Nobel Literature Prize for Gao Xingjian

Before this year's Nobel Prize in Literature was announced, perhaps not many people had heard of Gao Xingjian.

Gao was born in 1940 in Jiangxi Province, and graduated from the French department at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute. In 1987 he left China for political reasons, and settled in France.

Gao Xingjian is a multifaceted artist whose creative work spans prose fiction, drama and painting. His main works include the novels Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible, the novella A Pigeon Called Red Beak, the short story collection Buying Granddad a Fishing Rod, and the drama collections Six Plays by Gao Xingjian and Tale of the Classic of Mountains and Seas.

His plays have been performed many times in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Europe and North America, and dozens of exhibitions of his ink-wash paintings have been held around the world.

Gao Xingjian emerged as a writer after the Cultural Revolution. At one time he worked as a translator for the Chinese Writers' Association, and later as a dramatist at the Beijing People's Art Academy. In the early 1980s his book A Preliminary Discussion of the Art of Modern Fiction made him a celebrity in Beijing cultural circles, and was known as one of the "four beautiful kites launched into China's broad, lonely skies." But because the ideas in the book went against the officially promoted doctrine of social realism, and tended towards Western modernism, Gao's work was suppressed by the communist authorities and he went into exile overseas. After the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, Gao vowed he would never return to China as long as it remained under totalitarian rule. Although completed in France, his novel Soul Mountain-the main work for which he has been awarded the Nobel Prize-is based on his earlier experiences travelling through remote regions of southern and southwestern China. His second novel, One Man's Bible, is a detailed description of his experiences as a rebel, victim and onlooker in the Cultural Revolution.

Gao Xingjian himself admits to being "very, very surprised" to receive a Nobel Prize.

In the past, ethnic Chinese authors both inside and outside greater China such as Lin Yutang, Ba Jin and Li Ao have been nominated for the Nobel literature prize, but none was ever selected. Yet now that a Chinese writer has been awarded the prize for the first time, the Chinese world has been far from unanimous in its approval.

In Taiwan, Linking Publishing Company published Gao's Soul Mountain in 1990 and One Man's Bible in 1999, but sales were poor. Yet most of Taiwan's media have reported extensively on his Nobel award as a big event for the Chinese literary world. But the mainland Chinese media has mostly played down Gao's citation, and China News Service's report described him as "an ethnic Chinese writer from France" who was now "a French citizen."

The mainland Chinese Writers' Association even criticized the Swedish Academy's choice as being "more political than literary in nature."

In response, Swedish Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl denied that the choice of Gao was influenced by any geographical or political considerations. He said: "Gao Xingjian is a great writer who has made innovations in both prose and drama. As an author, he has provided broad knowledge to readers worldwide."

Political factors aside, there are also those in the Chinese literary community who lament that from a purely literary point of view, "the Nobel literature prize has been bungled again."

Some have commented that for the prize to go to French-resident Gao, whose works are not widely read in either mainland China or Taiwan, while other authors whose works are highly influential on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have not been so recognized, inevitably gives the impression that the Nobel judges approach Chinese culture through their own cultural traditions, and can more easily accept a writer like Gao whose style is close to Western modernism.

However, Columbia University professor and literary critic Wang Dewei feels that Gao Xingjian is a highly innovative writer with original ideas, and that a combination of factors including his fame overseas, his literary status, his creative style and his accessibility surely make him a fitting choice to receive the prize, whether on behalf of Chinese authors or of writers in exile.

Lee Chiao, president of local authors' association Taiwan Pen, also sees Gao's Nobel Prize as a highly significant event, particularly since this is the first time the prize has been awarded for works in Chinese. "It proves one thing: even though Asia is beset by all kinds of worries, literature has not ground to a halt."

"As an emigre author, literary and artistic creation has been my only salvation," says Gao. "Living in exile in the West has not been a bad thing for me; on the contrary, it has given me even more sources of ideas. Writing Soul Mountain and Tale of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which I completed after leaving China, has helped me get over my 'homesickness.'"

As Gao Xingjian says, Chinese culture is in his blood, and he has no need to give himself trademarks. "What's important for an author is to transcend yourself, and be creative. You don't have to live by peddling your ancestral heritage," he says.

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Multifaceted artist Gao Xingjian is an accomplished painter as well as a novelist and playwright. He is pictured here at an exhibition of his paintings staged in Taipei in April this year. (photo by Hsiao Jung)