Soul Mountain - (A novel by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xinjian)

Soul Mountain (my opinion)

Gao Xinjian is the only writer from China, the honor of the Nobel Prize for Literature for his memorable novel "Soul Mountain", which set a new course that for the Chinese novel. This is an autobiographical social commentary that has significant place for the supernatural on his property. It describes the self-imposed exile in Sichuan province, the author draws on elements of the plot. If it were in central China, he would certainlypursued, but loneliness offered him plenty of time to prepare the way for his spiritual pilgrimage.

The story takes the reader into the remote world and forgotten of Eastern spirituality and philosophical abundance. Soul Mountain is in the proper sense, a world apart.

shamanic customs and traditions are still practiced in the province of Sichuan. Xinjian integrated into the novel on his experiences with the monks, folk singers and hermits, and so the history and mythologythe people around him. With Xingjian writes about the history and reality with mythology and the natural distortion of time and perceptions of past and present mix of history and folklore in a time trial.

Xingjian writes Taoist concepts appropriate to pursue a pure wisdom, exploring the paradoxes of truth. The contrast between the truth and wisdom often appears in the book, especially if Xinjian discussed his disappointment earlier onDiscovering that his immersion in books do not lend it wisely, but kept him from truly living.

The perspective of the novel the narrator has changed rapidly in the first, second and third. Each character reflects aspects of a unified vision, consciousness broken. Xinjian started so blurs the distinction between personal and social identity, his young companion is not just his desires, but also emerging economies, sexual freedomappears in post-Mao era. But the prose Xingjian is staggering, and the strength of the perspective shift and novel style for the reader to look him in the interpretation of history and social customs and internal matter.

Despite its ambitious philosophical premise of Soul Mountain has a very simple action on a spiritual journey that the centers of mirror Xingjian. The protagonist is a universal character, the forms of "I", "You," "he" and "them". Alternatingpersonal point of view from chapter to chapter, beginning with a comparison with "I" and the next with "You" Xinjian forces the reader and the two aspects of himself.

Odyssey provides its own implementation, a detailed report on this story a modern travel. The protagonist gets crowded trains, hitchhiking and driving. Travel the hard way in China, often blown off course or more than you need in one place.

MoreTo make the trip, the protagonist of a series of short-term relationships with a number of women, more like "them." The reports range from ephemeral to really flesh platonic. But he has explored sexuality, Xinjian in Soul Mountain shades of misogyny. Xinjian described one of "them" to fight wild animals ", the" tame suddenly "with him. In Soul Mountain, the understanding of female sexuality remains underdeveloped, and so every" it "objectifiesand then distorted.

Many images are taken from the protagonist's consciousness: "Ponds with floating duckweed, small wine shops in the city, the windows of upper floors overhanging the road, the stone arch bridges, arch bridges and boats passing under a covered dry well. " In order to increase the awareness of its origins, he gains a sense of wisdom through the childhood memories and the collection of traditional legends, stories of bandits on behalf of aMonastery raided.

Just as the protagonist visits the past, ponder his fate. An illuminating encounter with death resonates with a personal crisis in the past Xingjian. In 1982, Xinjiang has been wrongly linked to cancer, which forced him evaluate his life again, seeking comfort in the Confucian classic text I Ching or Book of Changes diagnosed. With personal insight, Xinjian vividly recorded his protagonists anxiously awaiting a fateful X-ray: "Pending the promulgation ofDeath sentence, I was in this state for nothing, watching the autumn sun outside the window, softly intoned Namo Amitofu, always and forever in my heart. "The emotional and spiritual upheaval Xinjian immediately prompted him to question the nature of his existence and the fruits of this journey are found in Soul Mountain.

The stories collected along the way include cruelty. The first describes the woman who runs her illness with love, their suffering and their constantDeath wish, another cause of pity and admiration, the martyrdom. hostile encounters in the novel seem to allude to experiment with Xingjian, the Chinese government. A story that involves, directly to the Cultural Revolution, the brutal execution of political opponents of the radicals. However, the underlying currents of violence are juxtaposed strangely with the intellectual growth, and the author has never solved if all the characters can never really get this movingAtrocities. By refusing to tell his own story as he tries to relate to universal themes Xinjian exceeds the limits of his narrative. Constantly oscillating between research and education of the individual mixing experiment, social consciousness, it seems to drive the story. The story has a mysterious power and grab the reader and keep them from start to finish included, are mostly non-Chinese readers to stay to explore the secrets of the underwaterinvisible world.

Raja Sharma