Chapter 5 Building a Modern Zen Drama

——A Brief Commentary on Gao Xingjian's Recent Dramas 1 In 1997, Gao Xingjian created a succinct "koan" in the play "August Snow". Huineng, who was still a rice clerk, came to listen to the Zen master Ren Hongmi teach the most important principles of Buddhism: Shinobi: Who is the outsider? Huineng: Huineng is the walker. Shinobi: What are you doing standing outside? Hui Neng: You are still hesitating at the door, can you get in? Shinobi: Just take a step forward. Just take a step forward, which is easy to say and seems not difficult to do, but it is the most important test for an artist.

ten years ago. In 1986, when Gao Xingjian's magnificent and astonishing performance made Gao Xingjian reach the highest point of fame in the Chinese theater circle, he quickly wrote it, which surprised the whole literary world: Unexpectedly, he completely restarted a new way and put 80 The accumulated achievements of Chinese experimental theater in the 1990s were completely ignored. At that time, some critics accused the propaganda of religion. Gao Xingjian replied: What he showed was "a perception method for Eastern people to know themselves and find a balance between themselves and the outside world, which is different from Westerners' introspection and repentance. Orientals do not have such strong Confessional Consciousness".This way of perception is the instinctive comprehension of language.The superficial language itself is not sufficient, and the "person" as the self is always lonely. Only by relying on language to transcend language can we get out of the predicament. Although it may not be possible to reach the other shore, at least it is a possible direction of swimming.

At the time of writing, Gao Xingjian did not have a clear idea of ​​Zen drama aesthetics, which can be clearly seen in the drama thesis (Jinghua Night Talk) published the following year.But there are indeed many passages in it that have never appeared in modern Chinese drama: Another: Everyone is looking for it here, what are you doing there? S: There's nothing I'm looking for here. ... People watching the circle: (coming out from the crowd) Where are you going? Person: I will go there. People watching circles: Didn’t you find nothing?how did it pass 2 "Thinking about the past" is just a vague longing for the other side.Afterwards, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gao Xingjian turned to folk dramas, trying to rewrite Chinese mythological epics from folk customs.He wrote "The City of the Underworld" and "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", etc., but actually gave up the pursuit of a new drama style from the beginning.It was not until 1991 that he calmed down to think again, and then he continued to write the most experimental novella among his works, as well as the monologue "The Realm of Life and Death".

This "brand new beginning" made Zhong Fu's pursuit begin to take shape on the stage.No wonder this play is the most performed Chinese contemporary drama abroad.The play is not long, but the form is very special: the whole play is a monologue of a female character, but there is a female dancer (as her mental image?), and a clown plays several male roles mentioned in the female monologue.The speaking female hardly made any movements, except for raising her hand and turning her face: while the latter two performed exaggerated movements on stage like pantomime, but they didn't have a single line.The speaking woman calls herself "she" and tells with a weary emotion the difficulties, the boredom, of relations with men.But when the man disappeared, or was "killed" by her (turned into a farm hat on a hanger). She began to feel lonely and even found that her limbs began to fall off.

Woman: (stops, staring blankly at the fallen hands and feet) She doesn't understand, what's going on?How did her own home, her cozy and warm nest, turn into a terrifying hell overnight... She has to get out! (Calls) She wants to go out-go-no one hears, no one cares, she is in her own room, locked herself up, can only come in but not out... (Kneeling on the ground, looking around, Overwhelmed.) (The clown backed up from the side of the stage, looked down at the ground, and stepped back to the center of the stage. Only then did a mouse appear in the direction he came from, and was induced by him to crawl up to him cautiously and timidly. Only then did the audience realize that he was holding a mouse in his hand. thread, and he pockets the mouse, down.)

After the individual is freed from the pain of sex and growth, the self becomes something that is not observable by oneself or others, and also something that is not said by oneself or others. It can even be said that the speaker in "The Realm of Life and Death" is both and not the speaker himself.Otherwise, she does not need to use "she" to refer to herself; and the performer is between the speaker and the performer and is not equal to either of the two elders, otherwise he or she does not have to be transformed into a split stage image.Such a complex relationship; maybe only the woman's last Zen-like charade can give a little hint: an old man in gray clothes and hat comes up from nothing, the old man is neither the speaker nor the listener, the old man It seems to be a conclusion that can not be expressed in words.

The monologue "The Realm of Life and Death" is Gao Xingjian's boldest dramatic experiment.It lies not only in technique (pantomime, ballet, magic, light and shadow, acrobatics, etc., appear only as "accompaniment" to monologues), but also these physical performances, often as the negation of meaning, as the opposite of speech, rather than as its illustration. Woman: She just understood.She was in pain only because she was under his gaze.Could it be that he has become the whole meaning of her existence?No! (turns around trying to get away) (The eyes in the hands of the black-robed man are on the ground, always staring behind her.)

Woman: (calling) No--! (run) (The man in the black robe does not chase, but only raises the eyes in his hand to observe, and when she is finished running, he puts it behind her head again.) This is Gao Xingjian's first play that is deeply influenced by Buddhism in a true sense. The self-reported life experience of the protagonist in the play is almost similar to the "Four Noble Truths" that Shi Ying has obtained for many years. bitter. On topic.This play is the most difficult to find "Western influence" in Gao Xingjian's plays. "Life and Death" is a contemporary oriental drama in the true sense, which is transformed into the outside: the loneliness of life, which is successfully expressed as a sad state of mind in the play, is re-transformed into a personal tragedy on the stage. dramatic situation.

However, the "quietness" that Buddhism considers to be liberation, that is, "vomiting, abandoning desires, annihilation, and silence", eradicates troubles, but in the self-report of the hostess, it is extremely bleak. Silence does not necessarily cut off all karma . The heroine of (Life and Death Realm) walks to the brink of life and death, but is still far from attaining liberation. 3 "Dialogue and Rhetorical Questions" in 1992 seems to be a double-entry expansion of "The World of Life and Death": it uses the upper and lower parts that Gao Xingjian likes to use; a monk.The whole play seems to tell a tragic story about a man and a woman turning from love to hate, but it has always been unfolded in a Zen-style response.This may be why the Chinese title of the play does not resemble a literary work.

A man and a woman seem to meet by chance, have just spent a night of fun, and after everything is over, they find that they are completely unable to communicate, that is to say, unable to "properly" say goodbye politely and without emotion.There is a monologue in the middle of the dialogue, but the dialogue uses the normal person, but the monologue uses the third person, or the second person refers to himself, and the sentence structure is complex, as if he is thinking, which is in contrast to the extremely short sentences in the dialogue part that are perfunctory to the other party.

Man: (softly) One minute earlier, or one minute later, why put on airs, each other, that's all there is to it. Woman: (softly) Of course she expected it, she wanted the ending from the beginning, but she didn't expect it to end so suddenly, so hastily, and so quickly. (The monk hits the wooden fish twice) Woman: Come on!Nothing to be proud of. Man: I didn't say anything. Woman: Better not say it. Before that, when the two started to quarrel, a monk walked to the corner of the stage and sat cross-legged with his back to the audience.A woman recounts a sexual experience in the Himalayas.Monk keeps trying to do handstands when the two just treat each other as impersonal, stereotyped opposites.When a man talks to a woman about love, the monk starts laying eggs on a stick.When both became impatient with the conversation and ended up urging each other to take off their clothes, the monk simply cracked an egg and stood on a wooden stick.In the end, the sexual play between man and woman turns violent, the woman kills the man with a dagger, the man wraps himself in a black cloak and kills the woman, and the monk is shocked to find the stick nailed to the ground. In the second half of the dance, there was nothing above the sky, only the two heads of the man and the woman were illuminated by lights on the floor, and the ghosts of the man and the woman stood up and looked at their severed heads.Only then did the two of them have the possibility to communicate, and the conversation took the form of a relay, that is, what the two said seemed to be the same dream. Their actions and conversations were "increasingly abnormal and weird." It also gradually goes from meaning to meaninglessness, from order to disorder: the monk is sprinkling water and sweeping the floor. Woman: Winter... Man: Teapot for winter? Woman: Get... Man: And then—? Finally, the two repeated the same sentence "a crack", and the monk coughed and threw the broom on the ground, "the two stared at the monk in astonishment."Although the two of them occasionally saw the monk before, they turned a blind eye to it. This time they saw clearly.If "The Realm of Life and Death" can lead to enlightenment (the protagonist's lack of enlightenment enables the audience to realize it), it is gradual enlightenment, while "Dialogue and Rhetorical Questioning" if enlightenment can be achieved, it is epiphany enlightenment, so it is closer to Southern Zen Buddhism. "Dialogue and Rhetorical Questions" uses unreasonable and illogical "koan" to write dramas, which is more tactful than "The Realm of Life and Death". The thinking about death and life in "The Realm of Life and Death" is carried out in memory: in this play, it is a stage contrast between life and death.Living in the struggle between sex and death, they are born to be able to speak, but the language is not only incapable of communicating (the pair had sexual intercourse but did not communicate, and did not even ask each other's name when they were physically close before the scene), on the contrary, it made people alienate and deviate from each other. , hatred, and finally murderous intentions; death cannot be spoken, but ghost dreams are still expressed in language.The antagonism is reduced, of course, and the possibility of expressing meaning is also reduced.The last two "souls" became speechless, unable to communicate.And unable to vent their troubles, they can only be reduced to no language available.However, only after the language is abandoned, it is possible to gain epiphany from a super-linguistic prompt like a cough. 4 The introduction of Zen into the drama made the plots of the first two dramas too light; in 1995, Gao Xingjian's play "Night Tour God" seemed to intend to experiment with the possibility of "farce" Zen drama. At the beginning of the play, it was a carriage, and the ticket inspector opened the door to check the tickets. What he saw was the appearance of all living beings in the society. The girl in black stockings had no ticket, and asked the ticket inspector to let her go by lifting up her short skirt. The journey continues, the "passenger" reads aloud, and murmurs to a city on a drizzling night, the stage turns into a street corner under the lamppost, and the "sleepwalker" wanders the streets raving, he kicks the cardboard box in front of the store, The homeless man sleeping in it woke up with a start and cursed.The sleepwalker continued to pace and bumped into the ruffian. Just as he was about to fight, the prostitute appeared and hooked up with the ruffian.Sleepwalkers can only meditate in solitude. Sleepwalker: (for a moment) You don't say anything anymore, you don't say a word, you don't make a sound, you are only immersed in your own thoughts, and you don't deal with anyone anymore! You are still alive in this world only because you are still talking to yourself, talking to yourself, and talking to yourself. (stands still, like a statue) (There is a little music floating in the wind.) Sleepwalker: (changing postures) It doesn't matter what you meditate on, what matters is your act itself, even if it is not perceived by others. (Changing posture again) Others don't matter to you, others are their business.You are you. So the sleepwalker feels that he can be a worm or a butterfly, as long as he has nothing to do with society and others, he can be omnipresent in the world.It's a pity that at the entrance of Yiheimen, his (getaway) freedom was deprived.A murderer "The Lord" grabbed him by the throat and forced him to lead the tramp away from the cardboard box.The prostitute just came back when the sleepwalker returned to the intersection, and after a lot of noise, the tramp couldn't sleep and had to walk away.The sleepwalker deliberately let the prostitute go to the door, and sure enough, the prostitute was shot and killed by the assailant, who forced the sleepwalker to carry a suitcase across the street.The ruffian used a gun to force the sleepwalker to put the two bodies into a cardboard box, but the sleepwalker beat the ruffian to death with a trick and stuffed them into a cardboard box.After all were killed, he felt a "criminal pleasure". In the compartment, the "passenger" fell asleep, and the book fell to the floor. From this carriage to that carriage, from this street to that street, "Night Tourist" is incomparably different from "Absolute Signal" in the early 1980s.There is the final victory of good, and here is the irresistible temptation of evil (the "sleepwalker" who thinks and feels more evil than any street gangster), and any trust in people is hidden danger.In a little more than ten years after the appearance of "Absolute Signal", Gao Xingjian's plays changed from public to national.Towards spiritual individualism, and finally a strong and self-conscious self-deprecation. In "The World of Life and Death" and "Dialogue and Rhetorical Questions", this spiritual individualism is supported by Zen enlightenment.The paradox on the stage that the speaker cannot act on his own, and the doer cannot speak, symbolizes the inability of the speaking subject to know himself.But at least the two may be combined to form the two phases of the subject from delusion to enlightenment. In the play "Night Tour God", the "old man" who can be regarded as the incarnation of the Zen master in "Dialogue and Rhetorical Questions" is the last one to appear on the stage. He is so "drunk" that he can only speak in a daze: (The old man goes up with the wine bottle.) Old Man: Still here, what are you doing?Sleepwalker: Oh! (Hastily stomped his head, crushed it, and turned around) I'm sorry.You ask if his head is still there? Old Man: (Disapprovingly) Head?Sooner or later, everyone has to lose their heads, but there is no such thing as a permanent head. Sleepwalker: That’s right, but what you’re asking is if your head is still there? Old man: (raise eyebrows) Do you want to drink more? Sleepwalker: (takes a sip from the wine bottle, laughing) You said you can’t figure out whether it’s you drinking or your end drinking? Old man: It's all the same, (raises the bottle to look at the wine) What you drink is always wine. (throws away the bottle) The sleepwalker crushes his own head because he is afraid of the thinking self, which in itself can be an opportunity to surpass himself, if the sleepwalker can keep up with the old man's Zen-like scheming.It's a pity that he didn't understand the old man's stupid smile, and finally became angry and took prisoner and killed him.The whole play seems to directly recognize the impossibility of modern thinkers from obscurity to enlightenment, and becoming a Buddha by seeing one's nature. The third stage of Gao Xingjian's plays are all tragedies, all ending in violence. The violence in "Night Tour God" is directly imposed on Wu himself, canceling the possibility of self-transcendence.While tightly strangling the old man's neck, the sleepwalker thought: You are full of blood, you are not the shadow of others, you really exist, even if you are meaningless in this meaningless world, using meaningless resistance to deal with this meaningless world, it also proves that you are meaningless exist! (let go) (The old man falls to the ground, the smile still frozen on his face.) Indeed, the "sleepwalker" is not the shadow of the other, but the shadow of the self.It is the dream image of the traveler, who uses violence to prove his physical existence, and the result is to destroy the independent thinking self. 5 Playwright Gao Xingjian has always had a theater theorist in his heart.His script is a dramatic experiment with a clear intention.His innovation is also a clear goal and thoughtful plan.In Gao Xingjian's script, there is no improvisation, not even an "arbitrary" passage driven by instinct. As early as 1995, I thought that the aesthetics of Gao Xingjian's recent dramas was Zen-style, and his goal was freehand brushwork.At that time, I did not have any evidence of Gao Xingjian's own remarks, nor did I hear him approve or deny; he always took the "high profile" of "you criticize you, it has nothing to do with me" to critics, and I can't accuse him of refusing to comment. Willing to agree with me. In 1997, Gao Xingjian wrote "August Snow", the biography of Huineng, the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism. This is the only Peking opera written by Gao Xingjian.Gao Xingjian hopes to "not stick to the ready-made singing and performance procedures, and both music and singing need to be created separately, so as to find new vitality for traditional drama."In other words, this is a Beijing opera that does not follow the formula completely.In the last few scenes, Gao Xingjian turns from Huineng's death to the life of monks and laymen in the world: the nun endlessly hides as a mad woman covered in mud, always trapped in inextricable karma; "this Zen master" can split bricks; "It's a Zen master" can breathe fire from the mouth; "Crazy Zen master" claims to be a flower monk, and has no taboos, asking singing girls to "show off all their abilities."And the common people were even more chaotic: a courtesan sang on stage from the orchestra under the stage, singing "Unless she is a woman, how can a monk understand?" The writer asked Master Huineng to give a circle of light; Instead of playing "stock", play cat tricks. The whole drama ends with cats meowing in the Buddhist hall, the apse is on fire, and there is a lot of noise and chaos. At this time, Hui Neng calmly passed away, and the mountains and trees turned white all of a sudden, as if it was snowing in August. Great Zen Master: Let go, let go, let’s make a living on our own, and leave no one else behind!Visiting the hall is like a theater, where people leave and the venue is empty! It is Gao Xingjian's specialty to write scenes of chaotic crowds, from ", to "Shan Hai Jing Zhuan", and then to "Night Tour God".In the second act, the writing of mad Zen is no different from vulgarity, but it is Gao Xingjian's favorite way of writing "great madness and great vulgarity". It seems to put a question mark on whether Huineng's teachings can stand the test of reality.By this time, we can see that this biographical drama is far beyond the dramatization of Hui Neng’s life or Southern religious teachings, but the relationship between religion and secularism, the antithesis of the transcendence of birth and human affairs, and the two actually coexist. .This reminds us of Gao Xingjian's first drama with religious pursuit ten years ago, where the pursuit of transcendence is serious, pious, and indignant at the filth of the world, a bit like the first half of "August Snow". Hui Neng, and in the second half of the story, each has its own joy in being out of the world and entering into the world.Monks seek fame, wealth and status even more than ordinary people. "Everyone wants to be God! Who would rather be a joke?" Huineng, who created the "Dunzong", didn't seem to think that the descriptions of the people were unexpected. He saw that the illiterates and children with less ambition were the ones who could achieve detachment among all living beings.Therefore, he burned the ancestral robes, "attached to the mantle and rebelled against my clan." 6 It should be pointed out that Zen has almost nothing to do with Chinese opera. Not only has Chinese opera theory and performance practice not been exposed to Zen thought, but Chinese opera has never contained Zen content in the subject matter. This is exactly in contrast to Chinese poetry. Since then, there have been a large number of Zen poems, mostly poets fascinated by Zen, or monks fascinated by poetry.It can be said that it is a matter of course for Zen theory to enter poetics, and the situation in the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy is also the same. However, Chinese opera has never had a Zen theme.Some operas of the Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties, especially vulgar operas, have Buddhist content, and some are interpretations of Buddhist scriptures.For example, the story of "Mu Lian Rescue Mother" comes from the "Ullambana Sutra"; the story of "Motanga Girl" comes from the "Surangama Sutra";There is also a part of the repertoire, which is based on the stories of learning Buddhist scriptures in mysterious costumes, and was later collected in it.Those who write about Zen monks have nothing to do with Zen, such as the Yuan Zaju "Yueming Monk Du Liucui", and "Yueming Three Times Lin Qiliu".This play was later rewritten by Xu Wei as "A Dream of Cuixiang". It was rewritten by Wu Shike as "The Case of the Red Lotus". The Buddhist content of all these plays can actually be said to be folk tales, full of ritual colors of Chinese folk customs.It is no wonder that the first half of Gao Xingjian's "Ming Cheng" is very similar to the seduction of women in "Du Liucui", and the second half of "Journey to Hell" is very similar to the appearances of hell in "Mu Lian Saves Mother". Therefore, Gao Xingjian's modern Zen drama is a pioneering work in the history of Chinese drama, and there is no precedent to follow.All the discussions in the Chinese drama circle about freehand drama have missed the point: Although the idea was inspired by ancient poetry and painting, they mistakenly found models from opera, and completely forgot (or dared not) take Zen as the starting point.It was only at the end of the century that Gao Xingjian was finally able to establish a new, Chinese-style theatrical aesthetics based on Zen Buddhism in his recent plays. Because there is no precedent to follow, when we analyze this special drama aesthetics, we have to adopt an analysis method that violates the original meaning of "the unity of the Vatican and the self" of Zen. Distribution, the role of drama language both to conceal barriers and to induce consciousness, and finally to see if a synthesis can be achieved, explaining the mechanism of freehand brushwork and epiphany in drama. First of all, I want to discuss the meta-consciousness of drama, because controlling and being controlled, manipulating and being manipulated, acting and being acted are the most basic links of drama aesthetics. When Buddhism was first introduced to China, it was first of all its layered concepts such as "Three Realms" and "Six Heavens of Desire Realm" that made Chinese scholars "surprised that they thought it was strange." "Youyang Miscellaneous Cu" retells the story in the "Metaphor Sutra": "In the past, when Fanzhi was doing magic, he spit out a pot. There was a woman and a screen in it, and he was in the writer's room. , There is a man in the middle, and lie down with him again. Fan Zhijue swallows it one by one, and walks away with a stick." Lu Xun believed that this idea came from the "Contemplating the Buddha Samadhi Sea Sutra". The concept of hierarchy has a profound influence on the way of thinking in Zen. There are many such koans in Zen literature.To give just one example of the opposition to Chinese folk gods: in the second volume of "Five Lantern Festival", there is a story of "a monk who fell from the stove".After a few selections, the attendant monk asked: "A certain monk who has been serving the monk for a long time has not been instructed. What scriptures did the Kitchen God get to ascend to heaven?" . ” Therefore, one must “break” the phenomenal world in order to enter a higher level. The koan uses stories to describe levels, while some of Gao Xingjian's plays use performances to describe levels. Drama is just a long koan, thus turning itself into a so-called "metadrama". Since the early 1960s, Chinese theater circles have been keen to discuss the ideal of "freehand drama", but the theory has become more and more confused, and so far no recognized "freehand drama" has been written.The premise of freehand brushwork is that there is another "ideal" realm above the writing, which Wang Guowei later classified as "realm".The realm is beyond the medium of art, and also beyond the objects directly seen by viewing art. Gao Xingjian's view of the level of drama is the key turning point of the tricks as Zen, from confusion to enlightenment, from doubt to wisdom, and it is also the advancement from the level of performance to the consciousness beyond performance.In "Night Tourist", the traveler becomes a sleepwalker, a dream hatched by his reading meditation, so to speak.It is the combination of his imagination and the content of the book (the sexy woman in the car seat is obviously a reminder that the sleepwalker meets a street prostitute), the passenger is the performer, and the sleepwalker is the performer who is performed again.When there are only books left in the last carriage but no readers.The sleepwalker is punched by the masked man in the street, while the train carrying the sleepwalker is passing through the sky: the performed world snatches the performer from the performed world, in other words, the performed world is more important than the performed world. really.It is no longer possible for the sleepwalker to return to the stage after collapsing in a play within a play. It should be said that this is a wonderful slapstick derivation of the meta-consciousness of drama.The Zen koan is originally a farce, and the philosophy in the farce seems vulgar, but it has the possibility of seeking enlightenment that is thought-provoking. 7 Such a unique drama aesthetics is different from the so-called realism script-performance system. The "realism" system allows actors to empty their subjective consciousness and fully experience the role to reproduce the role, thereby hoping that the audience will agree with this experience and immerse themselves in the performance. The reality of the world, in the end, agrees with the play's interpretation of the world. Such a unique sense of drama.It is also different from Brecht's point of view.The latter uses the "division method" to force the audience to see the falsity of ideology's interpretation of the drama, so that they can take a critical look at the world together with the performers. We can also take Gao Xingjian’s thoughts one step further. When Brecht attributed the effect of the performance to the theory of “diversity”, what he thought of was the possibility of communication and the direction of interpretation—prompting the audience to think and transform. The World: Gao Xingjian's theater meta-consciousness goes a step further than Brecht's. His purpose is to let the audience see the triple nature of the theater itself, so as to stand in the position of "intermediary", that is, the controller.If the drama wants the audience to understand something.I just want them to understand to some extent that since the subject can appreciate or quietly watch the self-mockery of the subject of the drama, then people can also self-examine and criticize the live dramas in this world.We have to forget what Brecht said about the critical world of theater viewing.The difficulty is not in changing the world, but in understanding yourself critically.In this regard, Gao Xingjian called it "let the audience illuminate their own insight". What Gao Xingjian hopes for the audience is to let them understand that both the subject of the performance and the subject of the performance, including their audience, are both controlled and beyond control, free and not free, so as to gain insight into the limitations of any subject. "From the discovery of this self at the end of the last century, to the inevitable doubt of the self, it is now the end of another century." If you can realize from the play that self-awareness itself is a beast in a cage, then you will understand why the "self" first needs compassion and relief. Gao Xingjian's view of drama is very similar to Zen apprentices watching koan or practicing Zen. Becoming a Buddha or a demon depends on one mind.The audience is actually the owner of the highest subject, and the subject on the stage is just the projection of his own evolution—not drama, not human, but the viewer's heart. 8 Language has always been the central link in Gao Xingjian's view of drama.But his view of language is very special. He still insists on a "counter-mainstream culture" language: he advocates using the most common, "non-literary" language, spoken language, living language, and dialect.He believes that some vocabulary, morphology and syntax in dialects "can enter literary language without much modification". In recent dramas, Gao Xingjian's insistence on "common language" is no longer a stylistic choice, but a fundamental aesthetic choice.Perhaps, it was his insistence on plain language that led him to Zen aesthetics naturally.Compared with the crowned and refined language of Confucian classics and mainstream literature, the plain but fluent language of Zen is more of an "unscheming" way of expression: My efforts in language are not so much rhetoric as careful rhetoric, but rather fluency. Even if it is a sentence pattern with a complex structure invented by myself, I also strive to obtain a certain sense of language only from hearing, and the reader does not have to force it to explain.In this regard, I should admit that the language of the Chinese translation of the "Diamond Sutra" has inspired me a lot. The refusal to inherit the mainstream language method is not only a question of cultural attitude, but also a question of language style, but how to complete the task he set for himself, that is, to use language to achieve transcendence.For this purpose, the Shan heritage is crucial.The more refined and embellished literary language is actually the more public language, because this refined language requires professional or semi-professional, that is to say, have received excellent cultural education, understand a large number of allusions in the vocabulary, and also A language such as the population that understands the historical and cultural orientation of the style resists personal interpretation, and it is even less likely to achieve transcendent understanding.Therefore, Lizong emphasized the need to use the language of lay people, and even regarded the beauty of words as the object of treatment. "Evil words are not righteous, they are still beautiful."In Zen dramas, language does not take meaning as its purpose. On the contrary, meaning becomes an excuse for the development of the drama text, a necessary but not inevitable cloak.Gao Xingjian called it "meaning in meaninglessness" brilliantly. 9 Fundamentally speaking, Zen enlightenment is non-communicative.If one person (such as Gao Xingjian, the playwright) realizes something, he cannot tell another person (such as the audience watching Gao Xingjian's play).As a playwright, he must of course use language, but language itself cannot "communicate from heart to heart", it can only obstruct communication. The only remaining way is to hint to the audience in various ways, and if they want to realize something, they can only figure it out on their own.Drama is finding a way out of nothing, using words to imply what cannot be said.Derrida once discussed the hindrance of language to drama: "As long as the stage is controlled by language, it is theological, because the will to speak is inevitably the arrangement of the original logos. It does not belong to drama, but it controls drama remotely." When Derrida made this statement, he had in mind Western theology, and the Logos' rationale for "revelation."He probably did not expect that there is an Eastern religious "theology", which not only denies the Creator, but also denies the divinity that can be reached through language, but it repeatedly induces it with language, the so-called koan.Zen's several ways of dealing with language barriers have been successfully transformed into dramatic means in Gao Xingjian's recent dramas, and they are means with excellent dramatic effects. It cannot be said, even if it is said, it cannot be broken. Therefore, Zen practitioners' ingenious arguments and discussions can only be inappropriate, answering irrelevant questions, or even insinuating hints. .Such a koan deliberately plays with meaninglessness.If such a non-communicative speech act has to be used in response, the dramatic tension will be stronger, and the answer is irrelevant to the question, and the words are irrelevant. The ending paragraph of "The Realm of Life and Death" is arranged like this: Woman: Tell a story?A romance?A farce?A fable?a joke? .... (The old man gradually walks to the center of the stage, where there is a stone. The old man lowers his head and walks around the stone carefully.) The questions asked by the woman in the monologue are only answered by silent, irrelevant actions, so that the words of the woman and the actions of the man have only one meaning, that is, meaninglessness.But both of these two kinds only show the language barrier, and have not yet shown the gesture of surpassing the language barrier. There is another passage near the end of "Dialogue and Rhetorical Questions".Whether there are dreams, memories, or fantasies behind the door between women and men, the man repeats: "Absolutely not". Woman: (lighter) This cannot be said. Man: (very lightly) Why? Woman: (almost in a whisper) You can't say that! (The man is dumb. The monk enters, the sound of gurgling water.) (The monk hurried forward, put one knee on the ground, bowed his body, clasped his palms together in a gesture of scooping up water, dipped his little finger in the water, washed his ears, left and right ears, stood up and listened, and gradually grinned, showing an Amitabha-like smile.) There is nothing behind the door (the other shore?) because there is nothing to say.Only by washing your ears and listening, you may be able to hear the Buddha nature from your inner voice.Therefore, the Zen master asked Buddhists to "look south and look at the Big Dipper". The unreasonable direction is the correct direction to find the unspeakable. As a result, Gao Xingjian's near-action language is written, but it demonstrates the gesture of overcoming language barriers.This kind of modern Zen drama is not rebuilding the publicity, but rebuilding the exchange of drama in the joint participation of both parties, but fully personal efforts beyond the publicity, which I want to call "non-public participation". 10 Let me summarize in the most general, non-religious language possible: Gao Xingjian's recent theatrical art creations prove that it is possible to have a contemporary theater based on the following artistic principles: First of all, this kind of dramatic language can be meaningful, and the plot can have dramatic interest, but the standpoint of this kind of drama does not lie in this, they do not point to a certain theme, a certain interpretation, it only induces the audience to appreciate the possible Second, in order to achieve this purpose, the language itself is often ordinary and unpolished, but opaque or translucent, so as to free up the largest language. Third, in order to enlighten the audience's inherent understanding, this kind of drama often implies the control and controlled consciousness of the performance itself, as well as the human mind's understanding of the world. fourth, and most important or most difficult to articulate, this kind of theater strives to induce the audience to co-create a realm.This state is far from the appearance of the world, but an indescribable state of transcendence behind the multitude of phenomena. This kind of drama is called Zen-style freehand drama because Chinese poetry and painting moved towards freehand under the inspiration of Zen many centuries ago.Gao Xingjian's achievement is the first time in modern China to consciously apply this kind of aesthetics to a modern art, and it is one of the most public art.Therefore, Gao Xingjian had to use sufficient originality to push Zen/Xiyi aesthetics a big step forward and make it a modern art philosophy. Although the expansion of this aesthetics is far from reaching its peak: Gao Xingjian is in his creative prime, and his works in recent years are getting better and better, but from his original ability, his theoretical foundation and cultural literacy , from his self-possessed self-confidence, and from what he has achieved, we have reason to believe that his unique chapter in the history of world theater will be rewritten, and rewritten many times. (Source of the article: Issue 7 of "Pioneer Today")