Lu Xun by Zhou Shuren - Essay Example

______ _______________ ______ _____________ ______ ______________ ______ _______________________ ZhouShuren "Lu Xun" Lu Xun was the pen name of a Chinese writer named Zhou Shuren. He is one of the prominent Chinese writers of the 20th century and was even considered as the founders of modern Chinese literature. Born in Shaoxing of Zhejiang Province into a destitute but educated family, he studied in the family school, setting solid foundation for the study of literature. His form of writing made use of the baihua which is the Chinese vernacular as well as Classical Chinese. He was more of a short story writer, editor, translator, critic, professor, scholar, essayist, poet, and patron of arts. His works exerted a very significant influence after the May Fourth Movement, an anti- imperialist, cultural, and political movement spearheaded by students' demonstrations, to such degree that he was glorified by the Communist regime after the year 1949. Even Mao Zedong, a well-known and highly respected Chinese political leader, claimed that he himself is a lifelong aficionado of the works of Lu Xun. Although Lu Xun was compassionate to the ideals of the Communist, surprisingly, he never joined the Chinese Communist Party. In several works of Lu Xun, he contrasted the hypocrisy of upper-class scholars and elites, with the suffering of the lower-class people. But the uncomplicated interpretation of his stories often neglected their uncertainty and metaphysical levels. His works that deeply influenced modern Chinese fiction are Na Han (Call to Arms) of 1923, Pang Huang (Wandering) of 1926, and Gu shi xin bian (Old Tales Retold) of 1935. His essays are often satirical in his societal remarks and with his mastery of the vernacular language; his expertise with tone, which does not always project an easy thought, make his works even harder to translate. He produced harsh condemnation of China's social problems, particularly in his analysis of the ideal Chinese national. Lu Xun had all the qualifications of a good polemicist; simply means a writer who argues in disagreement or opposition to others. One of major of works of Lu Xun is the "Wild Grass" or "Ye Cao" which is a collection of prose poems which was written in 1924 and 1926. It is a pessimistic and gruesome set of poems that is a product of dreams including nightmares. A caption that would portray his seemingly negative attitude is read as follows: "As subterranean fire is spreading, raging underground. Once the molten lava beaks through the earth's crust, it will consume the wild grass and lofty trees, leaving nothing to decay. But I am not worried; I am glad. I shall laugh aloud and sing." (Wild Grass 1974) However, he is motivated to write in the hopes of enlightening his people, for humanity, and for the need to better it. It appeared from his writing that his aim is to expose the disease, or the unfortunates of the society, and draw attention to it so as it can be cured or corrected. Also evident is the mixing of literal and figurative truth; fantasy and reality; animate and inanimate objects. In effect the poems in "Wild Grass" are a product of supernatural events and the dream, or the intentional framing of a piece of account as a dream, is strongly associated with the world of the individual subconscious. It is a place of strong emotional intensity inspiring of otherwise subdued or surrealist image and desires. This is depicted in the line, "If you sleep to a time when you lose track of time, your shadow may come and take his leave with these words: There is something I dislike in heave; I do not want to go there." (Wild Grass 1974) The effect is one of underscoring the inconsistency between the inner world and outer world, and of highlighting the complications of individual psychology. In several of these short passages, the dream now becomes a model of art, rearranging personal experiences into symbolic structures, aiming not as visualization of actual events, but rather an image deformation as an artistic way to project concealed traumas of the inner mind. This piece made by Lu Xun is quite similar to stories by Shi Zhecun such as "Sorcery", and "The General Head". Noticeably in the Ye Cao is not only structured in a way distantly leading from sleep to awakening or vice versa but also is a piece of work over-conscious of its own formlessness and its organic feature of decay, meaning its texture is deliberate. The wretched and yet futile, if nonetheless substantial, effort that strikes against unyielding iron walls, the irresolvable mixture of hope and despair, is best recounted in the metaphor of weeds as fire - both symbolic of life on the verge of death. This is also the materialization of the affective side of the stirring and arousing of revolutionary desire. This is best depicted in, "From the clay of life abandoned on the ground no lofty trees, only wild grass. For that I am to blame. Wild grass strikes no deep roots, has no beautiful flowers and leaves, yet it imbibes dew, water and the blood and flesh of the dead, although all try to rob it of life. As long as it lives it is trampled upon and mown down, until it dies and decays." (Wild Grass 1974) The wild grass that sprung out of the debris of the past life is precisely the realized allegory of "awakening" wherein life becomes the life lived. The wild grass becomes the allegory of the very shaky and difficult effort to emerge. Wild grass growing like weeds occupy a fine margin between the earth and the sky, in same context as between two decays: the rotting of past life, and its own current decay. Even though the wild grass tirelessly and eagerly strives to survive, however its insignificant being is doomed from the start. Its grounds for existence are at the price of the very ground that roots its brief, and searing life. The wild grass is thus material proof of the futility of a frustrated effort. It sets proof of a past life's existence in perish, a proof of the weakness to undergo awakening, but its decay also serves as proof of the awakened subject's being. In the piece called "Hope" of the same book, there is grief over the too-long life of his "hope" as shown in the parable of the prostitute; "what is hope A prostitute! Alluring to all, she gives herself to all, until you have sacrificed a priceless treasure - Your youth - then she forsakes you," (Wild Grass 1974) rather than the untimely death of the Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi. Also in this piece, the narrator puts next to the vanished youth within himself and the silenced nonexistence of the youths outside and around him. It is the assertion on hope in the poem, underlines by the structure of the influence of hope, which crossovers Ye Cao from the foreword to the end. In the foreword hope appears in the reflection of the weeds and the yearning for their decay. In the last piece, this string leads to the irony of the most emerald of forests existing in the desert. Even though it is nothing but a delusion caused by unrelenting hope, but hope itself is a sanctuary where the drive to move forward and outward can be, at least even in an illusion, it is satisfied. Although the image of the "weeds" is both a mutinous call to arms and a drifting image between past and future, light and darkness, it contains in itself some enigmatic obscure core of independent texture. It is a symbolic state of tyranny and a struggle for life, replacing itself a picture of the past and the lost. "Weeds" share the abundance of hope and an unassuming disappointment of everyday, mirroring the shapeless humility in the prose-poetic expressions of the emotions, and yet in the end existing nothing but "weeds", unresponsive to the gaze that attempts to give them meaning. The fire menacing at any moment to engulf the weeds of wild grass should be regarded not only as mere paired images, but as an indissoluble element of the weed emotion itself in Lu Xun. Lu Xun is not just commended by his countrymen but also his foreign counterparts. A Japanese Nobel Laureate Oe Kenzaburo called Lu Xun the greatest writer Asia produced in this century. Many expert translators found it their desire to be able to compile the work of Lu Xun which further paved the way of getting the West to take Chinese literature seriously and finally on the quest to be recognized. Wolfgang Kubin has established himself as a primary player in the world-wide undertaking. The attractive set of red, cloth-bound volumes that he, his students and colleagues produced contains an all-new German translation of Lu Xun's selected works from 1881 to 1938, several of which were never published before in English or French, including some of Lu Xun's essays in wenyan which were written in period of 1907 to 1908. This was during his stay in Japan, which Xu Gouzhang once referred to as Lu Xun's Lehrjahre. These translations were important in a time when Western literature was hardly ever read in China, and his literary criticisms remain discriminating and influentially argued. Lu Xun's work seemingly portray long grudges and his words are arranged in such a way that they appear to be in a warpath, then feinting an attack, now mimicking weakness, now halting, now withdrawing, finally setting up a powerful trap, all very much similar to the ancient art of war. His works portray much anger in oppression and tyranny but he believes that people who experience this still have "hope" left in them. Referring to the book, "Wild Grass", the opening statement, "Wild Grass strikes no deep roots, has no beautiful flowers and leaves, yet it imbibes dew, water and blood and the flesh of the dead although all try to rob it of life." (Wild Grass 1974) There is a challenge to summarize that poem in this situation; however, it may suggest the harshness of much life in China and the resilience and forbearance of its people. "I love my wild grass, but I detest the ground which decks itself with wild grass." This passage depicts his love for the Chinese people but despises the country and the tyrants of the people. It is therefore subjective on how a reader perceives the messages of the book for it may also seem the grass to be the futile life left to live. His patriotic ways are channeled through his writings and though it is outwardly pessimistic, the book was still able to convey a message of truth. He also has a way of criticizing the follies of his characters and at the same time sympathizing with their follies: "For my own sake and for the sake of friend and foe, man and beast, those whom I love and those, whom I do not love, I hope for the swift death and those decay of this wild grass. Otherwise, it means I have not lived, and this would truly be more lamented than death and decay. Go, then, wild grass, together with my foreword!" (Wild Grass 1974) It also conveys a somewhat sympathetic engagement and an ironic detachment at different times; nevertheless, it is a strong piece on social commentary. Lu Xun's importance to the Chinese literature is in the fact that during his lifetime, he contributed extensively to every modern literary genus except in novels. He wrote in a clear logical style which was bound to influence many generations, in prose poems, stories, and essays. His significance in Chinese history is yet to be debated upon since he was told to map the blueprint of the future in communism and Mao Zedong hailed him as the chief commander of China's Cultural Revolution. Although he was said to be one of the fathers of Communism in China, but his form of "free writing" and the very form of writing style, was suppressed in the communist setting. His works further received international acclamation and many foreign literary pieces got its inspiration from the timeless works of Lu Xun. Citations: (1) Xun, Lu. "Wild Grass." (1974) Read More