Soul Mountain

Soul Mountain is a novel by 2000 Nobel Prize winning Chinese author Gao Xingjian, first published in Chinese in 1990. It was first published in the United States in in December 5, 2000, and was translated by Mabel Lee. The novel is a product of the author's journey in rural areas of China, inspired by a false diagnosis of fatal lung cancer.

The novel is a part autobiographical, part fictional account of a man's journey to find the fabled mountain Lingshan. It is a combination of story fragments, travel accounts, unnamed characters , and folk poetry/legends.

Synopsis

At the suggestion of a fellow traveler, the protagonist chooses to seek out the elusive Lingshan, a sacred mountain. The narrator himself, however, multiplies as the narrative progresses. First he divides into "I" and "you". Then the "you" creates a third voice, a troubled and emotional "she", followed by "he". These characters hold some interest for the sacred mountain, yet in the quest the sensitivity and humanity of the characters is revealed, and the narrator realizes that he still craves the warmth of human society, despite its anxieties.

Publication

''Soul Mountain'' was first published as ''Lingshan'' in Taipei by Lianjing Chubanshe in 1990. It was then published in by Liliane and No?l Dutrait by the title of ''La Montagne de l'?me'' in 1995. In 2000 it was published, with an English translation by Mabel Lee, by Flamingo/HarperCollins in Australia.

Autobiographical influences

In the early 1980's, Gao Xingjian faced a great deal of criticism in the wake of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It was during this time, in 1983, that the author was diagnosed with lung cancer during a regular health screening. With the memory of his father's death by the same cause just two years earlier still fresh in his memory, Xingjian resigned himself to death, which brought about a "transcendant tranquility"., shortly after the ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Additionally, traditional Chinese culture promotes the Confucian ideology of dissolution of the self and promotion of subservience and conformity.. The combination of traditional conformity and the "self-sacrificing" ideology of the Chinese Communist Revolution effectively silenced artists and writers who depended on their creativity of self-expression. Thus, under these circumstances, Gao Xingjian left his native country to finish ''Soul Mountain'' in 1989 in Paris, publishing it the following year in Taipei. Mabel Lee describes the novel as "a literary response to the devastation of the self".