Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

  I guess your money’s not burning up fast enough, I say.

  I’m in buying and selling, I make presents of these to all the officials, this is what they thrive on. Don’t you need to get them to approve your proposals and give you your quotas? If you don’t give presents doors won’t open. But you’re my friend! Are you short of spending money? If it’s under ten thousand I can get it for you without any problem.

  Don’t go breaking the law, I warn him.

  Break the law? I just give a few presents. It’s not me who breaks the law, the ones they should catch are the big shots!

  They can’t catch the big shots, I say.

  Of course you’d know better than me, you’re in the capital, you’d get to know about everything that’s going on! I tell you, catching me isn’t all that easy. I pay all my taxes. I’m now an honoured guest in the homes of county dignitaries and regional heads of the bureau of commerce. It’s not like when I was the town primary school teacher in Chengguan. At that time, to get transferred from the countryside to Chengguan, at least four months of my yearly salary was spent on meals for cadres in the education office.

  His eyes narrow as he takes a step back and, with his hands on his hips, scrutinizes an ink painting of a winter landscape on my wall. He holds his breath for a while then turns and says, didn’t you once praise my calligraphy? Even you thought it was good but when I tried at the time to put it into an exhibition at the county cultural centre, it was turned down. The calligraphy of some important officials and famous people is sub-standard but aren’t they the honorary chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of calligraphy research associations and aren’t they the ones shamelessly getting their work published in the newspapers?

  I ask him if he still does calligraphy.

  I can’t make a living from calligraphy, it’s just like with the books you write. But if one day I too become a famous person, people will come sniffing at my backside after my ink treasures. That’s society, I’ve given up on it.

  If you’ve given up on it then there’s no point talking about it.

  I’m cross about it!

  Then you haven’t given up on it. I ask if he has eaten.

  Don’t worry about it, in a while I’ll get a car to take you to whatever restaurant you like, I know that your time is precious. I’ll first get what I have to say out of the way, I’ve come to you for help.

  How? Tell me about it.

  Help get my daughter into a prestige university.

  I say I’m not the president of any university.

  And you wouldn’t get appointed, he says, but surely you must have some contacts? I’m now considered wealthy but people still think of me as a speculator. I can’t let my daughter’s life be like mine, I want her to go to a prestige university so she can get into the upper stratum of society.

  So she can find herself the son of a high-ranking cadre? I ask.

  I have no control over that, she knows what she must do.

  What if she won’t look?

  Stop interrupting, will you help or not?

  It depends on her school results, I can’t do anything to help.

  She’s got good results.

  Then all she needs to do is sit for the examinations.

  You’re really pedantic. Do you think all those children of high-ranking cadres have passed examinations?

  I haven’t researched such matters.

  You’re a writer.

  So what if I am a writer?

  You’re the conscience of society, you must speak for the people!

  Stop joking, I say. Are you the people, or am I the people, or is it the so-called we who are the people? I speak only for myself.

  What I like about you is that you always tell the truth!

  The truth is, my good elder brother I’m starving, so put on your overcoat and let’s find somewhere to eat.

  Someone is knocking at the door again. I open the door but don’t know the person holding a black plastic bag. I say I don’t want to buy any eggs, I eat out.

  He says he’s not selling eggs and opens the bag to show me it doesn’t contain a weapon and that he is not a criminal on the run. He carefully takes out a large bundle of paper and says he has come especially to seek my help. He has written a novel and wants me to have a look at it. I have no choice but to let him in and invite him to sit down.

  He says he won’t sit down but will leave the manuscript and call again at a later date.

  I say there is no need to leave it for a later date, if he has something to say he can say it now.

  He fumbles in his pockets with both hands and takes out a packet of cigarettes. I hand him matches and wait for him to light his cigarette so that he can quickly finish what he wants to say.

  Stuttering, he says he has written a factual story–

  I have to interrupt him and tell him I’m not a journalist and I’m not interested in facts.

  Stuttering even worse, he says he knows literature isn’t the same as newspaper reports and that this work of his is fiction. He has added an appropriate amount of fabrication to a factual basis. His purpose in getting me to look at it is to see if it is publishable.

  I say I am not an editor.

  He says he knows this but thought I might be able to recommend it, I could make any corrections I wanted. I could even add my name to it so that it could be considered a joint work. Of course his name would be put second and mine first.

  I say that if I put my name to it, it will be even harder for it to get published.

  Why?

  Because it is very hard to get my works published.

  He exclaims to indicate that he understands.

  I am afraid he doesn’t fully understand and explain that it would be best if he found an editor who was able to publish his work.

  He stops talking and is obviously uneasy.

  I make up my mind to help him, then tell him to take the novel back.

  His eyes open wide and he asks instead whether I would forward it to the relevant editorial department.

  It’d be better for you to send it directly rather than for me to forward it. It will certainly stir up less trouble, I say with a smile.

  He also smiles, puts the manuscript back into his bag and mutters his thanks.

  I say no, it is I who am grateful to him.

  There is knocking on the door again. I don’t want to open it.

  You gasp for breath taking a step and then resting as you walk towards the mountain of ice. It is a struggle. The green river of ice is dark but transparent. Huge mineral veins, inky green like jade, lie beneath it.

  You glide on the smooth ice and the biting cold stings your numb frozen cheeks. Barely visible snowflakes of all colours glisten before your eyes and the moist air you breathe out instantly forms a layer of white frost on your eyebrows. All around is frozen silence.

  The riverbed suddenly rises and the glacier imperceptibly moves a few metres, ten or so metres or even much more in a year.

  You are going against the flow of the glacier crawling like a partially frozen insect.

  Up ahead, in the shadows where the sunlight doesn’t reach, windswept flat slabs of ice soar up. When gale-force winds blow at a speed of over a hundred metres per second, these white walls of ice are polished to a high sheen.

  You are in the midst of these ice crystal ruins and even while not moving you are gasping for air. There is a tearing pain in your lungs and your brain has already frozen so that you can’t think, everything is almost blank, isn’t this precisely the state you have been aspiring to reach? Like this world of ice and snow there are only some indefinite blurred images created by shadows – they don’t tell anything, have no meaning, are a stretch of deathly loneliness.

  You can fall over with every step, so you fall over, then struggle as you slide and crawl. Your hands and feet can no longer feel pain.

  The snow piled on the ice gradually decreases and is left only in corners where the wind can’t reach. The snow is solid,
it gives the impression of being soft and fluffy but is in fact wrapped in a hard coating of ice.

  A bald eagle is circling in the valley of ice below your feet, it is the only other form of life apart from you. You can’t decide whether or not it is something you’ve imagined but what is important is that you do have visual images.

  You spiral upwards. And while spiralling up between life and death, you are still struggling. You still exist, that is to say, blood is still circulating in your veins, your life still hasn’t ended.

  In the vast silence, there is a tinkling, a faint tinkling which is barely audible, like ice crystals colliding. You think you hear it.

  A purple cloud haze appears on the mountain top, showing that the wind storm is swirling at high speed. Wisps of cloud on the edges show the force of the wind.

  The tinkling becomes clearer and causes your heart to palpitate. You see a woman riding on a horse. The horse’s head and the woman both appear above the snow line, against the background of the gloomy ice ravine. You seem also to hear singing accompanying the tinkling of the bells on the horse.

  Woman from Chang’an,

  Hair plaited with silk ribbons

  Jade earrings

  Silver bracelets

  Sash of many colours . . .

  She seems to be a Tibetan woman you once saw on a horse next to a road-marker 5600 feet above sea level on a snow-covered mountain. She was looking back at you and smiling, enticing you to fall into an icy ravine. At the time you couldn’t help walking towards her . . .

  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.

  You open your eyes, the light hurts, you can’t see anything but you are aware that you are still crawling, the tinkling bells have become distant memories, indistinct longings, like sparkling ice flowers, fragmented, ephemeral, glistening on the retina of your eyes. You strive to discern the colours of the rainbow, you swirl around upside-down, float backwards, lose the ability to control yourself. It is all futile striving, vague hope, refusal to be extinguished, pitch-black cavern, skeleton’s eye-sockets seeming to go deep inside, nothing there at all, a cacophony splits asunder with a blast!

  . . . a never before experienced limpidity, a totality of purity and freshness. You perceive a barely discernible subtle, almost soundless sound, it turns transparent, is carded, filtered, clarified. You are falling and while falling you float up, so gently, and there is no wind, no physical burdens and no rashness in your emotions. Your whole body is cool, your body and mind listen intently, your whole body and mind hear this soundless, billowing music. In your conscious mind this thread of gossamer becomes smaller but increasingly clear, appears right before your eyes, delicate like a strand of hair, and also like a crack of light. The extremity of the crack fuses with the darkness, loses its form, expands, transforms into faint, minute points of light, then boundless countless particles, enveloping you in this cloud blanket of distinct particles. Minute points of light form clusters, drift into motion, turn into a mist-like nebula, keep slowly transforming, gradually solidifying into a dark moon tinged with blue. The moon within the sun turns grey-purple, instantly spreads out, but the centre further condenses, turns dark red, gives off bright purple rays. You close your eyes to cut the glare but can’t. Trembling fear and hope rise from the depths of your heart, at the edge of the darkness you hear music, this solidified sound gradually expands, spreads and sparkling crystals of sound penetrate your body. You can’t work out where you are. The particles of bright crystals of sound permeate your body and mind from all directions. As a mass of long notes take shape, there is a vigorous middle note, you can’t catch the melody but can perceive the richness of the sounds. It links up with another mass of sounds, intermingles, unfolds, turns into a river which disappears and appears, appears and disappears. A dark blue sun circles within an even darker moon, you hold your breath enraptured, stop breathing, reach the extremity of life. But the force of the pulsating sounds becomes stronger and stronger, lifts you up, pushes you towards a high tide, a high tide of pure spirituality. Before your eyes, in your heart, in your body oblivious to time and space, in the continual surge of sustained noise, of reflected images in the dark sun within the dark moon, is a blast exploding exploding exploding exploding explo- explo- explo- explo- -ding -ding -ding -ding – then again absolute silence. 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.

  In the snow outside my window I see a small green frog, one eye blinking and the other wide open, unmoving, looking at me. I know this is God.

  He appears just like this before me and watches to see if I will understand.

  He is talking to me with his eyes by opening and closing them. When God talks to humans he doesn’t want humans to hear his voice.

  And I don’t think it at all strange, it is as if it should be like this. It is as if God is in fact a frog. The intelligent round eye doesn’t so much as blink once. It is really kind that he should deign to gaze upon this wretched human being, me.

  His other eye opens and closes as it speaks a language incomprehensible to humans. Whether I understand or not is not God’s concern.

  I could of course think maybe there is no meaning at all in this blinking eye, but its significance could lie precisely in its not having meaning.

  There are no miracles. God is saying this, saying this to this insatiable human being, me.

  Then what else is there to seek? I ask of him.

  All around is silence, snow is falling soundlessly. I am surprised by this tranquillity. 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 everything.

  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.

  Written from 1982 to September 1989

  Beijing and Paris

  The Case for Literature

  Nobel Prize Lecture

  By Gao Xingjian

  I have no way of knowing whether it was fate that has pushed me onto this dais but as various lucky coincidences have created this opportunity I may as well call it fate. Putting aside discussion of the existence or non-existence of God, I would like to say that despite my being an atheist I have always shown reverence for the unknowable.

  A person cannot be God, certainly not replace God, and rule the world as a Superman; he will only succeed in creating more chaos and make a greater mess of the world. In the century after Nietzsche man-made disasters left the blackest records in the history of humankind. Supermen of all types called leader of the people, head of the nation and commander of the race did not baulk at resorting to various violent means in perpetrating crimes that in no way resemble the ravings of a very egotistic philosopher. However, I do not wish to waste this talk on literature by saying too much about politics and history, what I want to do is to use this opportunity to speak as one writer in the voice of an individual.

  A writer is an ordinary person, perhaps he is more sensitive but people who are highly sensitive are often more
frail. A writer does not speak as the spokesperson of the people or as the embodiment of righteousness. His voice is inevitably weak but it is precisely this voice of the individual that is more authentic.

  What I want to say here is that literature can only be the voice of the individual and this has always been so. Once literature is contrived as the hymn of the nation, the flag of the race, the mouthpiece of a political party or the voice of a class or a group, it can be employed as a mighty and all-engulfing tool of propaganda. However, such literature loses what is inherent in literature, ceases to be literature, and becomes a substitute for power and profit.