Abstract
Much ink has been spilled over how Lu Xun’s (1881–1936) political views inform his creative writing and how politics and literature are mutually implicated, but the aesthetics of his tragic narratives remains marginal in literary studies. Often lauded as the father of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun has not only made major contributions to the formation of literary realism but also put his unique vision of tragedy into practice. At the core of his tragic poems and narratives lie the tropes of solitude. The tragic is characterized, not by tragic incident, but by void thereof, by a state of speech-less solitude and nothingness (xuwu). The aesthetic implications of such a tragic vision are twofold. The creation and consumption of literature in China during the first half of the twentieth century focused on questions of the nation and society, but Lu Xun’s solitary characters in The Weeds ask fundamental existential questions while carving a space for a new genre of writing.
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Notes
To more accurately convey its meaning, I choose to translate the title Yecao as Weeds instead of the English translation as “Wild Grass” by Galdys Yang and Yang Xianyi. However, for titles of stories and poems, I follow their translations in Wandering (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1981), Silent China: Selected Writings of Lu Xun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973) and Lu Xun: Selected Works. 4 vols. (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1980b). The Romanization system adopted is Pinyin, but I preserve the Wade-Giles system for publications or titles already in use that followed the Wade-Giles system.
Wang Guowei champions the novel Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) as the tragedy of tragedies, because it presents “the inescapable affliction as an outcome of the relations among the characters and the positions they hold, and not as a result of doings of snake- and viper-like evil or unpredictable fate.” For more details about the three types of tragedies on Wang’s hierarchical scale, see Wang Guowei, “Honglou meng pinglun” (Criticism of the Dream of Red Chamber) in Jing’an wenji (Collected Essays of Jingan) (Japan: Association of Chinese Intellectual History, 1957), pp. 41–43.
Written on October 21, 1925, one year before Yecao (the weeds) (Lu Xun 1981b, p. 130).
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Acknowledgements
A shorter, earlier version of this article appeared in Comparative Literature in the Cross-cultural Context, ed. Cheng Aimin and Yang Lixin (Nanjing: Yilin Press, 2003). I thank both Peter Hajdu, editor of Neohelicon, and Cheng Aimin for permission to use the materials.
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Huang, A.C.Y. Tropes of solitude and Lu Xun’s tragic characters. Neohelicon 37, 349–357 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0035-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0035-z