Biobibliographical
notes
Gao
Xingjian, born January 4 1940 in Ganzhou (Jiangxi province) in eastern
China, is today a French citizen. Writer of prose, translator, dramatist,
director, critic and artist. Gao Xingjian grew up during the aftermath
of the Japanese invasion, his father was a bank official and his mother
an amateur actress who stimulated the young Gaos interest in the
theatre and writing. He received his basic education in the schools
of the Peoples Republic and took a degree in French in 1962 at
the Department of Foreign Languages in Beijing. During the Cultural
Revolution (196676) he was sent to a re-education camp and felt
it necessary to burn a suitcase full of manuscripts. Not until 1979
could he publish his work and travel abroad, to France and Italy. During
the period 198087 he published short stories, essays and dramas
in literary magazines in China and also four books: Premier essai sur
les techniques du roman moderne /A Preliminary Discussion of the Art
of Modern Fiction (1981) which gave rise to a violent polemic on modernism,
the narrative A Pigeon Called Red Beak (1985), Collected Plays (1985)
and In Search of a Modern Form of Dramatic Representation (1987). Several
of his experimental and pioneering plays - inspired in part by Brecht,
Artaud and Beckett - were produced at the Theatre of Popular Art in
Beijing: his theatrical debut with Signal dalarme / Signal Alarm
(1982) was a tempestuous success, and the absurd drama which established
his reputation Arrêt de bus / Bus Stop (1983) was condemned during
the campaign against intellectual pollution (described by
one eminent member of the party as the most pernicious piece of writing
since the foundation of the Peoples Republic); LHomme sauvage
/Wild Man (1985) also gave rise to heated domestic polemic and international
attention.
In 1986 Lautre rive / The Other Shore was banned and since then
none of his plays have been performed in China. In order to avoid harassment
he undertook a ten-month walking-tour of the forest and mountain regions
of Sichuan Province, tracing the course of the Yangzi river from its
source to the coast. In 1987 he left China and settled down a year later
in Paris as a political refugee. After the massacre on the Square of
Heavenly Peace in 1989 he left the Chinese Communist Party. After publication
of La fuite / Fugitives, which takes place against the background of
this massacre, he was declared persona non grata by the regime and his
works were banned. In the summer of 1982, Gao Xingjian had already started
working on his prodigious novel La Montagne de lÂme / Soul
Mountain in which - by means of an odyssey in time and space through
the Chinese countryside - he enacts an individuals search for
roots, inner peace and liberty. This is supplemented by the more autobiographical
Le Livre dun homme seul / One Mans Bible. A number of his
works have been translated into various languages, and today several
of his plays are being produced in various parts of the world. In Sweden
he has been translated and introduced by Göran Malmqvist, and two
of his plays (Summer Rain in Peking, Fugitives) have been performed
at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
Gao Xingjian paints in ink and has had some thirty international exhibitions
and provides the cover illustrations for his own books. Awards: Chevalier
de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres 1992; Prix Communauté
française de Belgique 1994 (for Le somnambule), Prix du Nouvel
An chinois 1997 (for Soul Mountain).
A selection of works by Gao Xingjian in English:
Wild Man : A Contemporary Chinese Spoken Drama / transl. and annotated
by Bruno Roubicek // Asian Theatre Journal. Vol. 7, Nr 2. Fall 1990.
Fugitives / transl. by Gregory B. Lee // Lee, Gregory B., Chinese Writing
and Exile. Central Chinese Studies of the Universtity of Chicago,
1993.
The Other Shore : Plays by Gao Xingjian / transl. by Gilbert C.F. Fong.
Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1999.
Soul Mountain / transl. by Mabel Lee. HarperCollins, 1999.
One Mans Bible. [In transl. by Mabel Lee.]
Contemporary Technique and National Character in Fiction / transl. by
Ng Mau-sang.
[Extract from A Preliminary Discussion of the Art of Modern Fiction,
1981]
The Voice of the Individual // Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies
6, 1995.
Without isms / transl. by W. Lau, D. Sauviat & M. Williams // Journal
of the Oriental Society of Australia. Vols 27 & 28, 199596.
Literature:
Trees on the Mountain : an Anthology of New Chinese Writing / ed. by
Stephen C. Soong and John Minford. Hong Kong: The Chinese U.P.,
cop. 1984.
Gao Xingjian, le moderniste // La Chine aujourdhui No 41, septembre
1986.
Basting, Monica, Yeren : Tradition und Avantgarde in Gao Xingjians Theaterstück
Die Wilden. Bochum : Brockmeyer, 1988.
Lodén, Torbjörn, World Literature with Chinese Characteristics
: On a Novel by Gao Xingjian // Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies
4, 1993.
Lee, Gregory B., Chinese Writing and Exile. Central Chinese Studies
of the Universtity of Chicago, 1993.
Lee, Mabel, Without Politics: Gao Xingjian on Literary Creation // Stockholm
Journal of East Asian Studies 6, 1995.
Lee, Mabel, Pronouns as Protagonists : Gao Xingjians Lingshan
as Autobiography // Colloquium of the Sydney Society of Literature and
Aesthetics at the Univ. of Sydney. Draft paper the 34 Oct. 1996.
Lee, Mabel, Personal Freedom in Twentieth-Century China: Reclaiming
the Self in Yang Lians Yi and Gao Xingjians Lingshan //
History, Literature and Society. Sydney: Sydney Studies in Society
and Culture 15, 1996.
Au plus près du réel : dialogues sur lécriture
19941997, entretiens avec Denis Bourgeois / trad. par Noël
et Liliane Dutrait. La Tour dAigues: lAube, 1997.
Lee, Mabel, Gao Xingjians Lingshan / Soul Mountain : Modernism
and the Chinese Writer // Heat 4, 1997.
Calvet, Robert, Gao Xingjian, le peintre de lâme // Brèves
No 56, hiver 1999.
Zhao, Henry Y.H., Towards a Modern Zen Theatre :Gao Xingian and Chinese
Theatre Experimentalism. London: School of Oriental and African
Studies, 2000.
The
Swedish Academy