"Spirit Mountain" Author: Gao Xingjian Publisher: Lian Jing Publishing Company

★First time including the author's preface and interview★
The most far-reaching experience in my career is revealed through my masterpiece, which brings me back to the freedom of Lingshan Mountain to inquire.

The first reason for fleeing is to survive, and the second is to seek freedom. As an artist and writer, it is for the freedom to create.
──Gao Xingjian

The 30th anniversary of the publication of "Spirit Mountain", Gao Xingjian's "greatest work" in his creative career, not only took the longest time to write, from China to France, the novel also records the author's wanderings in the Yangtze River Basin in the 1980s, to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Sichuan and Guizhou, and his experiences over ten thousand kilometers in the wild mountains and harsh waters.

After the protagonist of the novel was misdiagnosed with lung cancer, he left Beijing and traveled upstream along the river. On the way, he accidentally heard the name of "Lingshan Mountain" and came to the town of Wuyi to find the entrance to the mountain. The stumbling and trekking of life thus carries the connotation of a pilgrimage. On the surface, as a writer, he visited the countryside, collected folk songs, visited singers and priests, and went deep into the land where the ethnic minorities of Tibetan, Qiang and Miao still passed on witchcraft and strange stories, and met another woman; in fact, in the intersection of the perspectives of the personal pronouns "I", "you" and "she", he unfolded an inner philosophical journey.

The narrator describes himself as follows: "In this long monologue, you are the person I am speaking to, a self that listens to me, and you are just my shadow." This novel, with its unique polyphonic narrative, not only blends novel aesthetic expressions such as dramatic spoken language, but also reveals layers of thinking. As Gao Xingjian said, "It opens the channel to people's consciousness and subconsciousness" and "the person is the channel." Through the practice of language art, it approaches the narrator's spiritual freedom from all angles.

The Royal Swedish Academy's eulogy said: "Spirit Mountain is not only a pilgrimage novel that narrates the protagonist's journey, but also represents a process of reflection. The two sides of this reflective road are fiction and real life, fantasy and memory. The form of exploring knowledge issues is to gradually deepen in order to get rid of purpose and meaning."

Recommended by all

As the title suggests, "Spiritual Mountain" is a dizzying novel. The fearless Gao Xingjian has just written the most confusing novel: a guide for a skywalker, page by page, like a kite, floating in the wind, really fascinating! - "Express", André Clavel

This is of course a novel, a comprehensive masterpiece covering everything from nature to life. Chinese literature, which was almost dead in the 1990s, can only rely on Gao Xingjian's creativity and courage. --Alain Peyrobe, Le Monde

People will understand: Gao Xingjian is not creating a nostalgic work, but an art of the mountain of the soul! Want to know how he climbed it? The important thing is to keep moving! --- Jacques Decornoy, Le Monde International Edition

This fascinating book is the work of a painter, poet and philosopher: it is like a wonderful kaleidoscope, presenting an eternal China, cruel and sometimes wonderful and broken, in the destruction and rebirth of China. He spent seven years on this wonderful climbing journey, from the past and childhood, the world and human affairs, as well as the previous songs of ethnic minorities and the violent and cruel new atmosphere, constantly weaving a network to form a strange contrast. In short, it constitutes a microcosm of humanity. --Diane de Margerie, Le Figaro

The historical or political aspects are only the surface of this multifaceted book, which sometimes takes the form of a tramp novel, sometimes like a dream, and sometimes like a lyric poem. As the author says, this is a so-called oriental novel, which includes allegory, travelogue, and myth. - Gérard Meudal, Liberation

This wonderful book, a poetic chronology, interweaves historical anecdotes, folk tales, literary research, philosophical thinking and love entanglements, and as the author said, it puts an end to homesickness. ——"Film and Television Weekly", Jean-Luc Douin

This is not just a simple novel, "Spirit Mountain" is a spiritual journey. - Jose fa Martinez, "Marseille Daily"

About the Author

Gao Xingjian

An internationally renowned all-round artist, he is a novelist, playwright, poet, drama and film director, painter and thinker. Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China in 1940, he settled in Paris in 1988 and acquired French citizenship in 1997. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000. His novels and plays focus on the dilemma of human survival, and the Royal Swedish Academy praised him in the Nobel Prize citation for his "universal values, profound insights and rich wit of language."

His novels have been translated into 40 languages ​​and widely distributed around the world. His plays have been performed frequently in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia, with more than 130 productions. His paintings have also been exhibited in many museums, art fairs and galleries in Europe, Asia and the United States. He has had 90 solo exhibitions and published more than 30 albums. In the past decade, he has filmed three film poems, integrating poetry, painting, drama, dance and music, making film a complete art.

He was also awarded the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, the Knight of the Legion of Honor of France, the Gold Medal of the Renaissance of France, the Ferronia Literature Prize of Italy, the Special Tribute Award of the Milan Art Festival of Italy, the Prix de Rome of Italy, the Gold Plate Award of the Academy of Lifetime Achievement of the United States, the Lion Award of the New York Public Library of the United States, and the Gold Medal of European Contribution of Luxembourg; the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Marseille-Provence in France, the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, the National Taiwan University, the National Central University, the National Sun Yat-sen University, the National Chiao Tung University and the National Taiwan Normal University have all awarded him honorary doctorates. In addition, in 2003, the city of Marseille, France, held his large-scale art creation event "Gao Xingjian Year". In 2005, the University of Aix-en-Provence, France, held the "International Academic Symposium on Gao Xingjian's Works". In 2008, the French Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau and the Chinese University of Hong Kong held the "Gao Xingjian Art Festival". In 2010, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, UK, held the "Gao Xingjian's Creative Thought Symposium". In 2011, the University of Nuremberg-Erlangen, Germany, held a large-scale international symposium "Gao Xingjian: Freedom, Destiny and Prediction". In the same year, Korea University in Seoul held "Gao Xingjian: Intersection and Communication between Korean and Overseas Perspectives", and the National Theater of Korea held the "Gao Xingjian Drama Festival". In 2014, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's Institute for Advanced Study held the "International Symposium on Gao Xingjian's Works". In 2017, the National Taiwan Normal University held the "Gao Xingjian Art Festival". In 2018, the Aix-Marseille University Library in France established the "Gao Xingjian Research Archive". In 2020, the National Taiwan Normal University Library established the "Gao Xingjian Archive Center".

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