Jabal Al-Ruh

The novel Mount of the Spirit is a unique work in the contemporary literary scene. This work, which is, at the same time, an internal journey, a dialogue between characters defined by pronouns "I," "you," "he," or "she," has (the pronoun "we" that indicates the masses is excluded because it undoubtedly evokes more than necessary painful memories...) a call to Chinese scenes and forests that are still virgin, a depiction of love's wounds or simply a description of a moment of pleasure resulting from love or contemplating a river, a classic wandering and wonderful story, an evocation of the whimsical or contemporary Kafkaesque reality, reflection on the novelistic art. This work could not have been, afterwards, anything without the language it was written in: a modern, musical language, without artifice or ambiguity, "flows" completely when read aloud. The theatrical experience is fundamental in Gao Xinjian's writing: he regularly creates a distance between the novel and the reader through the phrase "says," which is repeated endlessly and is also found in his plays. And if "I" is another person for Gao Xinjian, then "I" becomes "you," a kind of reserved, distant, and therefore universal inner voice. When the conscience of "I" tries to realize its illusions, it is the conscience of "you" that takes its place.