Lu Xun

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For the leading general under the Kingdom of Wu during the Three Kingdoms era in ancient China, see Lu Xun (Three Kingdoms).
Zhou Shuren

Born September 25, 1881(1881-09-25)
Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China
Died October 19, 1936 (aged 55)
Pen name Lu Xun
Occupation Novelist, Essayist
Nationality Chinese
Writing period 1918-1936

Lu Xun (traditional Chinese: 魯迅; simplified Chinese: 鲁迅; pinyin: Lǔ Xùn) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (traditional Chinese: 周樹人; simplified Chinese: 周树人; pinyin: Zhōu Shùrén; Wade-Giles: Chou Shu-jen) (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936) is one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered the founder of modern baihua (白話) literature, Lu Xun was a short story writer, editor, translator, critic and essayist. He was one of the founders of the China League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.

Lu Xun's works exerted a very substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement to such a point that he was lionized by the Communist regime after 1949. Mao Zedong himself was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun's works. Though highly sympathetic of the Chinese Communist movement, Lu Xun himself never joined the Chinese Communist Party despite being a staunch socialist as he professed in his works.

Contents

[edit] Life

[edit] Early life

Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, Lu Xun was first named Zhou Zhangshu and later renamed Shùrén (Ch.樹人), literally, "to nurture a person". He was the eldest of four brothers. His younger brother Zhou Zuoren, four years his junior, would become a notable writer in his own right.

The Shaoxing Zhou family was very well-educated, and his paternal grandfather Zhou Fuqing 周福清 held posts in the Hanlin Academy; Zhou's mother, née Lu, taught herself to read. However, after a case of bribery was exposed - in which Zhou Fuqing tried to procure an office for his son, Lu Xun's father, Zhou Boyi - the family fortunes declined. Zhou Fuqing was arrested and almost beheaded. Meanwhile, a young Zhou Shuren was brought up by an elderly servant Ah Chang, whom he called Chang Ma; one of Lu Xun's favorite childhood books was the Classic of mountains and seas.

His father's chronic illness and eventual death during Lu Xun's adolescence, apparently from tuberculosis, persuaded Zhou to study medicine. Distrusting traditional Chinese medicine (which in his time was often practised by charlatans, and which failed to cure his father), he went abroad to pursue a Western medical degree at Sendai Medical Speciality School (now medical school of Tohoku University) in Sendai, Japan, in 1904.

Lu Xun in his youth
Lu Xun in his youth

[edit] Education

Lu Xun was educated at Jiangnan Naval Academy 江南水師學堂 (1898-99), and later transferred to the School of Mines and Railways 礦路學堂 at Jiangnan Military Academy 江南陸師學堂. It was there Lu Xun had his first contacts with Western learning, especially the sciences; he studied some German and English, reading, amongst some translated books, Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, J. S. Mill's On Liberty, as well as novels like Ivanhoe and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

On a Qing government scholarship, Lu Xun left for Japan in 1902. He first attended the Kobun Gakuin (Hongwen xueyuan, 弘文學院), a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. His earliest essays, written in Classical Chinese, date from here. Lu also practised some jujutsu.

Lu Xun returned home briefly in 1903. Aged 22, he complied to an arranged marriage with a local gentry girl, Zhu An 朱安. Zhu, illiterate and with bound feet, was handpicked by his mother. Lu Xun possibly never consummated this marriage, although he took care of her material needs all his life.

[edit] Sendai

Lu Xun left for Sendai Medical Speciality School in 1904 and gained a minor reputation there as the first foreign student of the college. At the school he struck up a close teacher-mentor relationship with lecturer Fujino 藤野嚴九郎; Lu Xun would recall his mentor respectfully and affectionately in an essay "Mr Fujino" in the memoirs in Dawn Dew-light Collected at Dusk.(Incidentally Fujino would repay the respect with an obituary essay on his death, in 1937.) However, in March 1906, Lu Xun abruptly terminated his pursuit of degree and left the college.

Lu Xun, in the well-known Preface to Nahan, his first story collection, revealed why he gave up completing his medical education at Sendai. One day after class, one of his Japanese instructors screened a lantern slide documenting the imminent execution of an alleged Chinese spy during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Lu Xun was shocked by the complete apathy of the Chinese onlookers; he decided it was more important to cure his compatriots' spiritual ills rather their physical diseases.

"At the time, I hadn't seen any of my fellow Chinese in a long time, but one day some of them showed up in a slide. One, with his hands tied behind him, was in the middle of the picture; the others were gathered around him. Physically, they were as strong and healthy as anyone could ask, but their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually they were calloused and numb. According to the caption, the Chinese whose hands were bound had been spying on the Japanese military for the Russians. He was about to be decapitated as a 'public example.' The other Chinese gathered around him had come to enjoy the spectacle." (Lyell , pp 23).

Moving to Tokyo in spring 1906, he came under the influence of scholar and philologist Zhang Taiyan and with his brother Zuoren, also on scholarship, published a translation of some East European and Russian Slavic short stories. He spent the next three years in Tokyo writing, translating the literature of ither countries into Chinese.

[edit] Career

The statue of Lu Xun and his wife Xu Guangping in Guangzhou
The statue of Lu Xun and his wife Xu Guangping in Guangzhou

Returning to China, Lu Xun began teaching in the middle school of his hometown and with the establishment of the republic, briefly held a post in the Ministry of Education at Beijing. Encouraged by some fellow associates, he took up teaching positions at the Peking University and Peking Women's Teachers College and began to write.

In May 1918, Lu Xun used his pen name for the first time and published the first major baihua short story, Kuangren Riji (狂人日記, "A Madman's Diary"). He chose the surname Lu as it was his mother's maiden family name. Partly inspired by the Gogol short story, it was a scathing criticism of outdated Chinese traditions and Confucian feudalism which was metaphorically 'gnawing' at the Chinese like cannibalism. It immediately established him as one of the most influential leading writers of his day.

Another of his well-known longer stories, The True Story of Ah Q (A Q Zhengzhuan, 阿Q正傳), was published in the 1921-2. The latter would become his most famous work. Both works were included in his first short story collection Na Han (吶喊) or Call to Arms, published in 1923.

Between 1924 to 1926, Lu wrote his essays of ironic reminiscences in Zhaohua Xishi (朝花夕拾, Dawn Dew-light Collected at Dusk), published 1928, as well as the prose poem collection Ye Cao (野草, Wild Grass, published 1927). Lu Xun also wrote many of the stories to be published in his second short story collection Pang Huang (彷徨, Wandering) in 1926. Becoming increasingly estranged with his brother Zuoren, the stories are typically more melancholic than in his earlier collection. From 1926, after the March 18 Massacre, for supporting the students' protests which led to the incident, he went on an imposed exile to Xiamen, Amoy University, then to Zhongshan University at Guangzhou with his wife Xu Guangping.

From 1927 to his death, Lu Xun shifted to the more liberal city of Shanghai, where he co-founded the China League of Left-Wing Writers. Most of his essays date from this last period. In 1930 Lu Xun's Zhongguo Xiaoshuo Lueshi (中國小說略史, A Concise History of Chinese Fiction) was published. It is a comprehensive overview of history of Chinese fiction up till that time, drawn from Lu Xun's own lectures delivered at Peking University and would become one of the landmark books of Chinese literary criticism in the twentieth-century.

His other important works include volumes of translations — notably from Russian (he particularly admired Nikolai Gogol and made a translation of Dead Souls, and his own first story's title is inspired by a work of Gogol) — discursive writings like Re Feng (熱風, Hot Wind), and many other works such as prose essays, which number around 20 volumes or more. As a left-wing writer, Lu played an important role in the history of Chinese literature. His books were and remain highly influential and popular even today. Lu Xun's works also appear in high school textbooks in Japan. He is known to Japanese by the name Rojin (ロジン in Katakana or 魯迅 in Kanji).

Lu Xun was the editor of several left-wing magazines such as New Youth (新青年, Xin Qingnian) and Sprouts (萌芽, Meng Ya). Because of his leanings, and of the role his works played in the subsequent history of the People's Republic of China, Lu Xun's works were banned in Taiwan until late 1980s. He was among the early supporters of the Esperanto movement in China.

[edit] Death

Lu Xun died in 1936 of tuberculosis. His remains were interred in a mausoleum within Lu Xun Park in Shanghai. He was survived by a son, Haiying.

[edit] Style and legacy

Lu Xun's style could be described wry and ironic. His essays are often very incisive in his societal commentary, and in his stories his mastery of the vernacular language and tone make some of his literary works (like A Q Zhengzhuan, 阿Q正傳, The True Story of Ah Q) very hard to convey through translation. In them, he frequently treads a fine line between criticizing the follies of his characters and sympathizing with their very follies.

Lu Xun's importance to modern Chinese literature lies in the fact that he contributed significantly to every modern literary genre except the novel during his lifetime. He wrote in a clear lucid style which was to influence many generations, in stories, prose poems and essays. Lu Xun's translations were important in a time when Western literature were seldom read, and his literary criticisms remain acute and persuasively argued.

[edit] Thought

Lu Xun, hailed as "commander of China's cultural revolution" by Mao Zedong, is typically regarded as the most influential Chinese writer who was associated with the May Fourth Movement. He produced harsh criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his analysis of the "Chinese national character". He has often been considered to have had leftist leanings. Called by some a "champion of common humanity," he helped bring many fellow writers to support communist thought, though he never took the step of actually joining the Communist Party. It should be remarked, however, that throughout his work the individual is given more emphasis over collectivistic concerns.

[edit] Works

[edit] Stories

  • from Call to Arms (1922)
    • "A Madman's Diary" (1918)
    • "Kong Yiji" (1919)
    • "Medicine" (1919)
    • "Tomorrow" (1920)
    • "An Incident" (1920)
    • "The Story of Hair" (1920)
    • " Storm in a Teacup" (1920)
    • "My Old Home" (1921)
    • "The True Story of Ah Q" (1921)
    • "The Double Fifth Festival" (1922)
    • "The White Light" (1922)
    • "The Rabbits and the Cat" (1922)
    • "The Comedy of the Ducks" (1922)
    • "Village Opera" (1922)
    • "New Year Sacrifice" (1924)
  • from Old Tales Retold (1935)
    • Mending Heaven (1935)
    • The Flight to the Moon (1926)
    • Curbing the Flood (1935)
    • Gathering Vetch (1935)
    • Forging the Swords (1926)
    • Leaving the Pass (1935)
    • Opposing Aggression (1934)
    • Resurrecting the Dead (1935)

[edit] Essays

  • "My Views on Chastity" (1918)
  • "What is Required of us as Fathers Today" (1919)
  • "Knowledge is a Crime" (1919)
  • "My Moustache" (1924)
  • "Thoughts Before the Mirror" (1925)
  • "On Deferring Fair Play" (1925)

[edit] Collections

  • Call to Arms (Na Han) (1923)
  • Wandering (Pang Huang) (1925)
  • Old Tales Retold (Gu Shi Xin Bian) (1935)
  • Wild Grass (Ye Cao) （1927）
  • Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, (Zhao Hua Xi Shi)（1932） a collection of essays about his youth
  • Brief History of Chinese Fiction, (Zhong Guo Xiao Shuo Shi Lue) (1925) a substantial study of pre-modern Chinese literature

[edit] External links

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[edit] Translations


Persondata
NAME Shuren, Zhou
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Xun, Lu; 魯迅 (Traditional Chinese); 鲁迅 (Simplified Chinese); Xùn, Lǔ (pinyin); Hsün, Lu (Wade-Giles); 周樹人 (Traditional Chinese); 周树人 (Simplified Chinese); Shùrén, Zhōu (Hanyu Pinyin); Shu-jen, Chou (Wade-Giles)
SHORT DESCRIPTION Chinese Novelist, Essayist
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1936, aged 55
PLACE OF DEATH