Customer Reviews

Soul Mountain

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This English edition of Soul Mountain by the Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian fails to do justice to the orginal. There are simply too many mistakes, too many inaccuracies in the translation. The translation seems to be done by more than one person. Otherwise, how can one explain that a sinologist like Mabel Lee does not know Lao TZu? In her translation, Lao Tzu is translated as someone's "father." Also the term "elevation," which appears many times in the book, is often translated as a proper noun; but it is also correctly translated as "above sea level" in a couple of places. There are other examples of such inconsistencies in the translation. There seems to be a lot of guess work, not proper understanding of the original, in this translation. There are more than one places where a word or phrase the transaltor does not know is simply treated as a proper noun. There are also careless mistakes such as "one million yuan" translated into "one hundred yuan." The original prose of Mr. Gao is lucid, graceful and sensuous. The translation is full of long, involved, awkward sentences, like "It is only when my tape gets to the end and I stop the recorder to change the tape that, panting, that he too comes to a stop." Mr. Gao's work is infused with Chinese culture, history and is full of literary allusions and idioms. To render everything gracefully and faithfully into another language is no easy task. But this does not give a translator excuse or freedom to guess the meaning and create his/her own version. Mr. Gao used a famous saying in Chinese which talks about finding by sheer luck what one has been searching for far and wide. A literal trasnlation of the saying would be "You can wear OUT iron shoes in fruitless searching, and yet by a lucky chance you may find it without even looking for it." Lee's translation is "if you wear OLD iron shoes you won't find it anywhere and to look for it would be a total waste of time." Examples of such inaccuracies or misunderstandings are too numerous to name. It is a shame that such a masterpiece is presented to English readers in such shoddy translation. It deserves a new, better translation.

This has to be one of the most controversial books on the market. Either you love it or hate it, as reflected by ratings from 1 to 5 stars. I read the book first in Chinese (my first language), then in English, and I think I can partially explain this contradiction.

The central theme of the book is straightforward. A dying man goes on a quest for adventure and closure. The reason he chose to go to the Soul Mountain is purely coincidental, he heard the name casually mentioned by a fellow traveler on the train. We can only speculate that he was drawn to the "Soul" mountain in the hope of finding some spiritual enlightening and the meaning of his own existence.

The Soul Mountain (Lingshan) continues to elude Gao, and the closest thing he ever got to is the Soul Rock (Lingyan) where women burn incense when they want to have sons. Unlike many other readers, I could not detect any deep moral or religious questioning on the part of the author, nor is there a spiritual awakening in this book.

What has captivated me is Gao's lyrical description of the amazing landscape, the villagers, the Taoist priests, the monks and the hermits who live in the deep mountains and back woods. He reflects fleetingly on his past, full of memories of political persecution, failures in love and relationships, lack of fulfillment, and wrestles with his own demons of loneliness and homesickness. I am moved by his irrepressible sadness whenever he encounters remnants of his childhood: ponds with floating duckweed, arched stone bridges, small town wine shops---.I am dazzled by Gao's masterful use of both traditional and modern Chinese prose, his subtle sense of humor, irony, drama, mystery and his knowledge of history and folklore.

Gao's alternative use of "I." "you" and "He" does not bother me. In my mind's eye, I see the same person. But I find his jumps from reality to fantasy, from the mystic mountain to the sizzling bedroom a bit disorienting. His haunting nightmares and his philosophical rambling remind me of Avant Garde paintings. One gets a sense of power, but not beauty.

I read the Chinese version of the book first and loved it. However, when I read the English translation, I felt something was lost. It was not the fault of the translator, but the huge problem of uprooting a monumental work from its native land and transplanting it in a foreign soil. It is therefore surprising to me that so many Western readers are able to enjoy this remarkable piece of literature.

The matter of women in Gao's writing requires some cultural context. By tradition, the mainstream Chinese writers have been reticent about the matter of sex. Serious writers did not engage in description of sexual love. But as a modern writer, Gao probably feel obliged to break this taboo, although in my opinion, he probably does not feel comfortable about it, nor is this one of the more successful aspects of the book. The women in Gao's book are hard for the Westerners to relate. One book reviewer at Amazon.com described these women as "deranged or
hysterical drama queens of the highest order."

When reading this book, it is important to consider the social context it was written in. For more than 3 decades beginning from 1949, the only art form allowed in China was the exultation of the victory of the Communist revolution and the greatness of Mao Zedong. It is to Gao's credit that he was able to create his own unique writing style, despite this very difficult creative climate.

If "uniqueness," "power" and "craftsmanship" are the chief criteria by which art should be evaluated, then Gao deserves the highest honor possible bestowed upon him.

H. Mei Liu, M.D., author of GRANDFATHER'S MICROSCOPE

I found Soul Mountain to be one of those unique works of literature that immediately identifies itself as great for inexplicable reasons. I cannot compare this book to any other, either in terms of narrative sytle or content. Nonetheless, it is one of the most meaningful reflective texts I have read. It is about the author's journey of self-discovery, but along the way, you may have your own.

Given a reprieve from death when his diagnosis of lung cancer is rescinded and forced to leave Beijing due to threats of political imprisonment, the autobiographical narrator I travels throughout interior China documenting traditional folk songs and seeking a state of being in which he can give free rein to his artistic expression. In a series of unconnected episodes, I tells of his encounters with forest rangers, Buddhist and Daoist monastics, government workers, keepers of the traditions of ethnic minorities, and his own childhood memories. As he tells these stories, I decries the destruction of traditional culture for the sake of "progress" under the Communist regime but mourns the weight culture places on individual freedom. I longs to return to a wild, primal state but is rebuffed by the callous indifference of raw nature. I's story is that of trying to reconcile these conflicting ideas of what it is good for the self to become.

Interleaved with I's story is the story of you, who in metaphor with I's own journey, is traveling to the mythical mountain Lingshan (Soul Mountain). Early in his journey, you gains a traveling companion, she. The interaction between you and she becomes frightening portrayal of how men and women can trap each other in a relationship neither wants, and how easy it is to do so. Eventually you frees himself of she and resumes his journey to Lingshan, but his experiences are not again the same.

Experimental fiction always walks a fine line between narrating in an unorthodox way that is nonetheless perfect for telling the particular story being told and narrating in a way that is such a distortion of traditional narrative that the reader cannot follow. It took me a few (short) chapters to acclimate myself to the interplay between pronouns, to Gao's storytelling mode that is half travelogue and half metaphor, but once acquainted with it, I found it unique but very readable. The story is almost its own tutor in how to read it. There's a point about 300 pages in where both I's and you's stories undergo major changes, and the narrative style here changes a bit too, and I was lost again for a few chapters. This is unfortunate because I felt this section of the book was one of the most important and I missed a lot here, but even a re-read didn't help. The vast majority of the book though, is very lucid.

Gao's prose defies adjectives. It is haunting, multilayered, deeply symbolic, almost a mirror of the self. I've placed this book in my stack of things to read again in ten years, books that become reflections of one's own experience and should be re-read to see what new insights appear as that experience changes.

I wasn't going to write a review but I thought the following statement in Luis C. Chin's review is quite misleading:"Gao Xingjiang is not representative of Chinese Literature and was an obscure and unknown writer not only in China ... but also in the West."

I left China in late 80's. At that time Gao Xingjian was aleady well known among mainland Chinese writers, I was one of them. His fame then was mainly due to his experimental plays.

I just want to say that a reviewer should base his/her statements on facts, not on one's own self created myths. Also, the value of a literary work should not depend on the author's fame.

I read the Chinese version of "Soul Mountain" and enjoyed it. But I can't comment on the English version which I have not read.

A more self-critical, self-referential, post-modern novel could not be written. Now that it has been done, hopefully it will go out of style.

Literary theory, Chinese philosophy, and post-modern Western philosophy (which itself has a pre-occupation with literary theory) are Gao Xingjian's primary concerns in this book. His characters are I, he, she, and you. I creates you so that I am not lonely, and together you and I create he and she. But you and I trade places in the middle of the story. Although this reviewer is not bright enough to figure out what all of this is supposed to mean, for me it was about the fantasy lives so many of us live to avoid ourselves. The story itself wasn't hard to follow. As an uncondemning look at our mental worlds and fantasies, it is a successful, interesting, thought-provoking story.

I read it because I am interested in Chinese culture. The characters encounter various scholars and religious figures in their plotless adventures, and these encounters are a bit of a glimpse into China as Xingjian remembers it. Some familiarity with Chinese geography and religion will help readers.

The book caused a bit of a controversy in China for its sexual content. But in a Western context, it is unremarkable in this respect.

I ranked it so low, not because of its literary pre-occupations, but because it is very slow and hard to read. It doesn't pull a reader along. Perhaps in Chinese it resembles poetry; certainly there are some beautiful passages even in translation. Certainly some can inspire rich philosophical reflection. People who like to read and think hard about their reading will like this novel. People who desire entertainment will find it too heavy.

I must admit that, when the Nobel prize was anounced last year , that I had never heard of the author Gao Xingjian, a feeling I shared most probably with 95% of the rest of the world. My first reaction was: how nice that the price has gone to China, but couldn't they have chosen one of the more well known writers?

I think it was the Washington Post Review which defended the choice by saying, amongst other things, that the Nobel committe has chosen unknown writers before and they quoted Mahfouz, my absolute favorite writer and Saramango as examples. Therefore I decide to read Snow Mountain.

Not to my regret! Soul Mountain is an epic voyage through China, through the inner self of the writer through philosophy, through I don't know what.

You can read the book on several levels. His observations on China are wonderful and anybody who has traveled in that great country will recognize something about the strangeness and mystique that lure around every corner whilst at the same time also recognizing many of the very down to earth tableaus of the daily struggle for life.

Quite often I had the feeling of being taken back into Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance or Thomas Mann's the Magic Mountain; here you are reading about a very ordinary situation and all of a sudden you are taken into a major philosophical treatise.

The struggle of the writer with his inner self are dripping from every page. This perhaps, more than anything else, defines the strength of this book. It is a soul-searching effort which fortunately most people are not capable of. It would certainly not benefit my mental health to do the same. It felt gratified when it appeared at the end that the writer seemed to have found a workable peace in himself.

Gao writes sometimes tenderly, sometimes coolly analyzing, sometimes rebuffing and that all magnifies the power of this book; it seems that in all instances, without having control over them, he is capable of describing his feelings.

It is not an easy book to read. It does not have a plot and writing about feelings ensures a lack of coherence. However, he seems at all stages very much in command of what he is doing.

I am sure I have to read it a second, and even a third time to be able to grasp everything Gao wants to communicate and I will.

I will not comment on whether this book is worth a Nobel Prize but I know that, once again, the Nobel Committee has given us a writer of utmost quality which otherwise I would not have found.

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.

I was attracted to the Soul Mountain by the negative remarks of my compatriots. I agree with everyone that there are many great Chinese writers in China, but their works have not been introduced to readers in other cultures due to the great difficulty of the Chinese language. I was a little doubtful myself that the Soul Mountain may not be representative of achievement of Chinese writers, but was among the lucky few noticed by the world. As I read, however, I could not put it down. Gao Xingjian absolutely deserves the Nobel prize. I have read enough of both English and Chinese authors to tell.

I am overwhelmed, awed, amazed, dazzled, and deeply humbled at this powerful writing. There are so many things he is searching answers for. It will take me much more serching, much more thinking, much more exploring than my limited talent and experience could afford to be able to fully understand everything in this book. As far as I can tell, rarely has one writer ever produced as soul-searching, as provoking, as pounding a note in one single volume. How a work of such complexity is translated into other languages and accepted by other cultures is nothing short of a miracle. On the other hand, I believe Gao Xingjian's writing is a poem that transcends geographic border, time, and cultures. It searches answers for universal questions that have perplexed people everywhere at all times. I can't but feel sorry for those who allege that Gao won the Nobel Prize only by denigrating China. He doesn't have time nor does he need to denigrate China. There were already tons and tons of works on the Cultural Revolution and its calamities. He is not a historian or politician. He is a poet, a philosopher, a fine human being who takes life seriously.

I have read many other books on all kinds of subjects. But few, in my view, have achieved this standing. Some may have achieved in several books what he has in one chapter, or in one small tale. Some have sweated in many volumes to achieve what he achieved on one subject. This artful weaving of facts and magic, present and history, folklores and modernity, reality and imagination presents a perfect reading for those who love literature and who also are looking for a meaning of life.

I started reading this book because the title 'Soul Mountain' seemed very evocative. I ended up reading a work that exceeded my initial expectations of it.

This semi-autobiographical travelogue, if I may call it that (this work defies easy characterization in terms of genre), is based on the authors five-month travels in peripheral provinces of China among the Miao, Yi, Jiangsu, Tibetan, and Qiang people.

The author mixes this with his fantasies and day-dreams and philosophical reflections on a wide range of topics - men and women, history, nostalgia, madness, loneliness, pain, archaeology, nature, conservation, environment, Buddhism, Daoism, occult, sorcery, banditry etc.

The novel has two interwoven streams - one is the authors fantasies of woman and the other is his travel experiences.

In a writing style that seems a curious mixture of that of French and Chinese writers, the author gives poetic descriptions of pain, wonder, astonishment, degradation, fear, terror, hunger, fatigue, nature, folk songs, history, ruins, personalities, childhood, sex and so on.

The novel is not a story but a road novel. It does not have a beginning, peak and climax. It is a journey - always begun and never ended.

I have read about thirty of so 'classic' novels. This one stands out as the most memorable, although this is my subjective opinion.

There is no plot to describe here, but everyone will find a lot to identify in this novel.

I must admit that this isn't an easy book to read, especially if you are accustomed to reading memoirs or novels with simple, linear plots. Yet those who are patient will be rewarded with Mr. Gao's splendid prose - in a fine English translation from Australian scholar Mabel Lee - and insightful look at contemporary rural China. The unnamed narrator embarks on a quest for "Lingshan", or translated literally as "Soul Mountain" through the Chinese countryside. Along the way he will stumble on Chinese archaeological sites, meet with wildlife conservation biologists and discuss the country's endangered wildlife, and reflect on lost loves and meetings with various Chinese women. The novel can be best seen as a spiritual quest undertaken by the narrator, interested in renewing his life after being diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer. I can certainly understand why this novel was worthy of a Nobel Prize for literature; it is the finest novel I've read by a modern Chinese writer.