CUHK Series:Snow in August
Snow in August
Gao Xingjian
Translated by Gilbert C. F. Fong
Copyright Information
Snow in August
By Gao Xingjian
Translated by Gilbert C. F. Fong
© Gao Xingjian, 2000, 2001
English language translation © Gilbert C. F. Fong, 2003
First published in Chinese as Bayue xue by Lianjing Chubanshe, Taiwan, 2000
Revised edition published in Gao Xingjian juzuo xuan by Ming Pao Press, Hong Kong, 2001
First published in English by The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 2003
First English paperback edition, 2004
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ISBN
962-996-101-6
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Photographs courtesy of National Taiwan Junior College of Performing
Arts 國立臺灣戲曲專科學校. Photographer: Ming-hsun Lee 李銘訓
Paintings courtesy of Gan Xingjian
Printed in Hong Kong
Title of Book: Snow in August
Author: Gao Xingjian
Translator: Gilbert C. F. Fong
Edition: V1.0
Date Last Updated: Day (10) Month (05) Year (2012)
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Testimonials
"Snow in August blends Eastern and Western cultures. In form, there are elements of Shakespearean and Greek tragedy, but in spirit, it embodies a uniquely Eastern sensibility."
──Gao Xingjian
Directory
Titlepage
Copyright information
Testimonials
Introduction: Marginality, Zen, and Omnipotent Theatre
Snow in August
Act I Scene 1
Act I Scene 2
Act I Scene 3
Act II Scene 1
Act II Scene 2
Act II Scene 3
Act II Scene 4
Act III
Notes
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Introduction:
Marginality, Zen, and Omnipotent Theatre
I want to pass on to the Beijing opera actors the knowledge and experience gained from my work in experimental drama in the West…. My aim is to create a modern musical theatre based on the foundations of Eastern traditional drama, an omnipotent theatre of singing, dialogue, movement, and the martial arts.
—Gao Xingjian on Snow in August (Gao 2002: 6)
Snow in August is based on the life of Huineng (633-713), the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism and founder of the Sudden Enlightenment School. According to Gao Xingjian, the sources for this “major drama about life” are Huineng’s autobiographical Platform Sutra 壇經[1-1] and various koan cases (Gao 2002: 5). It is not surprising that Gao Xingjian has discovered a kindred spirit in Huineng, as there are elements in the Zen master’s life that strike a chord with our playwright. To put it more succinctly, Huineng, like Gao Xingjian, was always someone on the margins of society, often by choice. According to Huineng’s biographies (which are half legend and half history), he was an impoverished woodcutter from the southern part of China, the backwater of Chinese culture. (In the play, Huineng is first referred to as “the barbarian from the south.”) He never had any schooling, but despite being illiterate, he had an uncanny ability to understand difficult Buddhist sutras and elucidate Buddhist tenets in a straightforward manner. He was an outsider to the religious order—he did not belong to any temple, and he was not even an ordained monk when he became the Sixth Patriarch.Like our playwright, Huineng lived in exile many times during his life. When he was young, his father, who had been an official in the capital, lost his post and was banished to live in Canton in the south with his family. After Huineng was chosen as patriarch, he was forced to flee from the temple to live among hunters in the mountains to avoid persecution from jealous monks. He shied away from the seat of power, spurning the Emperor and the Empress Dowager’s royal summons to serve in the capital as “Teacher of Heaven and Men.” This was of course a grand gesture on his part, an attempt to underline his refusal to become a figurehead of state orthodoxy.
Some scholars have noticed that there is a latent anti-establishment stance in Zen Buddhist beliefs. Huineng’s famous gatha poem, which is quoted in the play, alludes to his non-conformist attitude:
The bodhi is not a tree,
Nor the mind a mirror bright;
Buddha nature is always pure,
Where can any dust alight?
While orthodox Buddhist masters typically insisted on cultivating virtues and doing good works to achieve enlightenment, Huineng, on the other hand, endorsed the idea of enlightenment through a direct understanding of one’s self-nature. Bodhi is wisdom and, according to Huineng, it cannot be grown or cultivated—he was to assert later that Bodhi comes as “sudden enlightenment,” thus the name of his school of Zen Buddhsim. The mind cannot be objectified as a mirror, as Buddha nature is self-nature—it resides within oneself, not in extraneous icons or deeds, which are but delusions. It is also pure and empty, such that even dust can find no place to settle, let alone soil it. In contrast, Shenxiu, the senior instructor and foil to Huineng in almost every aspect (in Huineng’s biography and in the play), still clings to objects in his metaphorizing Bodhi and the mind:
The body is a Bodhi tree,
The mind a mirror bright,
Always wipe it clean,
And let no dust alight.
Shenxiu is firmly rooted in the orthodoxy and its tenets. To him, good works and the cultivation of virtues (“Always wipe it clean”) will lead to the “way.” In contrast, Huineng’s “no-mind” approach moves beyond orthodoxy and abandons all attachments to enter into the realm of the void, thus achieving the highest pinnacle of enlightenment. This approach proves to be far superior, and he ultimately wins the succession to the patriarchate. His Platform Sutra is the only Buddhist sutra (jing 經) written by a Chinese master (all others were written by Indian masters). Histori-cally, he was credited with revolutionizing Buddhism in China by giving it Chinese characteristics and effectively transforming it into a Chinese school of thought.
The episodes of Huineng’s life are highlighted in Snow in August, as if Gao Xingjian had found the “objective correlative” for his ideal personality, the perfect vehicle for his worldview and philosophy of life—indépendance totale and freedom. As Gao Xingjian echoes Huineng: “You could say that there is Chan [Zen] in every person, and everyone can become a bodhisattva.” (Chang 2002a: 15) The truth, then, is not attached to any one thing, and it depends on no one but the individual himself or herself; in other words, it is contingent upon the actualization of individualism in its ultimate form. The significance of Huineng, according to Gao, does not reside in his status as a revered relig
ious leader, but in his inherent understanding of the truth about human existence and salvation, which represents a major breakthrough and “freeing up” of religion:
First, he [Huineng] broke through the obsession with material objects. He didn’t even want the traditional cassock and bowl but preferred to just try to achieve a spiritual connection or tacit understanding between master and acolyte…
Secondly, Huineng was unwilling to play the role of a messiah. He only guided people and inspired them to realize their own natures.…He has an even more modern image than Jesus Christ. Christ sacrificed himself to save others, but the thought of Huineng is even more modern—the point is not who will save who, but to go out and save yourself! (Chang 2002a: 13)
Liu Zaifu, a famous scholar and good friend of Gao Xingjian, once commented in a lecture that Gao’s work could be summarized in one word: self-salvation. In Snow in August, Gao tries to tackle the universal problem of freeing oneself from life’s sufferings, and Zen represents a supreme transcendence of worldly troubles and privations (Gao 2002: 5).
In Snow in August, Huineng is portrayed as a thinker, and that, Gao insists, is the only way he could be presented in drama—if drama were used to promote religion, it would become a meaningless endeavour (Chang 2002a: 14).GaoXingjian does not wish to promote Zen Buddhism—while he appreciates its scepticism towards language, he does not find it agreeable as a religious practice (Gao 1992a: 114). On many occa-sions, both public and private, Gao has saidthat he is not a believer and warned against regarding his plays as treatises on Zen Buddhism or any other philosophy (Gao 1992b: 136). However, there is no denying that a Zen ambience pervades many of his stories and plays—some critics even go as far as to insist that Gao is the creator of a kind of Zen theatre (Zhao 1999). Even Gao himself claims that with Snow in August, it is the first time in Chinese drama that Zen has been successfully integrated into a play, unlike many previous attempts which merely recount in a straightforward manner the stories of retribution and virtue rewarded (Chang 2002a: 13-14).
The ultimate goal of theatre is to express human nature.…This play should have a spiritual impact on people; it will be a jolt to the innermost mind, so it requires a powerful theatrical form. So long as you grasp the essence of Chan [Zen], you can move the audience. (Chang 2002a: 15)
What does Gao mean when he says that the play requires “a powerful theatrical form”? The 2002 production of Snow in August in Taipei, directed by Gao Xingjian himself, was an extravaganza. It featured fifty actors and actresses, a chorus of fifty, four percussionists, and a symphony orchestra made up of ninety musicians for a total of two hundred-odd performers. The impact came not only from the number but also from the onset of sights and sounds on the stage, a theatre of “singing, dialogue, movement and the martial arts.” The aim was to create a modern musical form based on Beijing opera, an all encompassing theatre which Gao called “omnipotent theatre” 全能的戲劇.
The Taipei production of Snow in August aspired to expand the possibilities of theatrical performance, in particular, Beijing opera. There had been many attempts to modernize the traditional art form, but they were all hampered by the preoccupation that the end product, no matter the experimentation, would still be Beijing opera. Gao Xingjian was different: he wanted total independence in order to free himself from all constraints. He started from zero and would be willing to accept any result as long as it was innovative—“it [Snow in August] includes everything, but is not any one thing,” (Chang 2002a: 11) i.e., it was not anything in the repertoire of existent theatrical forms.
In this “omnipotent theatre,” the actors also had to be “omnipotent actors” 全能的演員. They were required to sing, dance, and perform in different theatrical styles, and be accomplished in many performing arts techniques, both Chinese and Western. The performance was to be different from Beijing opera and stage plays, and the directing and acting had to be founded on a new understanding of contemporary theatre, i.e., what Gao Xingjian calls the “tripartite actor”—the actor, entering into a state of neutrality, should be able to separate himself from the character to display his art to the audience in a self-conscious and interesting manner (Gao 2002: 5; Fong 1999: xviii-xxi).
“Omnipotent theatre” developed out of the concept of “total theatre,” which Gao first advocated in 1984 with the experimental Wild Man (Yeren 野人). The play was an attempt to return modern drama to the traditional concepts of Chinese opera—it includes not only dialogue but also the essentials of traditional theatre, such as singing, movement and gesture, and martial arts. The emphasis is on theatricality, which constantly reminds the audience that they are not experiencing reality but watching a performance, and that they should thoroughly enjoy themselves in an exciting atmosphere not unlike that of a festival celebration (Gao 1984: 161-62). This is reminiscent of Bakhtin’s idea of the carnival, but whereas Gao Xingjian’s theatre can be considered in many ways “subversive,” its main thrust is to recover drama’s original raison d’ être, to bring the theatre back to its very origin as a religious ritual, whereby people can enjoy spiritual and physical fulfilment, acquire happiness, or extricate themselves from suffering (Gao 1993: 191; Gao 1988a: 132). The idea of total theatre was carried over from Wild Man to City of the Dead (Mingcheng 冥城) (1987) and Story of the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing zhuan 山海經傳) (1989). These two plays, according to Gao Xingjian, sum up his pursuit of the idea of the theatre. They are not traditional Chinese opera, nor are they Western opera; they feature music and dance, but they are not musicals in the general sense (Gao 1993: 190). With City of the Dead,
[I] wish to break away from all the stylizations of traditional Chinese opera, including those of music, singing, dancing, and costuming, but preserve their various performing techniques, such as face-changing and acrobatics.…If someone were to ask me what I mean by “Modern Eastern Theatre,” this play provides one of the answers. (Gao 1991: 243-44)
Contemporary theatre is characterized by the blurring of lines between different genres of performing art. The stage has become a melting pot, mixing drama with comedy routines, magic tricks, song and dance, and clowning techniques and devices. Meyerhold sees theatre as a “revue”: when dancing, clowning, gymnastics, and acrobatics are incorporated into a play, they “can make the performance more diverting and deepen the spectator’s comprehension of it.” (Meyerhold 1998: 254) Artaud insists that “theatre’s sphere is physical and plastic” (Artaud 2001: 137) and finds “spatial poetry” in the physicality of Balinese theatre and sign language (Artaud 2001: 104). In The Theatre and Its Double he writes:
To link theatre with expressive form potential, with everything in the way of gestures, sound, colours, movement, is to return it to its original purpose, to restore it to a religious, metaphysical position, to reconcile it with the universe. (Artaud 2001: 136)
Both Meyerhold and Artaud’s ideas have likely influenced Gao Xingjian’s views on the theatre. To Gao, the ideal performance is a blend of physical action, dialogue, and psychology (Quah 2001: 164), but his theatre goes beyond Meyerhold’s goal of deepening the audience’s comprehension, even though that is also what Gao aims to achieve when he insists on communicating with the audience and providing them with a new perceptiveness. He is perhaps more at home with Artaud’s idea of situating theatre at a metaphysical level. However, when Artaud proclaims that theatre exists “to express objectively secret truths, to bring out in active gestures those elements of truth hidden under forms in their encounters with Becoming” (Artaud 2001: 137), Gao would probably respond that his vision is more private, a “One Man’s Bible,” so to speak, or the insight one gets from understanding the self.
In 1988, Gao wrote an essay entitled “In Pursuit of a Modern Drama” (對一種現代劇的追求):
Drama of the future is a kind of total drama. It is a kind of living drama with interactions between actors, actors and characters, characters, actors and audience being enhanced. It is different fro
m the drama which is determined in the rehearsal room like canned products. It encourages spontaneous acting, which fills the theatre with vibrancy. It is like playing communal games. It fully develops every potential of the art. It will not be impoverished. It will collaborate with the artists of spoken language and avoid degenerating into mime or musical. It will be symphonized with multi-visuality. It will push the expressivity of language to its fullest capacity. It is an art that will not be substituted by another form of art. (Gao 1988b: 86, translated by Quah Sy Ren)
Thus his idea of the theatre is a living, vibrant theatre. It is interactive; it is like playing games in a communal setting; and it incorporates language and visual images which are expressive and multiple in its articulation. Furthermore, he aims not only for a multiform crossover, but also for an intercultural synthesis of Eastern and Western traditions. His total theatre aspires to combine the dialogic predilection of the West with the non-verbal physicality—gestures, movement and acrobatics—found in the theatre of the East, changing their techniques, breaking down the barrier between them and harmonizing their differences (Gao 1993: 186).
Eclecticism, then, is the key to Gao Xingjian’s theatre. As he says of Snow in August:
… the story of Huineng is of epic proportions, on a par with any drama from the pen of Shakespeare. In fact, Snow in August melds Eastern and Western cultures. The form is like that of Shakespearian or Greek tragedy, but the spirit can only have come from the wisdom of the East. (Chang 2002a: 13)
With his characteristic avoidance of identification with the centre, he proceeds to “rewrite” on a peripheral platform the art forms belonging to the collective conscious (in this case Western opera and Beijing opera), that which he considers the main stream, according to his own design and preferences. Gao himself described his production of Snow in August as “four unlikes”: unlike opera, unlike traditional Chinese drama, unlike dance, and unlike stage plays (Chang 2002c: 20). “It includes everything, but is not any one thing.” It developed out of Beijing opera and Western opera but was neither, a new theatre that one day would make its way onto the world stage (Chang 2002a: 11).