Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 4, 1940 Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China |
| Occupation | playwright, screenwriter, novelist, painter, director |
| Period | 1982- |
Gao Xingjian (pron. IPA: [káu ɕĭŋ tɕiɛ̂n]; Chinese: 高行健; pinyin: Gāo Xíngjiàn; born January 4, 1940), is a Chinese émigré novelist, dramatist and critic, who received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is also a noted translator, particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, a stage director and a celebrated inkwash painter.
Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China, Gao has been a French citizen since 1998. In 1992 he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Gao is known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China, where Signal Alarm (绝对信号, 1982) and Bus Stop (车站, 1983) were produced during his term as resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre from 1981 to 1987. Influenced by European theatical models, it gained him a reputation as an avant-garde writer. His other plays, The Primitive (1985) and The Other Shore(1986), were all openly criticized the state government.
In 1986 Gao was misdiagnosed with lung cancer, and he began a 10-month trekking odyssey along the Yangtze, which resulted in his "novel" Soul Mountain. The part-memoir, part-novel, first published in Taiwan in 1989, mixes literary genres and shifting narrative voices. It has been specially cited by the Swedish Nobel committee as "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves".
By 1987, Gao shifted to Paris, France. The political Fugitives (1989), which references the Tiananmen event, resulted in all his works being banned from performance in native China.
Although the general position by the Chinese media and current government towards Gao is that of silence, the Yangcheng Evening News, a state-run newspaper, in 2001, criticized one of his works. A Chinese columnist called him an "awful writer", and said that the idea of him winning the Nobel Prize was "ludicrous".
Gao Xingjian's Swedish translator Göran Malmqvist, is a member of the Swedish Academy and was responsible for the translation to Swedish for Nobel Prize consideration. Ten days before the award decision was made public, Gao Xingjian changed his Swedish publisher (from Forum to Atlantis), but Göran Malmqvist has denied leaking information about the award[1].
Selected works
- 寒夜的星辰 ("Constellation in a Cold Night", 1979)
- 现代小说技巧初探 ("A Preliminary Examination of Modern Fictional Techniques", 1981)
- 绝对信号 (Signal Alarm, 1982)
- 车站 (Bus Stop, 1983)
- 野人 (Wild Men, "Savages", 1985)
- 有只鸽子叫红唇儿 ("Such a Pigeon called Red Lips", 1984) - a collection of novellas
- 彼岸 (The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian , 1986)
- 给我老爷买鱼竿 ("A Fishing Rod for my Grandpa", 1986) - a short story collection
- 灵山 (Soul Mountain, 1989)
- 没有主义 (Without -isms, "No Ideology", 1995)
- 一个人的圣经 (One Man's Bible, 1998)
Works of Gao Xingjian in English
- Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather, short stories, Flamingo, London, 2004, ISBN 0-00-717038-6
- Soul Mountain, novel, Flamingo, London, 2001, ISBN 0-00-711923-2
- One Man's Bible, novel, Flamingo, ISBN 0-06-621132-8
- The Other Shore, plays, Chinese University Press, ISBN 962-201-862-9
Literature
- Trees on the Mountain: an Anthology of New Chinese Writing by Stephen C Soong and John min Ford. - Hong Kong: The Chinese U.P., copilot 1984.
- Gao Xingjian, le moderniste // La Chine aujourd'hui NO 41, September 1986.
- World Literature with Chinese Characteristics: On A Novel by Gao Xingjian by Torbjoern Lodén, // Stockholm journal of East Asian Studies 4, 1993.
- Chinese Writing and Exile by Gregory B. Lee - Center of East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, 1993.
- Gao Xingjian, the Voice of the Individual // Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies, 6, 1995.
- Without Politics: Gao Xingjian on Literary Creation by Mabel Lee // Stockholm journal OF East Asian Studies 6, 1995.
- Gao Xingjian and "Soul Mountain: Ambivalent Storytelling, Robert Nagle, Houston, Texas, 2002.
- Pronouns as Protagonists: Gao Xingjian's Lingshan as Autobiography by Mabel Lee// Colloquium of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics at the University of Sydney. Draft Paper, 3-4 Oct. 1996.
- Personal Freedom in Twentieth Century China: Reclaiming the Self in Yang Lian's Yi and Gao Xingjian's Lingshan by Mabel Lee // History, Literature and Society. - Sydney: Sydney Studies in Society and Culture 15, 1996.
- Outer one plus près you réel: dialogues sur l'écriture 1994-1997, entretiens avec Denis Bourgeois /trad. par Noeel et Liliane Dutrait. - La route of d'Aigues: l'Aube, 1997.
- Gao Xingjian's Lingshan/Soul Mountain: Modernism and the Chinese Writer by Mabel Lee, // Heat 4, 1997.
- Gao Xingjian, le peintre de l'âme by Robert Calvet, // Brèves No 56, more hiver 1999.
- Towards A Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingian and Chinese Theatre Experimentalism. Henry Y.H. Zhao, - London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 2000.