Lu Xun Selected Essays by Lu Xun

Author:Lu Xun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ①英语-汉语-对照读物②鲁迅杂文-选集摇
ISBN: 9787544709217
Publisher: 译林出版社
Published: 2009-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

■ Literature of a Revolutionary Period

——A Talk Given on April 8 at the Whampoa Military Academy

The subject of my talk today is “Literature of a Revolutionary Period”. This college has invited me several times to speak, but the reason I kept putting off coming was that I believed you invited me because I have written some short stories and am an author, so you want to hear from me about literature. Actually I am not an author and have no special knowledge. The first subject I studied seriously was mining, and I could probably give you a better talk on coal mining than on literature. Of course, my own liking for literature makes me read a good deal of it, but I have not learned anything from my reading which would be useful to you. And my experience in Peking during the last few years is beginning to shake my faith in the old literary theories on which I was brought up. That was the time when students were shot and there was a strict censorship, when to my mind only the weakest, most useless people talked about literature. Those who are strong do not talk, they kill. The oppressed have only to say or write a few words to be killed; or, if they are lucky enough to escape, all they can do is shout, complain or protest, while those who are strong go on oppressing, illtreating and killing them, and they are powerless to resist. What use is literature to the people then?

It is the same in the animal kingdom. When a hawk catches a sparrow, the hawk is silent, the sparrow is the one to cry out. When a cat catches a mouse, the cat is silent, the mouse is the one to cry out. And the one that can only cry ends by being eaten by the one that is silent. An author if he is lucky may write a few things which win him a name during his lifetime, or fame for a number of years——just as after the memorial service for some martyr, men forget the martyr but may discuss the merits of the funeral couplets——this is a very safe business.

However, I suppose writers in this centre of the revolution like to claim that literature plays a big part in revolution. It can be used, for instance, as propaganda to encourage, spur on, speed up and accomplish revolution. But to my mind, such writing lacks vigour, for few good works of literature have been written to order; they flow naturally from a man's heart with no regard for their possible effect.

To write on some set subject is like writing a paku essay, which is worthless as literature and quite incapable of moving the reader. For revolution we need revolutionaries, but revolutionary literature can wait, for only when revolutionaries start writing can there be revolutionary literature. So to my mind it is revolution which plays a big part in literature. The literature of a revolutionary period is different from that of ordinary times for, in a revolution, literature changes too.

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