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16 May 1991, Stockholm
(speech
presented at a play reading at the Swedish Royal Theatre) FOLLOWING
THE TIANANMEN events of 1989 a friend asked if I would write a play
about China
for an American theatre company; it would of course have to do with
real life.
I agreed. In August the first group of refugees who had fled Beijing
arrived in
Paris, and among them were several of my good friends. I started to
write the
play at the beginning of September and a month later I submitted my
manuscript.
After reading the English translation the theatre company requested
changes,
but I refused. I asked my friend to explain to them that when I was in
China
the Communist Party could not coerce me into making changes to my
manuscripts,
so an American theatre company certainly would not. The Swedish Royal
Theatre
is now enthusiastic about performing the play, and for this I would
like to
express my heartfelt thanks. The play
appeared in the first number of the Chinese periodical Today,
after it resumed publication, but overseas. From information
recently received from China, I learned that the authorities had listed
the
periodical as a reactionary publication, and that I had been expelled
both from
the Chinese Communist Party and from my state appointment. I must add
that they
were too late in making that decision, because I publicly announced my
resignation from the Chinese Communist Party two years ago in Paris,
when the
first shots of the massacre were fired. This play of
mine was also criticized by some activist friends from the Democracy
Movement.
That was only to be expected, since the play attacked certain infantile
aspects
of the Movement. Some writer friends criticized the play from another
angle:
they thought it was too political and not a purely literary work. I
definitely
am not a political activist and do not consider that literature has any
need to
be subservient to politics, but this does not preclude me from
discussing politics
in my writings at times if I want to. It is simply that I do not
approve of the
sort of biased writing that ties literature to the war chariot of a
particular
faction, because as a writer one has one's own things to do. My reasons
for
writing this play were 'not confined to condemning the massacre. I
stated in my
introductory note that it is not a socialist-realist play. As I see it,
life is
a state of perpetual fleeing, from political oppression or from others.
One
must also flee from one's self, because once the self has been awakened
it is
this that one cannot flee; this is the tragedy of modern man. In his book Ode
to Fleeing, the modern French
thinker Henri Laborit says that if resistance forms a group, the
individual
resister is instantly reduced to subservience within the group, so his
only
solution is to flee. I agree with his way of thinking. In my view, the
unwavering independence of the individual is of the utmost importance
for a
writer, or for any person, otherwise what freedom is there? For the
writer,
fleeing is hot at all unusual. I have calmly accepted this reality, and
in the
remaining years of my life I do not aspire to return to a so-called
homeland
ruled by a tyrannical government. As well as springing from political
repression, social customs, the fashions of the times and, the will of
others,
I think a person's misfortune originates from the self. This self is
not God.
It should not be repressed, nor should it be exalted; it is simply as
it is.
But fleeing from it is impossible; this is the fate of humankind. The
Greek
tragedies dealing with fate, the Shakespearean tragedies about the
individual
and modern tragedies concerned with the self of modern man are in fact
all derived
from the same source, and this was why I gave my play the form of a
pure
tragedy. I suggested that naturalist or realist methods not be used in
the
performance of Fleeing. Instead, I
recommended that it be performed as demonstrated in today's reading of
my play Soliloquy by Mr Bjorn Granath, who will
direct Fleeing. The actor should
maintain a certain distance from the character he is playing, observing
that
character from that distance, and entering and departing from it from
time to
time. Theatricality and appropriate ritual in the performance are both
essential. Over the past few days I have worked with the director,
theatre personnel,
choreographer and actors on rehearsal plans. It is a great relief that
they
understand what I want. At a gathering of some Chinese writers in Oslo
last
year, I said that in this modern age, with its growing flood of film
and
television, literature - that is, non-consumerist literature - is
increasingly
becoming a matter for the individual. I also said that writing is a
luxury,
particularly for those writing in Chinese and living in exile, and they
have to
be able to endure the loneliness, I did not imagine that so many people
would be
present at this gathering today, and for this I thank all of you. I
also thank
Professor Goran Malmqvist, who has translated Fleeing
into Swedish. Gao Xingjian:
The Case for Literature
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