May Fourth Period (1915-25): Lu Xun

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May Fourth Period (1915-25) Lu Xun

• Lu Xun ?? (1881-1936) as Representative May
  Fourth Writer
• almost universally recognized as the greatest
  writer of the May Fourth period
• often called the father of modern Chinese
  literature

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Lu Xun poster of the Cultural Revolution
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Lu Xun

• Early life (1881-1898)
• born in Shaoxing (??), Zhejiang in 1881 in a
  gentry family in decline
• Jiangnan (??) and modern Chinese writers

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Lu Xun

• Early life (1881-1898)
• educated in a traditional manner
• grandfathers arrest on corruption charges
• fathers death

Three Flavors Studio (above), the local clan
school Lu Xun attended Lu Xuns first teacher
Shou Jingwu (???) (left)
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Lu Xun

• For more than four years I used to go, almost
  daily, to a pawnbrokers and to a medicine shop.
  I cannot remember how old I was then, but the
  counter in the medicine shop was the same height
  as I, and that in the pawnbrokers twice my
  height. I used to hand clothes and trinkets up to
  the counter twice my height, take the money
  proffered with contempt, then go to the counter
  the same height as I to buy medicine for my
  father, who had long been ill. On my return home
  I had other things to keep me busy, for since the
  physician who made out the prescriptions was very
  well known, he used unusual drugs aloe root dug
  up in winter, sugar-can that had been three years
  exposed to frost, twin crickets, and ardisia . .
  . All of which were difficult to procure. But my
  fathers illness went from bad to worse until he
  died.
• I believe those who sink from prosperity to
  poverty will probably come, in the process, to
  understand what the world is really like
  (Preface to Call to Arms)

Lu Xuns father
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Lu Xun

• Western education (1898-1902)
• earliest contact with Western-style education in
  the sciences
• avid reader of Liang Qichao and Yan Fu

• I entered the J school, and it was there that I
  heard for the first time the names of such
  subjects as natural science, arithmetic,
  geography, history, drawing, and physical
  training (From Preface to Call to Arms).

Copy of Shiwu bao, journal edited by Liang Qichao
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Lu Xun

• I dreamed a beautiful dream that on my return to
  China I would cure patients like my father, who
  had been wrongly treated, while if war broke out
  I would serve as an army doctor, at the same time
  strengthening my countrymens faith in
  reformation (From Preface to Call to Arms)

• Japan (1902-09)
• language study in Tokyo 1902-04
• medical studies at Sendai University 1904-06
• return to Tokyo to pursue a literary career

Lu Xun as a student in Japan (left) Zhu An (??),
Lu Xuns legal wife (above)
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Lu Xun
I have no idea what improved methods are now used
to teach microbiology, but in those days we were
shown lantern slides of microbes and if the
lecture ended early, the instructor might show
slides of natural scenery or news to fill up the
time. Since this was during the Russo-Japanese
War 1904-05, there were many war slides, and I
had to join in the clapping and cheering in the
lecture hall along with the other students. It
was a long time since I had seen any of my
compatriots, but one day I saw a newsreel slide
of a number of Chinese, one of them bound and the
rest standing around him.
They were all sturdy fellows but appeared
completely apathetic. According to the
commentary, the one with his hands bound was a
spy working for the Russians who was to be
beheaded by the Japanese military as a warning to
others, while the Chinese beside him had come to
enjoy the spectacle. . .
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Lu Xun

• . . . Before the term was over I had left for
  Tokyo, because this slide convinced me that
  medical science was not so important after all.
  The people of a weak and backward country,
  however strong and healthy they might be, could
  only serve to be made examples of or as witnesses
  of such futile spectacles and it was not
  necessarily deplorable if many of them died of
  illness. The most important thing, therefore, was
  to change their spirit and since at that time I
  felt that literature was the best means to this
  end, I decided to promote a literary movement.

Lynching in the US and numb spectators
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May Fourth Period (1915-25)

• Period of Silence (1909-1918)
• returns homes, teaches, and does old-style
  scholarship
• only one short story from this period, written
  in classical Chinese
• in 1912, he goes to Beijing to teach and work
  for the government in the new Ministry of
  Education

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May Fourth Period (1915-25)

• May Fourth (1918-25)
• most productive period
• wrote all of his fiction, prose poems, and many
  essays during this period
• two collections of short stories Call to Arms
  (??) and Wandering (??)
• collection of prose poetry entitled Wild Grass
  (??)

Covers of the original publications of Call to
Arms and Wandering
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Lu Xun

• Imagine an iron house without windows,
  absolutely indestructible, with many people
  asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation.
  But you know since they will die in their sleep,
  they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you
  cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers,
  making those unfortunate few suffer the
  irrevocable agony of death, do you think you are
  doing them a favor?
• But if a few awake, you cant say there is no
  hope of destroying the iron house.
• True, in spite of my own conviction, I could not
  blot out hope, for hope lies in the future. I
  could not use my own evidence to refute his
  assertion that it might exist. So I agreed to
  write (Preface to Call to Arms)

Re-creation of iron house in the Shanghai Lu
Xun Memorial Hall
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Lu Xun

• well known stories include Diary of a Madman
  (????), Kong Yiji (???), Medicine (?), The
  True Story of Ah Q (?Q??)
• discourse of national character (???)

Drawing of Ah Q, by Feng Zikai (???)
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Lu Xun

• Political critique on the Left (1927-36)
• beginning in 1926, Lu Xun began to study Marxism
  and Marxist views of literature
• by 1927, he had become, at least according to
  the standard view of his life, a committed
  leftist
• through the 1930s, he writes mostly in the
  satirical essay form (zawen ??)
• from 1928 to his death in 1936, lives in
  Shanghai

Lu Xun, his wife Xu Guangping (???), and their
son
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May Fourth Period (1915-25)

• Death and legacy
• The Making of a Chinese Gorki and the
  canonization of Lu Xun

Photo of Lu Xuns coffin carried by friends and
associates (above) PRC memorial on the 20th
anniversary of Lu Xuns death (left)
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Lu Xun

• Stories
• Diary of a Madman
• first published in New Youth (May 1918), then
  collected in Call to Arms (Nahan ?? 1923)

Drawing of Madman by Ding Cong ??(left) original
publication of Diary (above)
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Lu Xun

• Stories
• Kong Yiji (??? 1919)
• My Old Home (?? 1921)

Drawing of narrator in My Old Home (left) Kong
Yiji (above)