Gao Xingjian: Soul Mountain

HarperCollins

$29.95

Review: Elspeth Sandys

Towards the end of this remarkable novel there is a chapter about the nature of fiction and its relation to life. The chapter takes the form of a dialogue between the author (who is also the protagonist of the story) and a literary critic.

If the reader were in any doubt that this is an autobiographical novel, this chapter would dispel that doubt. But the real significance of the chapter is the cunning way in which it anticipates the criticism the novel is likely to attract, then, in a virtuoso display of argument and counter-argument, disarms it. The chapter ends with the sentence, "Reading this chapter is optional," but as you've read it, you've read it, further disarming the critic by making clear the author's indifference to any opinions other than his own.

Reading this book is like peeling layers from the proverbial onion. The search for meaning, which lies at its core, disintegrates into a passionate acknowledgment of the hopelessness of that search. Don't go searching for meaning: all is embodied in the chaos.

Gao Xingjian, winner, with this novel, of the Nobel Prize for literature, was born in China in 1940, as Japanese bombs fell on Beijing. He has lived through the war against the Japanese, the civil war, the founding of the People's Republic, famine and hardship, the Cultural Revolution and the partial relaxations of the past decade.

He has endured forced re-education, public attacks on his work, and an official ban. The narrative takes the shape of a journey he took in 1983, following his reprieve from what turned out to be a mistaken diagnosis of lung cancer.

The ostensible aim of the journey is to find the fabled Lingshan - Soul Mountain. But the real purpose is to discover the truth of self: the beginning and end of the writer's search for meaning.

The China Gao Xingjian writes about reflects, in keeping with the personal nature of his search, the turbulent history of the period in which he has lived. But to describe this as a contemporary novel would be to give a false impression. Behind the overlapping narratives of enforced change and cultural despotism lie the myriad identities of China's past. Ming Dynasty stories (I especially liked the one about the Emperor who believed in family values) stand alongside modern tales of love and betrayal and political expedience. Buddhist monasteries and Daoist temples open first their doors and then their treasure chests of stories to the author. There are tales of ancestral sacrifices, of bandit chiefs and grave robbers, of goblins and demons, fox fairies and fire gods.

There's a modern-day hunt for the Wild Man of the Shennongjia Forest, and a cure for snake bite that takes no account of modern medicine. Shamans and fortune-tellers take their place alongside party officials and cadres, as the boundary between past and present becomes increasingly blurred.

It seems the further the author travels into the mountainous heart of China, the more immediate the past, with its burden of supersitition, becomes. But he is too sceptical, too involved in his tortured search, to allow himself flights of fancy. Everything that is recorded - such is the impression created by his cool, unemotional prose - is as exact a description as can be achieved.

A lot has been written about Gao Xingjian's experiments with language, his modernism (principal cause of the attacks on him in his homeland) and his decision to settle in France. I can't speak for the rest of his work, but for me what is most remarkable about Soul Mountain is its simplicity.

Any discussion of the themes of this great novel inevitably suggests that this must be a work of difficulty, even obscurity. Nothing could be further from the truth. The novel can be read simply as a record of an extraordinary journey into the remote central regions of China. Or it can be read as a metaphysical journey into the nature of existence and the relevance (if any) of fiction.

The novel ends: "The fact of the matter is I comprehend nothing. I understand nothing. This is how it is."

Bleak as this may sound, it should not be allowed to distract from the innumerable enchantments of the journey.

* Elspeth Sandys is an Auckland writer.