Word: xingjian
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Slouching behind his desk, director, playwright and Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian watches the rehearsal in dismay. The actors are tentative and uncertain, as if they don't quite know where they are going. The problem, in Gao's mind, is that they are complicating what should be simple. "Speak as you speak, listen as you listen," he orders. "Give me your true voice...
...experience during the Cultural Revolution, which he details in his second and most recent novel One Man's Bible, was not unique; it was merely horrible. "His language was raped," says Malmqvist. "For Gao Xingjian, to have his language raped is to be raped himself." He vowed that it would never happen again. When Chinese authorities threatened him for writing non-conformist literature in 1983, Gao was forced to choose between self-censorship and exile. "Exile meant survival to me," he says, "physical survival as well as maintaining spiritual independence, by gaining freedom of expression...
...Today Gao is adjusting to what he calls his "second exile," his escape from Nobel celebrity. After Taipei, he will retool Snow in August for a production in Marseilles, where 2003 has been declared the Year of Gao Xingjian. Regardless of plaudits, prizes and criticism, Gao will no doubt continue along his solitary, unflinching path. "I think he has an interior mission," says translator Dutrait. "He's determined to go all the way to the end, the end of his dreams of total art, of cinema, painting, novels, theater, everything. And he must go faster. He sees the time passing...
...chorus of concern grew louder when the first Chinese Nobel laureate in literature, exiled author Gao Xingjian (whose works are banned in the mainland) visited Hong Kong three weeks ago. Instead of being feted, he was pointedly ignored by officials...
When it announced in October that Gao Xingjian had become the first Chinese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy singled out for particular praise his "great novel" Soul Mountain, calling it "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves." Proving that fate sometimes smiles on publishers, an English rendition of Soul Mountain (HarperCollins; 510 pages; $27) was in the works well before the Nobel hullabaloo made its author an international celebrity, and has now arrived with the unexpected imprimatur of the Swedish Academy...