Lu Xun is an important Chinese writer, because he was one of the first authors to write in the vernacular about common people in common surroundings.
While his best known stories (Diary of a Madman, The Real Story of Ah-Q) are not really outstanding, some short sketches are true gems, like `New Year's Sacrifice', `The Loner' or `Forcing the Swords'. He had some formidable themes in his hands, like `Bringing Back the Dead', but he didn't develop them.
A cultural crusader, not a revolutionary
Lu Xun saw himself as a crusader for cultural reforms: `if people were intellectually feeble, they would never become anything other than cannon fodder or gawping spectators. The first task was to change their spirit, and literature and the arts were the best means to this end.' (Outcry)
He was in no way a revolutionary: `Everything that actually happened in 1911, I can't bear it. All those old friends - young men, quietly finished off by bullets, after years of sacrifice or tortured in prison for weeks. Or just disappeared off the face of the earth, along with their hopes and ambition ... Locked, abused, persecuted, their graves forgotten.'
Family and Village Life
In `Village Opera', real village life is better than `opera'.
Some stories are purely anecdotal family sketches (A Cat among the Rabbits, A Comedy of Ducks, A Happy Family, Soap, The Divorce), while other ones treat individual problems (the failure in a governmental exam in `The White Light' or obsession with cannibalism in `Diary of a Madman'), and still other ones with the Manchu law on pigtails or the stigma of baldness (Nostalgia, A Passing Storm).
`Yang Yiji' and `The Real Story of Ah-Q' deal with village outcasts seeking shelter or revenge against a harsh and cruel world.
Political and social issues
`My Old House' paints the abject misery of the Chinese village: `too many children, famine, taxes, soldiers, bandits, officials, corrupt local potentates.'
`In Memoriam' exposes the ravages of unemployment and the battle for the equality of the sexes.
`Brothers' paints the fear of illness.
`In Dragon Boat Festival' a strike creates money and food problems.
In `Our Learned Friend' the main character fights for the education of women and against the traditional belief that `books are the root of all evil'. In `Anti-Aggression', he fights for justice for everybody. In `New Year's Sacrifice' he fights against superstition. In `The Lover' he fights for freedom of speech in a village without a school or a doctor and where the inhabitants see all outsiders as `foreign devils'.
But, ultimately, in `Forcing the Swords' all men are equal in the face of Death,
This book, with an excellent introduction by Julia Lovell, is a must read for all those interested in Chinese literature.
