One Man's Bible Read Online Free

Xingjian’s works were published in China, the last being the reprinting of his play Fleeing —set in Beijing in the early hours of 4 June 1989. Gao had been commissioned by an American theatre company to write a play “about China,” but when changes were requested so that the students would be portrayed as heroic figures, he withdrew the play. It was subsequently published in the overseas Chinese literary journal Today in early 1990, then reprinted in China as evidence of a “pornographic work” by “an unpatriotic, reactionary, anti-party writer.” Although as an individual Gao had readily denounced the Chineseauthorities for the events of 4 June in the French and Italian media, he refused to compromise his integrity as a writer. His stance angered both political sides.
    But literature and not politics is Gao’s primary commitment in life and he acknowledges that he lacks the expertise for politics. His Chinese publications since relocating to Paris in 1987 can only be described as prolific, but his publishers have been in Taipei and Hong Kong. His collection of short stories, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather , was published by Lianhe Literary Publishing House (Taipei, 1988) and both Soul Mountain and a second novel, One Man’s Bible (1999), were published by Lianjing in Taipei. From 1982 to 1999 his plays were performed in thirty-two theatres in countries ranging from China to the Ivory Coast, and in recent years he has directed and undertaken the choreography for his plays. In 1995 his plays The Other Shore (written in Beijing, 1987); Netherworld (first draft in Beijing, 1987; final draft in Paris, 1991); Story of the Classic of Mountains and Seas (written in Paris, 1989-1993); Fleeing (written in Paris, 1989); Between Life and Death (1993); and Dialogue and Rebuttal (Paris, 1992) were published in Chinese as a collection by Dijiao Publishing House in Taipei under the title Six Plays by Gao Xingjian . In 1996 his collected critical essays, cogently outlining his ideas on artistic creation, were published under the title Without Isms (Cosmos, Hong Kong).
    In Soul Mountain Gao Xingjian recalls that as a student he would recite a line of classical poetry written by the great modern Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881-1936): “I offer my blood to the Yellow Emperor.” This line of poetry, written in 1902, had been appropriated by party ideologues to inspire the self-sacrifice of the individual for the masses and the nation. In Soul Mountain Gao notes that, regrettably for Chinese literature, Lu Xun had chosen the path of politics instead of literature. Lu Xun was painfully aware of the implications of his choice and he documents his ordeal in a series of prose-poems which were later published as a collection called Wild Grass , in 1927. He knew that this choice would leave him like “a corpse” of one who had “gouged out his own heart” and so hereverted to writing classical Chinese poems to ease his agony. More than half a century later, Gao Xingjian—no less of a cultural critic than Lu Xun, and a survivor of the Cultural Revolution—argues vehemently against tyrannical politics, mob action, the collective, religious fundamentalism, and crass commercialism because of the damage they wreak upon the individual. For both Lu Xun and Gao Xingjian, literary creation is the solitary act of the individual.
     
    On 12 October 2000, the Swedish Academy announced that Gao Xingjian had won the Nobel Prize for Literature “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights, and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama.” Gao’s Nobel Prize lecture, “The Case for Literature,” is available online in Chinese, English, French, and Swedish at www.nobel.se. The Swedish Academy described Gao’s novel Soul Mountain as “one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves.”
    Of significance is the fact that this is the first