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The Other Shore

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The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2000 goes to the Chinese writer Gao Xingjian

"for an œuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama".

In the writing of Gao Xingjian literature is born anew from the struggle of the individual to survive the history of the masses. He is a perspicacious sceptic who makes no claim to be able to explain the world. He asserts that he has found freedom only in writing.

His great novel Soul Mountain is one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves. It is based on impressions from journeys in remote districts in southern and south-western China, where shamanistic customs still linger on, where ballads and tall stories about bandits are recounted as the truth and where it is possible to come across exponents of age-old Daoist wisdom. The book is a tapestry of narratives with several protagonists who reflect each other and may represent aspects of one and the same ego. With his unrestrained use of personal pronouns Gao creates lightning shifts of perspective and compels the reader to question all confidences. This approach derives from his dramas, which often require actors to assume a role and at the same time describe it from the outside. I, you and he/she become the names of fluctuating inner distances.

Soul Mountain is a novel of a pilgrimage made by the protagonist to himself and a journey along the reflective surface that divides fiction from life, imagination from memory. The discussion of the problem of knowledge increasingly takes the form of a rehearsal of freedom from goals and meaning. Through its polyphony, its blend of genres and the scrutiny that the act of writing subjects itself to, the book recalls German Romanticism's magnificent concept of a universal poetry.

Gao Xingjian's second novel, One Man's Bible, fulfils the themes of Soul Mountain but is easier to grasp. The core of the book involves settling the score with the terrifying insanity that is usually referred to as China's Cultural Revolution. With ruthless candour the author accounts for his experiences as a political activist, victim and outside observer, one after the other. His description could have resulted in the dissident's embodiment of morality but he rejects this stance and refuses to redeem anyone else. Gao Xingjian's writing is free of any kind of complaisance, even to good will. His play Fugitives irritated the democracy movement just as much as those in power.

Gao Xingjian points out himself the significance for his plays of the non-naturalistic trends in Western drama, naming Artaud, Brecht, Beckett and Kantor. However, it has been equally important for him to "open the flow of sources from popular drama". When he created a Chinese oral theatre, he adopted elements from ancient masked drama, shadow plays and the dancing, singing and drumming traditions. He has embraced the possibility of moving freely in time and space on the stage with the help of one single gesture or word - as in Chinese opera. The uninhibited mutations and grotesque symbolic language of dreams interrupt the distinct images of contemporary humanity. Erotic themes give his texts feverish excitement, and many of them have the choreography of seduction as their basic pattern. In this way he is one of the few male writers who gives the same weight to the truth of women as to his own.

The Swedish Academy

Gao Xingjian has written some really provacative interesting drama for performance. The Other Shore is the best play available that presents the atmosphere and message of the horrors of the Maoism and the Cultural Revolution in a way that can be understood by people with no knowledge of Chinese history. Very interesting, Beckett-ish work just waiting to be performed.

Gao Xingjian's artistic sensibility was chiselled out of his double frustration of public condemnation and private shock.

After being established as a prominent Chinese playwright, he suddenly fell out of grace of the communist authorities, who dubbed his works as `Spiritual Pollution'. At that time he was also undergoing an intense personal trauma, being diagnosed, wrongly, with lung cancer. He set out on an extensive journey to the heart of China covering 5 months and 15,000 kilometres which helped him rediscover his self and his countrymen and helped change his world-view.

Although a direct outcome of this emotional journey was the phantasmogoric novel `Soul Mountain', the present five plays also bear testimony to his broadened horizon.

In his plays the mythical finds place with the real, as he tries to make sense of the diversity of his land's culture and its people. Gao tries to mask the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in a set of highly original imagery. The symbolism sometimes obfuscates the proceedings, but the stark realism of the human drama comes back again and again. Some of Gao's views, on man woman relationship for instance, may not be palatable to the Western sensibility, but one has to understand the vast compass that he is handling in these plays.

Out of the five plays `The Other Shore' and `Nocturnal Wanderer' are the most gripping. But all the five plays reflect the yearning of the individual to break lose from the stifling collective memory.

This collection of recent plays by Gao Xingjian is worth investigating by merit of the dramatist's receipt of the Nobel Prize and for the controversy raging around him and the Prize in China. Most readers will probably pick up this book for those very reasons. The plays contained are post-modern, avant-garde, and in some cases utterly abstract. They're the sort of scripts that probably make for very interesting plays when performed, but make for rather tedius reading. Some scripts make for very enjoyable literature, but Gao's are a little too "artsy" to work in print alone. I recommend "The Other Shore" for serious readers only: dramatists, academics, and the hardcore Chinese literature enthusiast. Casual readers, merely curious about this year's Nobel winner, should avoid this collection and instead read Gao's novel, "Soul Mountain", which is much more accessible.

Gao Xingjian's "The Other Shore" is an excellent collection of his plays. Translator Gilbert C. F. Fong does a good job expressing the eloquence of Xingjian's dialogue. The scholarly introduction gives analysis on the staging and influences on the playwright.

"Between Life & Death" is an amazing play, essentially a 32-page monologue for a female, although it could also be broken between various actresses playing aspects of the same character. It reminded me of an esoteric extended version of "The Vagina Monologues."

"Dialogue & Rebuttal" is an existential exploration of the male-female relationship. Man's expectations clash with woman's needs. It's not a plot-oriented play, but could be a gripping on stage.

"Nocturnal Wanderer" impressed me as most likely successful play for production in the United States. The Sleepwalker is the main character. Xingjian employs the interesting technique of having most of the dialogue of this character in second person, as if he were expressing extended prose monologues. The Sleepwalker encounters the Prostitute, the Ruffian & the Tramp, who each weave into what appears to be Xingjian's closest flirtation with traditional plot structure. The play becomes interesting with several gunshot assassinations and a head that rolls out of the briefcase at various intervals.

"Weekend Quartet" reminded me a bit of Philip Barry's "Hotel Universe" where a diverse group of travelers meet for a weekend. In Xingjian's play, an aging artist Bernard and his longtime live-in friend Anne invite a young author Daniel and his youthful girlfriend Cecile for the weekend. Xingjian's form is unique, writing sections of the play that lists the characters who speak. For instance, a section is labeled as dialogue between Daniel and Anne without designating the specific lines to be spoken by each character. The reader follows along with Xingjian's lead, understanding that probably Daniel speaks first followed by Anne and then alternating through the end of the section. It's a very different way of reading a play. What I understood is that this leads us to understand that the characters are playing aspects of each other that could be shuffled so that each assumes the other's point of view. Some of the quartets are more plot-oriented with the final section getting quite metaphysical. There is an extended moving monologue at the end by Bernard who faces death that could shine in oral interpretation or as an audition piece.

"The Other Shore" is a Buddhist play about a monk who is condemned for speaking the truth. It is non-realistic with the actors donning characters and shucking them at different points in the action. It requires very physical (handstands, etc.) and stylized staging.

I was glad to become acquainted with this Chinese playwright's theatrical works. Along with "Snow In August," it is an important body of work that begs production in the United States. Enjoy!

Gao Xingjian has received the Nobel Prize, 2000.

Gao Xingjian has received the Nobel Prize, 2000.

I read in the NY Times that Gao won a Nobel Prize for Literature, though most of his work is banned by the Chinese government. For this reason alone, I would read it. See NY Times' 10/13/00 article for more on him.