Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

 

Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

Translated from the Chinese by Mable Lee

" Engaging and elegant ... His first work." New is in York Times Book Review

Soul Mountain is a literary response to the devastation of the self of the individual by the primitive human urge for the warmth and security of an other, or others, in other words by socialized life.  Page vi

You asked him where he was going. "Lingshan"

"What?"

"Lingshan, Ling meaning Spirit or soul, and shan meaning Mountain." Page 2

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Today, you can't know what traumas tomorrow will bring. You've learned through experience everything you need to know. what else you are looking for? when a man gets to middle age shouldn't he look for a peaceful and stable existence, find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position become a husband and a father, set up and comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there'll be something for old age and little left over for the next generation?  Page 9

 A victim of mountain black magic won't be able to find his way out of the mountains. Page 11

In those contaminated surroundings I was taught that life was the source of literature, that literature had to be faithful to life, faithful to real life. My mistake was that I had alienated myself from life and ended up turning my back on real life. Life is not the same as manifestations of life. Real life, or in other words the basic substance of life, should be the former and not the latter. I had gone against real life because I was simply stringing together life's manifestations, so of course I wasn't able to accurately portray life and in the end only succeed in distorting reality. Page 12

I believe in science but I also believe in fate. Page 13

The pavilion has been painted recently and under the eaves the dragon and Phoenix design has been repainted and the two principal columns at the front are inscribed with the couplet:

Sitting at rest know not to discuss the shortcomings of other people.

Setting out on a journey fully appreciate the beauty of the Dragon River. Page 21

"Man follows earth, earth follows sky, sky follows the way, the way follows nature," he proclaims loudly. " Don't commit actions which go against the basic character of nature, don't commit acts which should not be committed. Page 48

Too much analytical thinking, too much logic, too many meanings! Life has no logic, so why does there have to be logic to explain what it means? Also, what is logic? I think I need to break away from analytical thinking, this is the cause of all my anxieties. Page 50

For me, however, what I had to ponder was this: how should I change this life for which I had just won a reprieve? Page 74

Are you saying that this Lingyan is just an insensate Rock? If I don't say that. what should I say? If I do that say that, is it because I shouldn't say it or because I can't say it? That is entirely up to you she will be what you want her to be if you think she is beautiful she will be beautiful if there is evil in your heart you will only see demons. Page 93

.

When the moon is out,

Don't take a torch with you,

If you take a torch with you,

The moon will be heartbroken.

When vegetables are in flower,

Don't take a basket to cut vegetables,

If you shoulder a basket to cut vegetables,

The vegetable flowers will be heartbroken.

If you are pledged to a girl who loves you,

Don't fancy another,

If you fancy another,

The girl will be heartbroken.

Page 117

A pigeon and a chicken search for food together,

The chicken has an owner but the pigeon does not,

If the owner of the chicken takes the chicken home,

The pigeon is left all alone.

A girl and a boy play together,

The girl has an owner but the boy does not,

If the owner of the girl takes her home,

The boy is left all alone.

Page 118

I asked him whether in the past clan classifications of Yi society were very strict, for example, if men and women of the same clan married or had a sexual relationship were both parties put to death? If maternal cousins married or had a sexual relationship were they punished by death? If a white Yi slave and a woman of the black YI  aristocracy had a sexual relationship, was the man put to death and the woman forced to suicide? Page 123

The tops of the mountains on this high plateau are like voluptuous breasts, but close up, they are huge and somewhat oppressive. Page 132

Shaking up and down in the speeding bus on the Mountain road induces a sense of loss of gravity. I seem to levitate. I don't know where I am drifting, and I don't know what it is that I am searching for. Page 136

On the other hand, if I were a woman and living with a man, this would also be a worry. The problem is the awakening self in the inner mind, this is the monster which torments me no end. People love the self yet mutilate the self. Arrogance, pride, complacency or anxiety, jealousy and hatred, all sprung from this. the self is in fact the source of mankind's mystery. So does this unhappy conclusion mean that the awakened self should therefore be killed?

This Buddha told the boddhisatva: the myriad phenomena are vanity, the absence of phenomena is also vanity. Page 152

Suicide has to be for someone or for something but she no longer exists for any person or thing, and she no longer has the energy to kill herself. Her heart has been numbed by all the humiliation and pain she has experienced. Page 258

Fuxi and Nuwa.  Page 307

The two conjoined figures are Fuxi and Nuwa, a brother and sister who, according to a Chinese foundation myth, were the only survivors of a great flood. Charged with repopulating the world, Fuxi and Nuwa created vast numbers of clay figures, which they were able to bring to life with some divine assistance.

You know that I am just talking to myself to alleviate my loneliness. You know that this loneliness of mine is incurable, that no- one can save me and that I can only talk with myself as the partner of my conversation. Page 312

Fiction is different from philosophy because it is the product of sensory perceptions. If a futile self-made signifier is saturated in a solution of lust and at a practical time transforms into a living cell capable of multiplying and growing, it is much more interesting than games of the intellect.  Furthermore, It is the game as life and does not have an ultimate goal. Page 315

Often career and ambition are inseparable. To say a man has ambition is to say he has a career. Ambition is the basis of a career, with ambition one invariably wants to be outstanding. Page 339

When Nuwa created humans she also created their sufferings. Humans are created from the interior of Nuwa and born in the bloody fluids of women and so they can never be washed clean. Page 350

Language is like a blob of paste which can only be broken up by sentence. If you abandon sentences, it will be like falling into a quagmire and you will flounder about helplessly. Page 351

Dragging weighty thoughts you crawl about in language, trying all the time to grab a thread to pull yourself up, becoming more and more weary, entangled in floating stands of language, like a silkworm spitting out silk, weaving a net for yourself, wrapping yourself in thicker and thicker darkness, the faint glimmer of light in your heart becoming weaker and weaker until finally the net is a totality of chaos. Page 351

How is it possible to find a clear language with an indestructible sound which is larger than a Melody, transcends limitations of phrases and sentences, does not distinguish between subject and object, transcends pronounce, discards logic, simply sprawls, and is not bound by images, metaphors, associations of symbols? will it be able to give expression to the suffering of life and the fear of death, distress and joy, loneliness and consolation, perplexity and expectations, hesitation and resolve, weakness and courage, jealousy and remorse, calm and impatience and self-confidence, generosity and constraint, kindness and hatred, pity and despair, as well as lack of ambition and placidity humility and wickedness, nobility and viciousness, cruelty and benevolence, fervour and indifference, and aloofness, and admiration, and promiscuousness, and vanity, and greed, as well as scorn and respect, certainty and uncertainty, modesty and arrogance, obstinacy and chagrin, resentment and shame, surprise and amazement, lethargy, muddle-headedness, sudden enlightenment, never comprehending failing to comprehend, as well as just allowing whatever will happen to happen. Page 352

Man follows earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the way, the way follows Nature.

This is the source of what I had heard from the old botanist in the primitive forest. The inner couplet is:

Invisible and an inaudible, mystical indeed is its imperceptibility, joining the trinity of jade purity, superior purity and supreme purity.

Know its workings, observe its profundity, pure indeed is its tranquility, forming the principal of the way of heaven, the Way of earth and the Way of man. Page 402

The old head Daoist tells me about the two couples. "the way is both the source and the law of the myriad things, when there is mutual respect of both subject and object there is oneness. this source gives birth to existence from non-existence, and to non-existence from existence. The union of the two is innate and with the Union of heaven and the man there is the attainment of unity in one's view of the cosmos and of human life. For Daoists, purity is the principal, non-action the essence and spontaneity the application; it is a life of truth and a life requiring absence of self. To put it simply, this is the general meaning of Daoist." Page 403

You go on climbing mountains. As you near the peak and are feeling exhausted you always think it is the last time but when the exhilaration of reaching the peak subsides you feel the urge again. This feeling grows as your weariness vanishes and looking at the rising and falling lines of the peaks in the hazy distance your desire to climb mountains resurges.  but once you climb a mountain you lose interest in it and invariably think the mountain beyond will have things you haven't encountered. When you eventually get to that peak the wonders you hoped for aren't there, and once again there is just the lonely mountain wind.Page 435

Xu Wei's couplet, "The world is a false illusion created by others, what is original and authentic is what I propose." seems to be more penetrating. 

However, if it is a false illusion why is it created by others? And whether or not it is false is irrelevant, but is it necessary to allow others to create it? Also, as for what is original and authentic, at issue is not its authenticity but whether or not it can be proposed. Page 448

He goes up and politely asks "Venerable elder can you tell me the location of Lingshan?"

“Where have you come from?” the old man asked instead.

He says from Wuyizhen. Page 478

…

He says " The road is not wrong, it is the traveller who is wrong." Page 478

He really can't make up his mind and can only think of an old proverb dating back a thousand years: "Existence is returning, non-existence is returning, so don't stay by the river getting blown about by the cold wind."  Page 479

These are all memories, this tinkling which sticks in your mind seems to be a sound in your brain. there is an agonizing, searing pain in your lungs and stomach, your heart pulsates wildly, chaotically, and your brain is about to explode. When it explodes, the blood will clot, it will be a soundless explosion. life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural. page 503 You fall into an even deeper darkness and again feel your heart pulsating, discern physical pain. The fear of death of the living body is concrete like this, the physical body you failed to abandon recovers its sensitivity. in the darkness, in the corner of the room, the line of bright red lights on your tape recorder is flashing. page 504

Snow is falling soundlessly. I am surprised by this tranquility. In Heaven it is peaceful like this.

And there is no joy. joy is related to anxiety.

Snow is falling.

I don't know where I am at this moment, I don't know where this realm of Heaven comes from. I look all around.

I don't know that I don't understand anything and still think I know anything.

Things just happen behind me and there is always a mysterious eye, so it is best for me just to pretend that I understand even if I don't.

While pretending to understand, I still don't understand.

The fact of the matter is I comprehend nothing, I understand nothing.

This is how it is. page 506

Introduction of the book Soul Mountain

Cliff Notes Plot summary, “Soul Mountain” by Gao Xingjian in 5 Minutes - Book Review

Adel Esmaeilpour's website

RIVERMAN, An American Odyssey By Ben McGrath

 

RIVERMAN

An American Odyssey

By Ben McGrath

Riverman

Wonderful starting for this amazing book by these sentences.

A businessman goes down to the river with a bottle of pills and liquor, intent to suicide. He gets nice and comfortable on a blanket when the landowner arrives carrying a shotgun."what are you doing on my land?" "Suicide. Say, may I borrow your gun? It'd be quicker than pills." "Sure, here." So the businessman shot the farmer, thought twice about it, and kept the gun. Page 7

The most wonderful day in the very full, topsy-turvy life of Richard Perry Conant occurred in his forty-ninth year, in the summer of 1999. an auspicious start: He awoke without feeling ill. page 9

The neighbor, named Scott, said that the boat's owner was in the midst of paddling "from Canada to Florida" and was presently enjoying a pit stop inside his house. Page 15

"He left Buffalo New York in early July, paddling alone down there rivers from New York to the Mississippi and then to the GIWW ( Golf Intracoastal Waterway West , Louisiana)" page 20

the whole adventure lasted nearly 14 months. page 26

He laughed again, more nervously this time and paused." That's kind of sensitive," he said. He paused some more mumbled about how he supposed it would "get out anyhow," then took a deep breath and said, "well one of the reasons I go on this trip is because I don't have an apartment. I am homeless. People call it homeless. I don't." I'd planned to ask next about how he financed his travel but he kept going and answered without my prompting," I was discriminated against in both housing and apartment," he continued "I was having a rough time. and I managed without going to jail or getting thrown into a mental hospital. Now I'm old enough where I can collect social security - and going on a trip like this?  it's cheap even though I make very little on social security on a trip like it is I can actually save big dollars he left again like I said this is much too sensitive But! it's the truth." Page 34

" I was scared," he said. " I had made it through a tremendous challenge, but I just had more respect for the river than I had ever had before. page 37

Forest Camp, in my recollection, was a guileless dope, whose life kept improbably interesting with history and celebrity, whereas one the things I appreciated about Canant was his heart-earned wisdom and his honesty about the costs associated with freedom. page 54

I found myself unable to come up with a holistic assessment on the spot and asked if I could borrow them for a closer look, figuring, if nothing else, that they might serve as a vicarious thrill ride for a man stuck at home with a newborn and a toddler and a view of a storied river out to the window. Page 60

Kelly told me that Conant reminded him of an old friend, Harry Heckle," the oldest man to sail around the world twice." As it happened, Kelly was talking to me from the banks of the James River, near where he had met Conant- and where, more recently, he had scattered Heckel's ashes." what a legacy for someone to have," Kelly went on. "I mean, he dropped memories all over the place. We all could be so lucky." Page 79

A journal in the overturned canoe contained notes for an aborted book project that Conant was thinking of calling THE ANATOMY OF FAILURE  a sort of capstone project begun in the immediate years before I met him, at a time when he believed his canoeing days where finished (" death is near," he wrote). But he wasn't able to bring himself to follow through on it. The same journal shows him keeping tabs on his rent payments for the storage lockers, unwilling to give up hope, growing impatient with his own bitterness and resentments, and starting to dream about rivers again: the Clark Fork, the Columbia, the Cumberland, the Colorado, the Red, the Rainy, the St. Lawrence, and the course of the Hudson, on which he floated into THIS book not as a failure but as an unlikely success story. page 85

Looking back as adults in their high-school years, several classmates claim him as their best friend. "Dicky was the first real love of my life," an ex-girlfriend says. "I took a bottle of aspirin to kill myself when he left me for the next girlfriend. I love that guy so much" For the yearbook, he was voted "picture perfect." page 91

Conant had left from just downstream of Stanley in a snowstorm on his forty-third birthday, bringing with him three books: a Gideon Bible and biographies of Einstein and Bismarck. Over the next six weeks, occasionally negotiating  Class IV rapids, he covered 350 miles. He stopped- far short of the Pacific -  only after losing fifteen inches of his bow to a steep plunge off a rock ledge that left him Maytagging, or whirling round and round, as in a washing machine. Speaking of it two decades later, to me, Conant called this a " learning experience,' a proof of concept. Among the lessons were that memorise should be prized over material possessions ( which could easily break or sink) and that traveling light had its downside. Without ballast, you were more likely to be tossed. "the peace of mind I found, largely alone on that white water mecca convinced me that life was capable of exquisite pleasure and undefined meaning deep in the face of failure," he wrote. " The experience itself is the reward." page 110

" Conant sees any 'purpose' in game ... No game man can device is harmless. the truth is that there can only be one chess master." page 113 by Donald Crowhurst

"Please do not think I am trying to break a record." It read " Record, is a very stupid word at Sea. I am continuing non-stop because I am happy at sea, and perhaps because I want to save my soul. page 113

" I can, I will!" Conant kept repeating, on an island in upstate New York, of his intention to paddle all the way to Florida. page 119

What fun, to be young, carefree, and descending a river! Page 119

The American river-trip canon can be understood as a play in three acts. It begins with Lewis and Clark, whose journals of exploring the Western frontier on the Missouri,and Snake and the Columbia Rivers, among others, were literally compelled by the president.The country had just doubled in size, with the Louisiana purchase. As a New York Times columnist once wrote "More was known about the moon before Neil Arestaurang touched down in the Sea of Tranquility in 1969 then was known about the land between the Mississippi and the Pacific in 1803." page 129

Next comes 'the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, set several decades later in a nation where the river no longer represents a frontier but the world unto its own, offering freedom from an imperfect society (sivilization," as Huck spelled it, can be plenty savage) and a place for forging unlikely friendships. page 130

Last, we get Deliverance, James Dickey's novel of city slickers seeking relief from middle -age doldrums and finding trouble afloat. Deliverance  gives us a river at once threatened by commercial interests , in the form of a proposed dam, and threatening to all who dare go near it. page 130

Canoe by paddle from New Orleans to Noma, Alaska." Kruger, writing in his book The ultimate canoe challenge added, "I have not seen verification of Jerry Pushcar's trip," sounding a little tweaked. in three years. Page 134

Waters Beneath My Feet: New Orleans to Nome... My 3 Year Canoe Odyssey , by Jerry Pushcar

A pond (or a swamp) is a microcosm- a retreat, a closed system, which is always at risk of being spoiled by the arrival of an outsider. is "Earth's eye," as Thoreau called it, "looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." But a big river,  as T.S. Eliot said, is "the only natural force that can wholly determine the course of human peregrination." Rivers are the basis of civilization itself. page 140

It was as if America's rivers, far from delivering the future, had continued vacuuming up ambitious as they slid, preserving along the water's edge a snacking time capsule. page 151

Lakes doesn't work for me", he said. "You can't go anywhere." page 168

There was this phrase that stuck with me: " I can and I will. !" He kept repeating that, and with that belly laugh. It surprises me that no one in a position of authority tried to stop him. page 211

What's your whole purpose, thought? page 222

Hooper Island Maryland page 225

"This has been described as a Nation's Paradise." the water, purplish and foamy, is so high in tannic acids that bacteria can't breed; drink freely, in other words, without boiling. "We learned that from the Indians: "This water won't go bad," peek said. page 235

"I was like، God ٫ I hope he didn't go today٫ because it was so windy and pouring rain" In the afternoon, she went out for an errand, and she kept an eye out the window, looking at the water, but, like so many of Conant's friends, she wasn't fortunate enough to see him again. page 245

Roger turned to Rob and said, " Dicky accused you of being a raconteur, but he was the real one. Except his stories were true." page 256

By the end, I'd connected with more than two hundred people whose paths crossed, at some point or another, with our protagonist. 259

Dicky Connant

Ben McGrath is a writer for the New Yorker and this is his first Book.

Salmon River ID

Yazoo River MS

Mississippi River MI

Missouri River MO

Atchafalaya River  LA

Red River NM

Tombigbee River. P AL

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#52 Riverman, An American Odyssey w/ Ben McGrath