The Other Shore (2 page)

In May 1985, Gao Xingjian was invited to give a series of lectures in Germany and France, where he apparently basked in the international recognition accorded to him in the foreign press. When he came back to Beijing in early 1986, he finished
Bi’an
《彼岸》(The Other Shore). Probably inspired by the freedom and individualism he had witnessed in Europe, the play, among its many different themes, expresses his reservations about the persecution of the individual by the collective rule of the masses, led by a deceiving and manipulating leader whose tactics and claims to power are highly questionable. The rehearsal of the play, done by the students of Beijing People’s Art Theatre and under the direction of Lin Zhaohua, was ordered to stop after only one month, and subsequently the plan to establish a workshop on experimental drama was also dropped. This turn of events prompted Gao to go into exile in France in 1987, convinced that his plays would never be allowed to be performed in China again.

When he was living and writing in France, Gao Xingjian could give full rein to his imagination to explore and promote his ideas about a modern theatre, free from the interference of any overriding authority. In 1989 his
Taowang
《逃亡》(Exile), which tells the story of three characters running away from the pursuing soldiers during the Tiananmen incident (1989), again brought down the wrath of the Chinese government. As a result, his membership of the Communist Party was revoked. Ironically, the play also put Gao Xingjian at odds with the Chinese Overseas Democracy Movement, which considered the portrayal of intellectuals as susceptible to doubt and emotional vacillations an insult. However, he maintained that his play was concerned with the fate of the individual and his response to an adverse environment. One cannot be sure whether this development distressed our playwright, or if it was actually a predictable outcome of his individualism and personality as a loner. The fact remains that after Exile, he shied away from Chinese subject matter in his plays in the next few years.

Gao Xingjian is a highly private person. His unhappiness in China was due as much to his eremitic disposition as to the suffocating socio-political system he found himself born into, a totalizing regime bent on collectivization and a common ideology which pervaded every aspect of the life of the individual, including his creativity. To Gao Xingjian, such heavy-handedness strangles the freedom of expression, particularly in art. His response can be likened to that of a traditional Chinese Zen Buddhist, who chooses to detach himself from the “dusty” human world while being in it, casting a “cold eye” on everything, especially the absurdities and the shortsightedness of the unenlightened. But while the Zen Buddhist is keen on pursuing a supreme happiness, the understanding of the
tao
, Gao Xingjian does not consider himself so lucky, for as a modern man obligated to explore his own soul, he simply cannot afford the luxury of hiding his torment behind the
tao
. Instead, he forces his way into the self and compels it to reluctantly admit to its own inadequacies, its fragmentation, its impotence to act, and its inability to eradicate the evil in and around it. If we were to discern a progression in Gao Xingjian’s dramatic career, it would have to be seen as a journey from the public subject matter of his early period to the later, more private concerns, a change from the culture and system specific to the more universal, and thus to the more neutral, his personal convictions having undergone, so to speak, a baptism of fire. This transition is clearly marked by
The Other Shore
in 1985, which features a mixture of private and public themes.

Gao Xingjian offers no solution to the problems of the self. Championing a new kind of modernism in contemporary Chinese literature, he claims in 1987 that it constitutes an affirmation of the self, not its negation, as in Western modernism, and a rediscovery of humanism, which has been lost among the insistence on the denial of rationality and the equation of absurdity with existence.
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The self, as life itself, is always in a state of flux, encompassing past and present, good and evil, long-lasting guilt and brief happiness, and life and death. And like a mannequin, the self is made up of many separable parts which can be assembled and disassembled at will, and appear either in one piece or as dismembered fragments to the horrified owner who claims to have held them together. Such is the essence of existence, made meaningless by the horror, ignorance, and injustice surrounding it. But Gao Xingjian is not a complete pessimist; what matters most to him and to his characters is the materiality of living, of being able to live and, most importantly, to speak and write. Thus words, or discourse, are all and everything in life through which man gets to know his own consciousness, even though words may be mangled, rendered nonsensical, or even useless. As he says, the unknowable behind the words contains the real human nature, and the absurdity of language is the same as the absurdity of living.
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To Gao Xingjian, literature has no obligations—the moral and ethical controversies arising from literary writings are only figments of imagination trumped up by meddlesome critics and cultural officials. “Literature has no relation to politics. It is purely a personal undertaking, an observation, a look back at past experiences, a speculation, a cluster of sentiments, a certain expression of inner emotions, and a feeling of the satisfaction of contemplation.” Therefore he advocates a “cold literature” (冷的文學
lengde wenxue
), i.e., literature at its most fundamental, to distinguish it from didactic, political, social and even expressive writing.
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However, a writer should not totally disassociate himself from society. While refraining from active intervention in social and political issues, he should “exile” himself but at the same time take a position on the margin of society, thus facilitating his undisturbed observations on life and the self. As such, “cold literature” is not art for art’s sake, which he despises as being tantamount to “cowardice,”
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and which is only meaningful in so far as it is practised in a society which prohibits it. “Cold literature” survives by means of exile, and it strives to escape from the strangulation of society to conserve itself.
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Needless to say, Gao Xingjian is ambivalent on the question of the relationship between a writer and his society, betraying a love-hate attitude to man’s involvement in society and detachment from it. Society is invariably made up of antipathetic masses, easily manipulated and prone to persecute the individual among them. But then what is a writer to write about apart from the society of which he is a member? This is Gao Xingjian’s dilemma, one that he tries to solve by placing himself on the outside, a stranger to his own community, and by retreating into the innermost depths of the individual, his consciousness. Therein lies his Chinese heritage, not so much in the superficial display of traditional Chinese theatrical conventions which occasionally crops up in his plays, but in his reluctance to totally cut himself off from humanitarianism in an effort to save the human soul, if not collectively, as individual beings. He is characteristic of the modern Chinese intellectual who rebels against his own Chineseness and yet rejects a Western individualism which pays no heed to society. According to his way of thinking, the latter is injurious to human nature—the negation of the very essence of life itself.

Gao Xingjian does not purposely seek to construct a barrier between himself and his world. He is, so to speak, not much of a joiner; he only desires to seek his own personal peace and freedom. In one of his latest declarations, he proclaims the idea of “None-ism” (沒有主義
Meiyou zhuyi
)
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, i.e., a refusal to believe in any of the “isms.” “No matter whether it is in politics or literature, I do not believe in or belong to any party or school, and this includes nationalism and patriotism.”
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His “None-ism” advocates an unlimited and unbridled independence, so that the individual can empty his mind of all the shackles of convention to make the choices best suited to himself, to be sceptical of all blind acquiescence to authority, trendiness and ideological detainment, in other words, it is to be a liberation of the spirit. As a writer, Gao Xingjian steadfastly refuses to be categorized as belonging to any school, Chinese or Western. While he was still in China, he struggled to break free from realism and the Stanislavskian method which had dominated the Chinese theatre for more than three decades, considering them to be too logical, neat, and tyrannized by words. On the other hand, he is also particularly harsh about post-modernism. According to his opinion, the means of what is known as post-modernism has become an end in itself, and art vanishes as a consequence.
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In other words, concepts have displaced art in the same way as dialectics and abstractions have taken over from genuine criticism, and anybody can become an artist because artistic skills are not required as prerequsites.
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Gao Xingjian’s antipathy towards the canonized is derived from his constant search for a genuine renewal in art. Even though he pursues “the freedom not to peddle antiques,”
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he is nonetheless not iconoclastic. “When someone wants to go forward, there is no need to trample on one’s ancestors.”
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He has not been able to sever himself totally from tradition: we can see him trying to seek inspiration from the theatricality of classical Chinese opera and from folk culture. The latter’s emphasis on rituality and simplicity interests him as an artist, and its uncorrupted character is a kindred spirit to his understanding of the primeval self.

In rejecting the modernist label in 1987 (when he was still in China), he said that it was more appropriate to place himself at the meeting point between Eastern and Western cultures and between history and the present.
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However, he also claimed that he has paid his debts to all things Chinese since the publication of
Lingshan
靈山 (Spiritual Mountain) in 1990, a novel set in the mythical mountains and streams of southwestern China. In his latest plays, he has been striving for neutrality and universality, shying away from Chinese settings and characters.

We shall not dwell on the idea of interculturalism in Gao Xingjian. Suffice it to say that even our writer himself is conscious of the crosscurrents of the Chinese and the Western interacting in both his personal and artistic life. It is important to point out that he always values the self not in an egotistic manner, but in the knowledge of the imperative to comprehend the self, its relation to the world, and the value of existence. The key here is the Chinese concept of “
jingguan
” 靜觀,
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or “peaceful observation,” which encompasses the ideas of tranquillity, disinterestedness, and detachment. And it is through this concept that we can begin to understand Gao Xingjian’s idea of the tripartition of the actor, i.e., just as a writer should observe himself and society with the indifference of an outsider, an actor should also be able to observe his performance and the character he is portraying with the same degree of “coldness” and detachment.

Acting and the Tripartition of the Actor

Gao Xingjian’s idea of dramaturgy affirms the importance of what he calls theatricality (
juchangxing
劇場性). When Aristotle talks about “action,” Gao Xingjian claims, he is referring to action in its fundamental sense, i.e., the kind of action that the audience can see and hear,
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unlike the “action” in contemporary drama which is limited to the conflict of ideas and concepts. This physical aspect of drama is what distinguishes it from poetry, which emphasizes lyricality, and fiction, which underlines narration. Drama is process, and while it may not necessarily be complete in itself, the changes, discoveries, and surprises in a play can be amplified and elaborated upon and made into elements of theatricality, thus generating dramatic action on the stage.
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According to Gao Xingjian, stage language can be used to indicate harmony or disharmony as in a musical structure. Like the notes in a symphony, the phonic qualities of words often highlight their materiality, effectively transforming the utterances into a non-narrational medium. In this manner, stage language acquires the charm and the almost magical power of chanting, and produces a deeply felt compulsion in both actors and audience. Such is the difference between the new language of drama, with its emphasis on materiality and physical impact, and the semantically inclined language commonly used in other literary genres.
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There is yet another aspect to the making of theatricality. Drama is nothing but performance, and the actions on the stage are meant for the enjoyment of the audience. In order to facilitate this communication and to enhance its directness, Gao Xingjian maintains that the actor has to be self-conscious of his craft, being aware not only of the character he is playing but also of the fact that he is putting on a performance as a performer. This awareness is in contrast to Stanislavsky’s total immersion method, and to an extent it is also distinguished from Brecht’s “alienation,” which breaks the illusion of realism and underlines the distance between performance and audience. To Gao Xingjian, there is no denying that drama is ostentation—the many attempts at realism by the modern theatre are nothing short of spurious and futile efforts to achieve impossibility. Ostentation is helpful and also essential to communicating with the audience: in fact, an actor should highlight the act of pretending, as if he is saying to himself and to the audience, “Look how well I can pretend to be somebody else!” As in Beijing opera or the Japanese kabuki, even though the actor focuses his attention on how to perform his role, he still manages to retain his identity as an actor—his job is to give a good performance but not to live the life of the character.
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The pretending still exists, and is even accentuated, but it coexists with a more direct and true-to-life actor-audience communication, in which the actor has become the centre and disseminator of artistic awareness. In other words, besides the character-centred and audience-centred theories of Stanislavsky and Brecht, Gao Xingjian has ventured his own actor-centred theory in an argument for a more self-conscious art.