Lu Xun
(1881–1936), Chinese writer. Lu Xun was the pen name of Zhou Shuren, a Chinese fiction writer, essayist, poet, translator, scholar, and patron of the arts who is widely considered to be the most influential man of letters in twentieth-century China. Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, Lu Xun went to Japan in 1902 to study medicine. As his autobiographical essays claim, he left medical school in 1905 to devote himself to a spiritual healing of the nation through literature. Returning to China in 1909, Lu Xun took up work at the Ministry of Education and also taught at schools in Shaoxing, Hangzhou, and Beijing. In 1918, he published Kuangren riji (Diary of a Madman), celebrated as the first piece in modern Chinese vernacular.
Lu Xun's collections of fiction, Nahan (Outcry, also known as Call to Arms, 1923) and Panghuang (Wondering, 1926), include short stories such as A Q zhengzhuan (The True Story of Ah Q) and Zhufu (New Year's Sacrifice), which portray with humor and sarcasm the delusions of villagers during the upheavals of the early twentieth century. As the stories offer a poignant criticism of contemporary social mores, they have come to represent of the ideals of the May Fourth Movement, an influential trend during the 1910s and 1920s that saw a new social order. In parallel, Lu Xun experimented with other forms of writing, starting with the prose-poems in Yecao (Wild Grass, 1927). After 1927, he wrote mostly essays, contributing to the burgeoning of the genre in twentieth-century Chinese literature. Altogether he published sixteen volumes of essays on subjects varying from sketches of everyday life to pointed political commentary. Lu Xun also influenced the literary scene through his journal editing and prolific translations, mostly of Russian and Japanese writers.
After moving to Shanghai in 1927, he used his status to support writers and other artists. Believing in the power of visual art to carry social messages, he advanced the woodblock print movement and collaborated with his brother Zhou Zuoren in publishing art prints. Despite his concern with social issues, he remained politically unaffiliated, engaging in debates with the poet Guo Moruo to the left and the essayist Lin Yutang to the right. In 1931, however, he joined the League of Leftist Writers, a fact used a decade later by Mao Zedong (1893–1976) to posthumously declare Lu Xun as the paragon of Communist writers.
Further Reading
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. (1987) Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Pusey, James Reeve. (1998) Lu Xun and Evolution. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
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