The Forgotten Public Intellectual - A Profile on Gao Xingjian
On October 11, 2012, when Mo Yan's name was announced as the Nobel Prize in Literature winner, the entire China celebrated his success. Media outlets hailed the winning of Mo Yan with headlines proclaiming the event as "The birth of the first Chinese Nobel Laureate in Literature". Amidst the public excitement, however, a notable Chinese public intellectual was widely overlooked despite receiving the honor a decade prior: Gao Xingjian.
Best known for his significant contributions to contemporary literature and drama, Gao Xingjian is a critical figure in the world of arts and letters. His work explores the theme of human traditions and the absurdity of life, reflecting his understanding of individuality, freedom, and the nuances of cultural beliefs. In 2000, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first Chinese-born laureate to receive this honor for literature.
Before quitting the Chinese Communist Party and moving to France, Gao was an active voice in the field of literature and politics in China. Just like most contemporary Chinese public intellectuals, Gao is critical in the nature of his work. Just as Stephen Mack highlights in his piece “Are Public Intellectuals a thing of the Past”, “the public intellectual function is criticism. And if intellectuals are in a better position to perform that function it’s not because they are uniquely blessed with wisdom—and it’s certainly not because they are uniquely equipped to wield social or political power. It is only because learning the processes of criticism and practicing them with some regularity are requisites for intellectual employment.” Gao’s critical assessment of the Chinese political system and societal development, too, stems from his personal experience and the rigorous academic training he received. The socio-political environment of China during his youth, especially the impact of the Communist Revolution and subsequent cultural policies, significantly influenced Gao's worldview and artistic direction.
Gao was born on January 4, 1940, in Jiangxi Province during the Anti-Japanese War. Based on his biography “望南看北斗 (Watch South For The Big Dipper)”, he was born into a wealthy family and had a happy childhood. His father, Gao Yuntong, was a clerk at the Bank of China. His mother, Gu Jialiu, was once an actor in an anti-Japanese theater group. When Gao Xingjian was young, due to his poor health condition, his mother decided to homeschool him. Under her influence, Gao Xingjian developed an interest in drama, writing, and painting.
After the Anti-Japanese War, in 1952, Gao’s family moved to Nanjing and Gao enrolled in a local catholic school founded by European missionaries. During his time there, he was exposed to a vast amount of Western literary works. One time, he came across a story written by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg about his bohemian lifestyle during the 1920s in Paris. The life depicted in the story deeply attracted Gao, drawing him closer to the world of French literature (Conversations with Gao Xingjian).
In 1957, Gao began his studies at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, a choice that not only provided him with a linguistic tool but also further opened the window to Western literary and philosophical traditions. The existentialist works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, in particular, left a profound impact on him, introducing themes of freedom, alienation, and the search for meaning that would permeate his later works (Conversations with Gao Xingjian).
After graduating from the university with a degree in French Literature, he was offered to work as an interpreter for the Chinese International Bookstore. Despite being primarily known to the academic world as an interpreter, Gao published various pieces on Western literature and screenplays in local newspapers, marking the beginning of his journey as a public intellectual.
Unfortunately, Gao was born in arguably the worst era for Chinese intellectuals since the Qin Dynasty. At the time, the first Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong, believed that there were “bourgeois infiltrators” within the Chinese Communist Party and had caused serious corruption, bureaucracy, and inequality. To prevent the restoration of capitalism and to regain his power within the party, Mao decided to launch a political movement later known as the Cultural Revolution targetting those that were considered “insufficiently revolutionary”.
In 1966, four years after Gao graduated, the wave of the Cultural Revolution swept through the land of China. It was a time of extreme political zealotry, social upheaval, and personal tragedy for many, including Gao. As Gao puts it, it was a period of “Red Terror”. His background and interests, particularly his fascination with Western literature and his burgeoning career as a writer and intellectual, made him a target for persecution.
In 1970, Gao was forced to move to the countryside for the so-called “reeducation”. His day job shifted from translating Western literature work to doing hard labor on a local farm. “I could only write in secret,” said Gao during an interview, “and when it came to burning, I had to burn them in secret too.”
These experiences of suppression, isolation, and reflection profoundly influenced Gao's worldview and his artistic output. The relentless struggle for artistic and intellectual freedom during these years inspired Gao to develop his unique literary style. Through his early screenplays, he began to explore the theme of meaning-searching in a world of chaos and absurdity.
After the Cultural Revolution, Gao was welcomed back to Beijing and began his career as a playwright for Beijing People’s Art Theater. For the next ten years, Gao penned a series of avant-garde plays that were to become some of the most influential and innovative works of Chinese theater during that era such as“Signal Alarm” and “Bus Stop”. These works pushed the boundaries of traditional Chinese theatre, introducing themes and styles that challenged audiences and the perceived societal norms.
As Gao Xingjian continued to explore and critique the complexities of societal constructs through his plays, his bold thematic choices and rebellious narrative began to attract the attention of Chinese authorities. In most of his plays, reflecting his experience during the Cultural Revolution, Gao questioned the social and political climate of the time. Deemed as a cause for political instability, Gao’s works were soon censored and even banned.
The restrictive environment for intellectuals in China during this period made it increasingly difficult for Gao to freely express his ideas and artistic vision. Eventually, the pressure from the government pushed Gao towards a decision that altered the course of his career. In 1987, seeking democracy and the freedom to write without the threat of censorship, Gao decided to leave China and move to France. This move marked the beginning of a new chapter in his life, one where he could express his artistic and intellectual views with greater freedom and without fear of political retribution.
Two years after relocating to France, following the Tiananmen Square Protest, Gao published his most important work, “Soul Mountain”. Inspired by a journey he made along the Yangtze River, Gao blended fiction and autobiography into a unique narrative structure that defies traditional genre categorizations. As Gao described, “At the time I was very interested in attitudes towards Chinese culture and Chinese history, and I realized that Chinese history was a history of power. I became very interested in the sources of Chinese culture and I traveled to where the novel takes place to investigate for myself what those sources were.”
The novel's narrative is deeply influenced by Gao's own experiences of censorship and exile. The protagonist's journey to "Soul Mountain" becomes a metaphor for the search for personal liberation and authenticity in a world where these ideals are often suppressed by external forces and internal doubts. The novel features two main characters—known only as "You" and "I". Throughout the entire novel, characters are not named and can only be distinguished through the pronouns. “To me, it's not that interesting to simply use language to describe characters or to describe a plot or to describe circumstances.” Said Gao, “I decided that the actual calling of names, of pronouns, was a subject worthy of investigation in itself; pronouns became the plot.”
The publication of "Soul Mountain" and its subsequent acclaim played a significant role in earning Gao the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, making him the first Chinese-born author to receive this prestigious award. However, since “Soul Mountain” was published in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests, the publishing of the book was interpreted by the Chinese government as an artistic resistance against the authority, or in another sense, authoritarianism. As a result, the government banned all of Gao’s books and plays, claiming that the winning of Gao was a political agenda against China. After the remark made by the Chinese government, Gao announced that he would never return to his “home soil” again. Since then, Gao faded away from public sight in China yet remains active as a public intellectual in Europe, promoting Chinese avante-garde literature.
On a personal level, Gao is undeniably successful as a public intellectual. His journey from a persecuted writer in China to a Nobel laureate in literature symbolizes the triumph of a free spirit. Despite being constrained by the Chinese political system for the majority of his career, Gao managed to find a voice that resonates on a global scale with his thematic choice and creative narrative. "Soul Mountain" and his other works not only showcase his literary talent but also his deep engagement with existential questions and the exploration of identity, culture, and history.
However, Gao Xingjian's life story, on a societal level, reflects the complex and often contentious relationship between public intellectuals and the societies from which they emerge, particularly under authoritarian rule. In contemporary China, fearing that public intellectuals would undermine the power of the authority, the government stigmatized the class of public intellectuals. In his work “Are Public Intellectuals a thing of the Past?”, Stephen Mack argues that a shift from “categories and class” to “function.” is essential for the concept of public intellectuals to be consistent with democratic values. In the case of China, the government reverse-engineered the concept, describing public intellectuals as a class with specific characteristics and backgrounds to weaken the influence of the public intellectuals.
Gao Xingjian's exile and the suppression of his works within China represent a significant loss, not just for Gao as an individual but for Chinese society as a whole. China had a pot of democracy boiled by public intellectuals like Gao at the turn of the Century. However, instead of embracing changes and ideas, the Chinese Communist Party decided to form a totalitarian society where citizens were forced to “neither listen nor hear things worth talking about.” The inability of China to engage with Gao's ideas and literary contributions reflects a missed opportunity for dialogue. It stands as a reminder of the cost of prioritizing political control over intellectual and cultural richness.
Comments