Lu Xun (鲁迅) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936), a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. Writing in Vernacular Chinese as well as Classical Chinese, Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet. In the 1930s he became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.
For the Traditional Chinese profile: here. For the Simplified Chinese profile: 鲁迅
I could not live a life further from 1920s China, but humans are humans and at times the plot of the characters lives was like a daytime soap. The gritty ones with blue lighting and off beat dramatic pauses.
So says the protagonist of The New-Year Sacrifice, the first story in Wandering, Lu Xun's 1926 short story collection; and I'll have to say that I wholly agree with him. In fact, I may be inclined to employ this most useful phrase to describe my feelings on the book itself.
I'm not sure about Wandering.
Lu Xun tells stories differently than other authors I've read. Each one has a very basic story line, with no frills whatsoever. They're vague, oddly translated, and more often than not go nowhere. To get any pleasure out of them requires searching for their artistically embedded meanings, often mistily displayed through human examples. The themes and feelings explored throughout include grievance, indecision, confusion, tradition and duty. It seems to me that each was put across rather carelessly, and I'm not really sure what kind of effect Lu Xun was going for, or if even he knew what effect he was going for.
My copy of Wandering is printed on slightly glossy paper, and at night, as I read by the light of my bedside lamp, parts of the pages, due to the moderate shininess of the paper, would be slightly obscured by a kind of gleaming reflection of the lamp's light. This resulted in me having to adjust how I held the book in order to see everything on the page, and I feel as if this obscuring of text somewhat reflects my overall reading experience. I felt a niggling annoyance that I was missing something, like these stories were actually much more interesting and thought-worthy than I understood, but that I wasn't fully comprehending Lu Xun's subtle concerns and intonations. Maybe something was lost in Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's murky translation, or maybe I'm just a blithering ignoramus, of which the latter is highly likely. Nonetheless, I can't say I got much out of these stories.
"Esitazione" raccoglie undici racconti che Lu Xun ha composto a Pechino nel biennio 1924-1925 e pubblicato nel 1926. Si tratta di: Sacrificio di Capodanno, Alla locanda, Una famiglia felice, Il sapone, La lampada della vita eterna, Pubblico ludibrio, Il professor Gao, Il solitario, Cordoglio, Fratelli, Divorzio. Filo conduttore della raccolta sono l’incertezza dell’esistenza, la crisi individuale e valoriale che caratterizza il tempo in cui vive Lu Xun e che si riflette nei protagonisti dei suoi racconti, in bilico tra passato e presente, conservazione e cambiamento. Pessimismo e desolazione permeano i racconti, che hanno un tono nettamente diverso da quelli della precedente raccolta.
this book is all about some small issues that happens around the author. he gave a lot of details to them to make them so vivid and realistic. by just reading these words you can picture a clear image of what happen at the scent. it give you such a big impact as you think about they happened a 100 years ago. their stupidity and avarice, their greed and numb, it all touch you the deepest part of your heart. i glad the we are moving on, though i do believe things like that still happen from time to time, i just hope it will get less and less.