Duihua yu fanjie) of 1992, Gao focuses on the near destruction of language and the act of narration itself. Inspired by style of question and answer prominent in Chinese Zen Buddhism, the first act opens with a couple who have just met and spent the night together, their dialogues progressively reveal an indifference to communicate and form a series of unconnected language bubbles. The skill with which personal pronouns are employed to differentiate between the actor, the role and the character brings out the extent to which language can trap the individual.

Gao's next plays, Nocturnal Wanderer (Yeyoushen) of 1993 and Weekend Quartet (Zhoumo sichongzou) of 1995, are framed within more definite narrative contexts. The subject matter of Nocturnal Wanderer, performed in the Theatre des Halles in Avignon in the summer of 1999, is a nightmare that explores the traditional theme of good and evil. The Avignon performance employed a strong burlesque and circus-like mode that suited the play well. As in a real nightmare, Sleepwalker, the main character, grapples with the situations and transformations that overtake him, his attempt to extricate himself from the bad dream are to no avail, and as another character points out to him 'Good dream or bad dream, you've gotta finish it.'

Gao Xingjian's most recent play, Weekend Quartet, is his most realistic work to date. Each of the four protagonists has a name and specific traits that characterises him. The play brings to the fore their individual viewpoints and is based on the structural elements of musical composition for a quartet. In writing the play, Gao studied some eighty quartets by Haydn, Mozart, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Gorecky and others. The role of rhythm and tonality in Chinese is of paramount importance and as Gao notes, Chinese with its loose word order and ability to forego notions of time can be written almost as if one were composing music.[ix] Although some of the 'musicality' of the work is lost in translation, the tension, point and counterpoint that the four characters play out retain the changes of mood.

Gao's blend of traditional Chinese theatre techniques and modern Western theatre offers a radically new interpretation of drama. His tripartition of the actor foregoes Stanislavski's total immersion in the role and Brecht's alienation. In his suggestions on producing the plays he refers to Grotowski's training method which 'aims at helping the actor discover his own self and to release its potential'. The overwhelming impression, when watching one of Gao Xingjian's plays, is that one is watching a ritual that enacts the bewilderment of modern man --- that one could walk on stage and cross the boundary to reach the surreal shore where myths are made and un-made.

Gao's latest publication, Yigeren de Shengjing (Taipei,1999), is perhaps the most difficult piece that he has written. Translated in French by Noël and Liliane Dutrait as Le Livre d'un Homme Seul (l'Aube, Paris 2000), it is currently being translated in English by Mabel Lee as One Man's Bible. Labelled (in the French translation) as a novel, the book defies the boundary between autobiography and fiction. He and you, the main protagonist who can be directly identified as Gao Xingjian, undertake to write a book about his past. The short chapters alternate between the present, set in the West, and his life in China. Written in France from 1996 to 1998 One Man's Bible is ruthless in its honesty.

Halfway through the book, Gao writes:

When you will discover this 'he' hidden under his mask,
[end p. 31] so as to be able to observe him, you will have to transform him into fiction, into an individual with no relationship to you, that awaits to be discovered. It is only this narration that will be able to bring you the inclination to write, and it is only thus that the curiosity and wish to seek again will arise spontaneously.
You do not play the role of the judge and do not consider him a disaster victim, the fury and the pain that impairs art must give way to observation; what is stimulating is not your judgements and his rightful indignation, nor is it your sadness and his pain, what counts is the process of observation in itself.[x]

Just as the reign of terror that plunged China into famine and chaos through reforms and counter-reforms spared no one, so this book looks on the madness without absolving anyone, least of all its protagonist. At times it seems almost a discourse on sanity as given by a madman, it is only the dispassionate eye that is not concerned to show itself as above or beyond, that only wishes to be, that made the writing of such a book possible. Several times, as he was revising the text, Gao considered abandoning the whole work; that he persisted is perhaps thanks to the singular driving force behind all his work, be it drama, painting or fiction: 'À présent,' he writes in One Man's Bible, 'tu n'as pas de doctrine. Et un homme sans doctrine ressemble davantage à un homme.'

'At present, you have no doctrine. And a man without doctrine is more akin to a man.'

Acknowledgements

This article is based on published and unpublished papers as well as discussions with Gao Xingjian. I wish to thank Mabel Lee of the University of Sydney and Henry Y.H. Zhao of the University of London for allowing me access to their as yet unpublished manuscripts, including her translation of Gao Xingjian's novel Soul Mountain and his monograph Towards a Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingjian and Chinese Experimental Theater. Sections of this essay were published in Quadrant, Australia.

Notes