«The deaf mountain»

Tuesday's books - Jonas Follonier

Gilbert Pingeon has published a simple and moving book at the beginning of this year with Editions de l'Aire. The author, a resident of Auvernier, offers the reader a story expressing his love of a particular mountain, its mountain, the Montagne Sourde. And the tone of the back cover immediately reveals the solitary genius behind the narrator:

«I often hear it said: “The mountains belong to everyone.” That's the kind of statement that'll saw your legs off and make you not want to walk. In any case, it's enough to put you in a bad mood for the rest of the day.»

The book, on the other hand, doesn't put you in a bad mood. On the contrary, it's a bubble of freedom, a quiet, passionate stop for any sensitive being. Not only because it tells a deeply rooted story, which could take place nowhere else but at the foot of the mountain in whose shadow the narrator grew up, but also because the mountain is bursting with symbols, all of which are already present in the first few pages. The first of these is the symbol of the novel. With all its essential tug-of-war. This famous novel, a literary genre of the modern age, which balances between truth and falsehood, reality and fiction.

«The Mountain is both fiction and reality.»

The mountain, the narrative voice, speaks to her. That's why she's deaf. You can't be deaf unless you're deaf. could hear. It's a real literary achievement, with a style that has already proved its worth. From the very first chapter, the mountain is also understood as the narrator's lover, sending him back to his own image. Is the lover, the mountain's second comparison, in turn a symbol of the novel?

«Because we're definitely a couple. Not the most orthodox, nor the best matched, but who cares?.
Each sees the other as both a dream and a mirror.»

As you read on, you feel like quoting everything, putting the whole novel in quotation marks, and exclaiming as the only comment: «Voilà!». That's why I won't go on with my blah, blah, blah. There's so much to say that it wouldn't be fair to single out some elements over others. This novel, is la Montagne Sourde: you can't fragment it, it's all of a piece. Deaf, he won't hear what the self-proclaimed literary critics, of which I am one, have to say. And that's just fine!

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Jonas Follonier for Le Regard Libre

Gilbert Pingeon
The deaf mountain
Editions de l'Aire
2019