Soul Mountain: Amazon.co.uk: Gao Xingjian, Mabel Lee: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

As one of Gao Xingjian's characters remarks, if a fiction writer could know the true stories of the people he passes on the street, he would be amazed. Surely the Nobel laureate's own story, which forms the basis of Soul Mountain, is worthy of amazement. In 1983 Gao was diagnosed with lung cancer, the disease that had killed his father. At the same time, he had been threatened with arrest for his counterrevolutionary writings and was preparing to flee Beijing for the remote regions of southwest China. Shortly before his departure, however, the condemned man got at least a partial reprieve: a second set of x-rays revealed no cancer at all. On the heels of this extraordinary redemption, he began the circuitous journey that would lead him to the sacred (and possibly mythical) mountain of Lingshan--and to this daring, historically resonant novel.

A destination chosen arbitrarily, at the suggestion of a fellow traveller, the elusive Lingshan becomes rich with meaning for the narrator of Soul Mountain. Meanwhile, the narrator himself shows a tendency to go forth and multiply. First he divides into You and I. Then You generates yet a third voice, a somewhat simple but intense young woman named She, followed by He--and none of these personae can resist the elemental lure of the sacred site. Indeed, the search for Lingshan becomes a metaphor for all spiritual striving:

Would it be better to go along the main road? It will take longer travelling by the main road? After making some detours you will understand in your heart? Once you understand in your heart you will find it as soon as you look for it? The important thing is to be sincere of heart? If your heart is sincere then your wish will be granted?

Along the way, I and You mourn the devastations of the Cultural Revolution, when thousands of monuments, temples, and graves were reduced to rubble. The obliteration of these reminders of the dead becomes a torment to the narrators of the novel, who struggle to assert their individuality--itself a proscribed act in Communist China--against what they see as a false and brutal ideal that has swept away history, literature, and tradition as decisively as it has destroyed the ancient forests. (At one point Gao describes the sad spectacle of the few remaining pandas, who wander a shrinking woodland wearing electronic transmitters.) Seamlessly translated by the Australian scholar Mabel Lee, Soul Mountain is a masterpiece of self-observation set against a soulful denunciation of "progress" and practicality. --Regina Marler

Review

'Gao has helped illuminate the human condition for people throughout the world in ways that bring credit to him and to literary endeavour.' THES

'There is a sense throughout that Gao is running after things that are already vanishing. On the nature reserves, people are shooting bears and even pandas; trees are being cut down a hundred times faster than before. Stones inscribed with historical inscriptions have been dynamited to yield materials for bridges that were never built… Soul Mountain is Gao's attempt to bring back what is lost. In the end, his gift is to look beyond politics at the human condition, offering no easy explanations and refusing artificial allegiances.' Sunday Times

‘Gao transcends cultural barriers. A good story will out in any language, and when Gao is good he is staggeringly so. His writing about the Cultural Revolution is remarkable.' Daily Telegraph

'A picaresque novel on an epic scale… Soul Mountain bristles with narratives in miniature – stories from ancient Chinese history, folk tales, childhood reminiscences, memories of the Cultural Revolution, as well as bitter arguments and passionate sex. Gao's aim is to represent "the ineffability of life", and, as far as that is possible to do, he has done it in this complex, rich and strange novel.' Independent on Sunday

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

The Intense Pleasure of the Journey 21 Feb 2001

By M. Milesi

Format:Paperback

Soul Mountain is a beautiful book. It is a spherical tapestry of a man's journey inward and outward, surrounding us in the myths, the landscapes, the laneways and the back street temples of China past and present. In the first pages, the narrator relates how he decided to go off to find Lingshan - 'ling' meaning 'soul or spirit' and 'shan' meaning 'mountain' - through a chance encounter with a stranger on a train. From there the identities of the narrator and the stranger become interwoven, just as the search for the elusive mountain at the source of the You river takes us through the painful, ephemeral beauty of personal life and national history. Gao Xingjian is a master of the visual: I found myself continually following his images in my mind, ending up far away from the printed page, back in my own wanderings alone in China.

Soul Mountain is not a linear novel that can be rushed through or read diagonally. Meetings with friends or strangers, attempts at conversation, lines of poetry, real or made up stories, incidents and musings flow together like leaves on the surface of a stream. And like leaves, they touch each other, carry each other along for a while and then separate to continue their journeys alone. The I-narrator is transformed into he then you then she, just as the eagle rock in the night forest becomes an old woman shaman, a beautiful girl and a terrifying demon.

The novel works through association and evocation, with a powerful sense of the significance of place and time in an individual's life and no need to create anything more binding than purely personal order. This doesn't mean that it is chaotic or illegible. You get so caught up in it that you accept the uncertainties of where you are going because of the intense pleasure of the journey there.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Not Enough "there" there 26 Dec 2007

By G. Legon

Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel and fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flat in comparison.

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China 25 May 2004

By Arbie

I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marks in vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, and probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, and being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.

To talk content, this is one man's journey around China in exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression and creativity that is deemed in opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul and psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns used in reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" and "You" for the first half of the novel, and then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he and the reader are looking down on himself from above - and also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author and an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").

Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, and this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), and just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.