The Symbol of Angst and The Poetics of Remembrance

The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance: Lu Xun and Chinese Literary
Modernity
Author(s): Wenjin Cui
Source: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture , FALL, 2016, Vol. 28, No. 2 (FALL, 2016),
pp. 139-182
Published by: Foreign Language Publications
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24886577
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The "Symbol of Angst" and the
Poetics of Remembrance: Lu Xun
and Chinese Literary Modernity1
Wenjin Cui
Introduction
This essay examines a crucial aspect of Lu Xun's literary thought—namely, f I am indebted to Mikhail lampolski for
his inspiration and encouragement. I am
his understanding of the relationship between literature and reality. Bring
especially grateful to Todd Foley, without
ing together a number of reflections on literary texts Lu Xun wrote at dif whose intellectual input and editing this
essay would not have found its current
ferent moments of his life, I demonstrate how he formulated a notion of
shape. I would also like to thank John
literature that conceives of writing not as the symbolic representation of Lagerwey for his precious feedback.
Finally, comments by two anonymous
truth, but as the correlative depiction of transitional existence. I argue that MCLC reviewers and Kirk Denton have
Lu Xun's conception of literature, informed by a strong sense of the lived been most helpful in revision.
moment of the historical present, is essentially an attempt to revitalize the

Chinese aesthetic tradition's correlative articulation of the world, for which
his encounter with the ontological "spirit" of the West provides a crucial
stimulation. I also provide a full explication of my theoretical premises re
garding the Western tradition of representation and the Chinese tradition
of correlation; their meaning should become evident by the end of this
essay. It will be helpful, nevertheless, to start with a simplified definition
of the aesthetic notions of representation and correlation. Essentially, the
representational conception of literature presupposes the ontological
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 139

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separation of the subject and the object, and employs symbolic forms to
represent the being and truth of the world. The aesthetics of correlation,
by contrast, presupposes the immanent correspondence between the mind
and the world, and employs the correlative interplay between presence
and absence to depict the transitional existence of things (Jullien 2009).
I begin my discussion by examining an intense consciousness of the
disjunction between subjective creation and objective reality that Lu Xun
revealed at a moment of personal crisis. This consciousness, I propose,
is the fundamental point that links him to the Western tradition of
representation. In light of his assimilation of the ontological "spirit" of
modern Western romanticism, I further inquire into Lu Xun's translation
of the notion of the "symbol of angst." I argue that rather than a merely
psychological foregrounding of the subjective inner world, the "symbolism"
Lu Xun embraces hinges on an affirmation of the subjective spirit as the
creative ground of the "truth" of reality.
Following the discussion of the ontological element that links Lu Xun
to the Western tradition of representation, I further advance the central
argument of my essay: Lu Xun's conception of literature, while assimilating
the ontological "spirit" of the West, is essentially a modernist attempt to
revitalize the correlative articulation of the world that defines the Chinese
aesthetic tradition. This argument is established in three steps. First, I

demonstrate the de-ontologizing operation that the representational
conception of literature undergoes in Lu Xun's youthful exaltation of xin
sheng (voice of the heart) and shensi (imagination). Examining how Lu Xun
reincarnates the ontological concept of imagination into the traditional
Chinese notion of shensi, I propose that his assertion of the freedom
of subjective creation is essentially the aspiration of a modern man to
reinvigorate the correlative mode of thinking of the Chinese tradition.
Second, I uncover the correlative structure that underlies the most striking
"symbol" that Lu Xun has created in reflecting on his own writing—the

grave. Through an explication of the meaning of death and remembrance
140 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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that is embodied in the image of the grave,丨 depict the intensified vision
of transitional existence that fundamentally determines his understanding
of writing. Finally, I illustrate how the poetics of remembrance that is
presented in the image of the grave applies to Lu Xun's conception of
literature in general.1 In particular, I demonstrate how Lu Xun's ultimate 11t should be noted that, given the scope
of this essay's questions as well as the
devotion to the zawen (the miscellaneous essay) form bespeaks his intention
relatively peculiar nature of Lu Xun's
to radicalize the correlative mode of expression from the lived moment of acceptance of Marxist literary theory,
1 cannot demonstrate the continuity
the historical present. Lu Xun's establishment of the poetics of remembrance
between his Marxist period and his early
on the radicalized ground of correlative thinking, I conclude, presents us period in this paper. That said, I do take
the liberty of drawing materials from his
with an extraordinary instance of the modernist transformation of the
last ten years.
Chinese aesthetic tradition.
Three clarifications are needed on the theoretical premise that

2 Jullien has written on a wide range of
underlies my discussion. First, in taking correlative thinking as the defining topics in classical Chinese thought, but I
draw mainly from two of his books: De
ground of Chinese culture and contrasting it with the ontological thinking
tour and Access: Strategies of Meaning
of Western culture, I essentially draw upon the comparative-philosophical in China and Greece (2000) and The Great
Image Has No Form, or. On the Nonobject
perspective the French sinologist Francois Jullien establishes in his study
through Painting (2009). Besides Jullien,
of classical Chinese thought.2 According to Jullien (2000: 376), "most prominent scholars working in this vein
include Marcel Granet (1999), Bernhard
generally, Chinese thought is relational. Not only are all of its terms paired,
Karlgren (1962), and Angus Charles
each with its counterpart; but from this interdependence, each gains its Graham (1989).
consistency. And this is true in their view of nature as well as of society." 3 Plato's world of Ideas and Laozi's vision
The relational or correlative structure of Chinese thought, as Jullien takes of the Dao are illustrative examples here.
In his attempt to separate being from
it, is not simply a matter of formal principle, but marks a distinct mode
nonbeing, Plato conceives of a world
of engagement with the world. In contrast to the ontological thinking of of Ideas, a realm of eternal Forms, that
transcends the sensible appearance, the
the West, which envisions a transcendental realm of essence and being,
perpetual becoming of this world. Laozi
correlative thinking questions the world in terms of transition and process.3 also seeks to look beyond the immediate
ly perceived world; however, the Dao he
Whereas for ontological thinking the world is the object of representation
thus envisions is not essence and being,
that the subject grasps symbolically, correlative thinking conceives of the but the immanent process of this world,
the undifferentiated fount of all things.
world as the immanent correspondence to the inner movement of the mind.
It should be noted that despite a high degree of consensus regarding 4 See, for instance, Heidegger's (2010)
authoritative critique of the ontologi
the ontological orientation of Western thinking,4 the understanding of
cal tradition of Western thought in the
the Chinese tradition in terms of correlative, relational mode of thinking introduction to Being and Time.

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is far more controversial. Indeed, there have been various attempts to read
5 Prominent examples of this line of a metaphysical or transcendental dimension into Chinese thought.5 My
interpretation include works by some
justification for endorsing the correlative line of interpretation, especially
influential modern Chinese philoso
phers, such as Mou Zongsan 1999 and Li as is found in Jullien's outstanding works, is fundamentally heuristic. The
Zehou 2009.
correlative line of interpretation, as I see it, has yielded more convincing
textual exegesis and more illuminating intellectual views. Whether this
judgment carries a grain of wisdom or can lead to a fruitful interpretation
of Lu Xun's literary thought is borne out in the following pages.
Second, in characterizing the Western tradition as representation and
the Chinese tradition as correlation, I do not mean to propose the existence
of monolithic, unchanging cultures; rather, the notions of representation
6 "Episteme" should be understood in and correlation should be taken as an episteme6 within which different
the Foucauldian sense; namely, as the
and opposing positions coexist, and in which the rupture between the
historical a priori that grounds knowl
edge and its discourses. It does not premodern and the modern traditions is visible. In this sense, the various
designate any specific theory or theme,
philosophical and literary references that I draw from both the Western and
but refers to the conditions of possibil
ity that underlie competing theories and the Chinese traditions do not exclude the existence of competing views,
themes (Foucault 1994).
but are chosen only because they are most suggestive for the specific issues
under discussion. Most important, highlighting the correlative structure
of Lu Xun's literary thought by no means understates or denies its radical
difference from the classical Chinese tradition. Quite to the contrary, my
contention is that only within the epistemic field of correlative thinking
can the break Lu Xun seeks with the premodern Chinese tradition be made
7 In this regard, I challenge both the
Eurocentric narrative of modernity and truly intelligible.7
the essentialist conception of a fixed,
Third, asserting the cultural specificity of the Chinese tradition does not
unchanging Chinese culture.
mean that it is closed and immune to the influence of foreign cultures. As
8 This is in fact an important theme that
I show, Lu Xun's assimilation of the ontological "spirit" of the West plays a
Lu Xun constantly turns to through
out his life. Illustrative essays include crucial role in his revitalization of the correlative articulation of the world.
Thoughts before the Mirror" (Kanjing
Indeed, one of my major assumptions is that the capacity to incorporate
yougan) (Lu Xun 2005:1: 208-211);
"Take-ism" (Nalai zhuyi) (6: 39-41); and foreign influences is a distinctive sign of the vitality of a culture.8 In
"Starting with Children's Photo-taking"
highlighting the fundamental difference between the Western tradition
(Cong Haizi de zhaoxiang shuoqi) (6:
82-84). of representation and the Chinese tradition of correlation, my aim is not

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to reify any essentia list conceptions of Chinese culture, but rather to lay
bare its grounds and presuppositions and thereby to point toward new
possibilities of transformation.
Existing scholarship on Lu Xun has engaged with his understanding of
the relationship between literature and reality from various perspectives.
Among these diverse approaches, two interrelated major lines of discussion
can be clearly discerned. The first concerns the question of subjectivity in
Lu Xun's conception of literature. It has become somewhat commonplace
to consider the subjective dimension as indispensable to an understanding
of Lu Xun's literary thought. Few scholars today would still hold the naively
conceived realist view that Lu Xun's works simply reflect external reality like
a mirror. Both Marston Anderson (1990) and David Der-wei Wang (1992)
have long since demonstrated that Lu Xun's realism is far from a passive copy
of reality, but involves complicated formal/aesthetic constructions. Peter
Button's (2009) more recent study also stresses the notion of subjectivity
in attributing to Lu Xun a pivotal place in the history of modern Chinese
realism.
Meanwhile, for those who highlight the modernist orientation of Lu

Xun, the subjective dimension has always been a focal point of discussion.
In his influential monograph on Lu Xun, Leo Ou-fan Lee (1987) draws
attention to the way Lu Xun symbolizes the existential conflicts of his
psyche. In his recent work, The Chinese Prose Poem, the first book-length
study in English of Wild Grass (Yecao), Nicholas Kaldis (2014:146) provides
a detailed reading of Lu Xun's prose poems as "attempts to engage and
capture in language and image the inner world of the subject (the psyche)
in its dynamic interaction with the outside world (the historical context)."
Similar explorations of Lu Xun's subjective expression of his inner vision
can be found in many other works that deal with Lu Xun's symbolism and
romanticism, both in the United States and in China (Sun 2010; Liang 2000;
He 2002; Pu Wang 2011; Zhang Jieyu 2013).
All of these works that take up the question of subjectivity have

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underscored, explicitly or implicitly, the distinctly modern character of Lu
Xun's literary vision. In these readings, Lu Xun's literary subjectivism bears
out various essential aspects that are commonly taken to define a modern
notion of literature: the discovery of interiority, the consciousness of form,
the engagement with the historical present, the self-ref lexivity of language,
and so on. It is certainly no surprise then that in reading Lu Xun's "Diary

of a Madman" as "a manifesto of a modern subjectivity," Xiaobing Tang
(1992: 1225) proclaims the story "a modernist text, a disruptive presence
that challenges the given language of meaning." The fundamental insight
that scholarship has established on the subjectivist nature of Lu Xun's
conception of literature, alongside the larger question of its implication for
Chinese literary modernity, forms a starting point of my own reflection on
Lu Xun. Although many scholars have stressed the psychological, existential,
formalistic, and ethico-political aspects of Lu Xun's literary subjectivism, my

interpretation focuses on its epistemological dimension. By drawing on a
wide range of Lu Xun's reflections on literature and engaging in a concrete,
theoretically informed analysisof their philosophical meanings, I shed some
new light on the epistemological ground of Lu Xun's literary subjectivism.
The second line of discussion prevalent in the scholarship raises
the question of Lu Xun's relationship with foreign cultures and with
the indigenous classical tradition. Regarding the role that Western and
Japanese thought plays in Lu Xun's conception of literature, current
scholarship has widely reckoned that it should not be understood as a
mere matter of influence. In her well-known reading of "The True Story
of Ah Q," for instance, Lydia Liu (1995: 76) argues that Lu Xun's use of
first-person narrative "profoundly supersedes Smith's totalizing theory
of Chinese character and leads to a radical rewriting of the missionary
discourse in terms of Chinese literary modernity." Focusing on Lu Xun's
early essay "On the Power of Mara Poetry" (Moluo shili shuo), Pu Wang
(2011) demonstrates the specific ways in which Lu Xun interprets and
appropriates various aspects of European romanticism. Complementing

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the efforts to highlight Lu Xun's creative intervention in the "translation"
of foreign ideas are studies that explore his transformative engagement

with the premodern Chinese tradition. In his study of modern Chinese
literature, for example, Jaroslav Prusek (1980) links Lu Xun to what he
defines as the lyrical character of the Chinese literary tradition. Leo Ou-fan
Lee (1987) also stresses Lu Xun's attachment to classical Chinese culture
and illustrates some of the specific literary elements he draws from it. But
Eileen Cheng's (2013:6) book on Lu Xun presents by far the most elaborate
discussion of Lu Xun's "transformative engagement with the forms, styles,
and conventions of traditional literature." Employing the Benjaminian
critique of the "teleological narrative of history" (6), Cheng demonstrates
how Lu Xun's pursuit of modernity is complicated by his ambivalent attitude
toward the specters of the past.
Overall, these studies have greatly undermined the dichotomies
of Western impact and Chinese response, foreign and indigenous, and
modernity and tradition that once shaped the study of both Lu Xun's
literary thought and modern Chinese literature in general. They provide
us a sophisticated picture of Lu Xun's creative engagement with both the
Western and classical Chinese traditions. It seems to me, however, that
the critical space that these works have opened can be further developed
by bringing into view the epistemological ground of correlative thinking
that defines Chinese culture. In this regard, the Japanese scholar Kiyama
Hideo's (2004) study of Lu Xun has established solid groundwork. Although
often presented succinctly and intuitively, Kiyama's interpretation of Lu
Xun drives home the fundamental point that links him to both modern
Western thought and the classical Chinese tradition—namely, his modernist
revitalization of the correlative articulation of the world. In substantiating

this fundamental insight, moreover, Kiyama makes some important
concrete observations on Lu Xun's incorporation of Western and traditional
cultural elements and thus provides highly suggestive clues for more
elaborate discussions. Building on many of the insights of Kiyama's works,

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I offer a more extensive and theoretically informed interpretation of how
Lu Xun turns the ontological spirit of the West into a transformative force
of the Chinese tradition and how, informed by a strong sense of the lived
moment of the historical present, he revitalizes the Chinese tradition at its
most fundamental core. Chinese literary modernity, I suggest, is not to be

reduced to the adoption of any set of modern Western ideas, but rather
should be understood as the transformation of the received tradition of
correlative thinking, for which the assimilation of Western thought plays

a significant role.
An Ontological Gap: The "Truth" of Reality and the "Symbol of

Angst"
9 Lu Xun 2005: 3: 473-480. Most of In "A Reply to Mr. Youheng" (Da Youheng xiansheng, 1927),9 written
the works I discuss have not been
about five months after the 1927 Nationalist massacre of Communists,
translated into English; all translations
appearing in this essay are my own. first in Shanghai, then in Guangzhou, Lu Xun reveals a crisis of writing he
I have consulted English translations
was facing at the time: as he puts it, a treatise that calls for "saving the
when available, although I have made
significant modifications to stress cer children," an apparent allusion to his earlier writings, now sounds hollow in
tain nuances of Lu Xun's writing that
the face of the immense "horror" (kongbu) he is experiencing. Indeed, he
are crucial for my interpretation.
believes his former criticism of society must have been in vain一otherwise,
he himself would not have survived. This revelation is brought to an end in
a way that is characteristic of Lu Xun: while indicating the possibility that

he might retreat into silence once and for all with the dissipation of the
"horror," he nevertheless reveals that he is still tryinq to save himself by
forgetting and becoming numb, and he would also like to transcribe what
he sees "amid pale bloodstains" (dandan de xuehen zhong).
Bringing literature and reality down to the material level of paper and
blood, respectively, was not new to Lu Xun. In fact, it immediately brings
to mind the series of responses he had written to the Beijing government's
slaughter of student protesters in 1926, known as the March 18th Massacre.
Upon hearing the news, Lu Xun (2005: 3: 279) had first lamented the
emptiness of his words, claiming that "lies written in ink can never disguise

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facts written in blood." As days went by, however, his critical edge turned
toward the erosion of time, which had caused the blood to fade. Although
he again lamented the emptiness of words, they now acquired a second
meaning: the facts written in blood can be preserved only by words written
with ink.10 In a way, these different stages and aspects of Lu Xun's thoughts 10 The most important essays are "More
Roses without Blooms" (Wuhua de qian
all seem to have been condensed in the laconic ending of "A Reply to Mr.
gwei zhi'er) (Lu Xun 2005: 3: 277-281);
Youheng," which simultaneously laments the futility of writing in a time "In Memory of Liu Hezhen" (Jinian Liu
Hezhen jun) (3: 289-295); "Amid Pale
of bloodshed and asserted the will to preserve the fading blood with
Bloodstains" (Dandan de xuehen zhong)
writing on paper. (2: 226-227); inscription to And That's
That (Eryi ji) (3: 425). For an excellent
On the other hand, while his "horror" intensified, Lu Xun seemed to
discussion of Lu Xun's response to the
have acquired a more distanced stance toward the inadequacy of writing. incident, see Kiyama 2004:137-140.
Compared to the almost unrestrained anger and lamentation that permeate

his earlier works, the tone is more determined and much calmer in "A Reply
to Mr. Youheng." Indeed, as his sense of the inadequacy of writing became
more externalized as an object of reflection, Lu Xun was able to reflect
more consciously on the question of writing. It almost seems that at the
moment he was revealing the crisis, Lu Xun had actually already passed
its most critical stage; an essay written a few days later demonstrated this
change most clearly.
Lu Xun begins the essay "How to Write" (Zenme xie, 1927)11 by 11 Lu Xun 2005: 4:18-28. Kaldis (2014:
153) discusses this piece in his analysis of
acknowledging that he has written very little during the past year. The Lu Xun's "Foreword" to Wild Grass. He
explanation he eventually gives is familiar enough: writing can never fully argues that it registers Lu Xun's resolu
tion "to use poetic expression to try and
capture the acute feeling of actual experience. Referring to Nietzsche's love
approximate the feeling of needing to
of books written in blood, Lu Xun confesses that he doubts the existence find a written medium for his deep
est sensibilities while simultaneously
of such writings, for literature is always written with ink and what is
recognizing that he does not even know
written in blood can amount only to fading bloodstains. At this point in how or where to start. Although the
representational predicament that Kaldis
the account, however, Lu Xun shifts from the contemplation of a kind of
pinpoints also forms the core of my inter
existential melancholy to that of a most mundane occurrence—a mosquito pretation of this essay, I more specifically
stress Lu Xun's subtle change of attitude
biting—thereby incorporating the threatening image of blood within the
regarding this predicament and the onto
more neutral question of "what to write" (xie shenme). Meanwhile, this logical intensity of his reflection.
sentiment is given rather dispassionately, without his earlier pathos. At

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the same time, Lu Xun also points out that although what is written in
blood is more stirring and distinct, it also fades and erodes more easily;
literature written in ink, by contrast, can have an everlasting life. To be
sure, he is far from exalting the eternal nature of literature; rather, his
reservation can be seen both in his comparing literature to white bones in
a tomb and in his calling for the passing away of literary works with time.
Despite this, however, he has clearly granted literature a more substantial
status vis-a-vis reality. Indeed, here Lu Xun turns his attention away from
the abyss that separates literature and reality, claiming that the question
of "what to write" has become unimportant because of the equivalence of
all subjects in the face of the abyss; instead, he turns toward the question
121 have used both "truth" and "facts" of "how to write.
to translate the word zhen as Lu Xun
uses it. Lu Xun is playing on the subtlety

The way Lu Xun approaches this question forms a kind of counterpoint
of zhen, which cannot be rendered to the first part of his essay by coming to the defense of fiction. He criticizes
into one word in English. In making
this point, Lu Xun might have drawn the notion that the best way to achieve truthfulness is to write in the first
inspiration from the following state
person, or at least to avoid psychological depictions when writing in the
ment by the Japanese writer Saneatsu
Mushanokoji that Lu Xun included, third person, as a conflation of truthfulness with facts. What leads to the
in Chinese translation, in one of his
disillusionment with literature, Lu Xun claims, is "mostly not to see truth
essays: "For whatever kind of real
ists, it is impossible to write 'like real/ in fiction, but to see fiction in facts."12 Literature is different from news
yet the 'real' can be written. Whoever
reports precisely because it allows for creative freedom. So long as one
does not understand this point cannot
understand so-called 'freedom' and realizes that it is a creation, there is no problem with deviating from facts.
'personality'; nor can they understand
great works" (Lu Xun 2009: 7: 248-251).
Comparing such an almost lighthearted assertion of the fictiveness of
Lu Xun's differentiation between factual
literature with the abyss between literature and reality discussed earlier,
and literary truth, as well as his affirma
tion of the long-lasting life of literature it does not seem so far-fetched to suggest that Lu Xun had arrived at an
in the same essay, is also discussed in important conviction about the nature of writing and that he would soon
Zhang Jieyu (2013: 26-28), but she does
not give much weight to the abyss that emerge from his self-imposed silence.13
Lu Xun had to confront in reaching this
The point I want to make here, however, pertains to the nature of
position.
Lu Xun's literary thinking revealed at this moment of writing crisis. His
13 What happened subsequently is
conception of literature as severed from reality, yet possessing truth at
well known: Lu Xun made the turn to
Marxism. the level of fiction, in my view, marks one of modern Chinese literature's

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closest points of commonality with the Western notion of representation.
The wrenching violence that separates literature from reality, along with
the affirmation of literature on the new grounds of creation, demonstrates
the extent to which Lu Xun has interiorized the core of the representational
mode of thinking.
To elucidate the fundamental link between Lu Xun's literary thought

and the Western aesthetic tradition, it is helpful to introduce a comparison
that Francois Jullien establishes between the Western tradition of

representation and the Chinese tradition of correlation. According to Jullien
(2009:4-5), European thought is fundamentally defined by the ontological

gap between presence and absence; it is at once devoted to the "beatific
cult of presence," while also developing a "tragic art of absence•“ It is in
the separation of presence from absence that being surges forth; conversely,
one is elevated to love through absence, which sharpens and diversifies

the faculties as a compensation for that very absence. Thus, "to remember
is to make the past 'present' by resuscitating it. To imagine is not only to

conceive but to look at something with the mind's eye as if it were present
(Rene Descartes). And, as Immanuel Kant tells us, "'re-presentation' (of
self), the most general term ... is the very operation of the mind" (5).
In contrast, Chinese thought14 does not ask the ontological question of 14 Jullien is discussing classical Chinese
thought here. Yet, as I argue later, the
being/essence, but instead comprehends the world in terms of transition
epistemic ground of correlative thinking
and process. Its conception of aesthetic creation is not based on the tragic also fundamentally underlies modern
Chinese culture.
opposition between presence and absence, but employs the fundamental
principle of correlating between "there is" (you) and "there is not" (wu).
Far from aspiring to stand apart from absence and to become more visible
in the process, presence is mingled with absence and becomes animated

by way of concealing and covering.
Putting aside for the moment the relationship between Lu Xun and the
Chinese aesthetic tradition, it is certainly valid to claim that the fundamental
point linking him to Western aesthetics lies in his intense consciousness

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of the disjunction between subjective creation and objective reality that
we have just observed. More than any specific theme or doctrine, it is the
ontological tension of representation that marks Western culture's most
profound influence on Lu Xun's literary thought. In light of Lu Xun's insight
into the epistemological core of the representational notion of literature,

it becomes clear to what extent the conventional understanding of realism
is inadequate in characterizing the strong social orientation of Lu Xun's
writings. What is important for him is not the "objective" portrayal of
reality, but rather the "truth" of reality that can be found only in the
creativity of the subject. This is certainly not to deny the validity of applying
the concept of realism to Lu Xun. Anderson (1990) and David Wang (1992)
have made commendable attempts to liberate the discussion of Lu Xun's
realism from a narrow understanding of literature as the passive copy of
reality and to explore the narrative and stylistic complexities of his fictional
15 Anderson (1990) shows how the short constructions of the Real.15 More recently, Peter Button (2009) has explored
stories in Call to Arms deviate from
the critical model of realism一which
the philosophical and aesthetic dimensions that Lu Xun's creation of the
he claims to be defined by the mimetic "type" holds for the development of modern Chinese realism. However,
creation of verisimilitudes~by shifting
from plot to authorial self-examination,
although the point is not to fight over the terminology itself, it seems
and how this is due to Lu Xun's moral
to me that the ontological tension that feeds Lu Xun's understanding of
unease at adopting an objective, de
tached style. Taking realism as an open literary creation is best captured in the notion of the "symbol of angst"
concept that encompasses diverse forms {kumen de xiangzheng), a term that he was deeply fond of and whose
for representing the real, David Wang
(1992) explores various nonmimetic significance remains vague.
narrative forms Lu Xun employs in his
Lu Xun received the notion of the "symbol of angst" from the Japanese
stories, including his satirical and lyrical
modes of representation. It should be literary critic Kuriyagawa Hakuson, whose eponymous book he translated in
noted that although both Anderson and
1924. The basic idea, as Lu Xun (2005:10: 257) quoted in his preface to the
Wang take the epistemological ques
tion of realism's claim to truth as their translation, is that "the pain and agony engendered by the repression of
starting point, they both quickly dismiss
life-force (shengming li) is the root of art, and the mode of its representation
the question and focus instead on the
formalistic constructions of "truth."
is symbolism in the broad sense." The theoretical references Kuriyagawa
Peter Button (2009: 64) has pointed out
this fact in an elaborate critique of these makes in explicating this idea are of Western origin and highly eclectic—
two books.
they range from the philosophical thoughts of Nietzsche, Bergson, and

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Russell, to Freudian psychoanalysis and its various applications to literary
criticism, and to the aesthetic and literary theories of Aristotle, Schiller,

and Tolstoy, among others. In addition to these largely underarticulated
theoretical statements, Kuriyagawa's explication is composed of some
essayistic reflections on life, artistic creation, and aesthetic judgment, along
with a wide array of literary references and quotations of primarily Western
but also Japanese sources, often accompanied by his rather impressionistic

comments.
Despite the highly eclectic and rather loose manner in which

Kuriyagawa advances his literary views, it is clear that the notion of "symbol
of angst" is conceived essentially in the romantic tradition, if we understand
romanticism in the broadest sense as referring to a general intellectual

attitude that espouses the freedom and creativity of the subjective spirit.16
16 As a historical movement, romanti
cism refers to the specific philosophical,
The fundamental characteristic of life-force, as Kuriyagawa makes explicit,
literary, and artistic trend that developed
is that it "renounces considerations of material interest, leaves behind
in the
the late eighteenth century and the
first half of the nineteenth century in
evaluation of good and evil, breaks away from the critique of morality and
Europe. The far-reaching influence of the
romantic
the constraints of tradition, and strives only to leap and transcend" (Lu Xun spirit, however, stretches the
entire course of modern Western culture,
2009:5:297). It is this romantically conceived free-flowing, self-transcending
up to the present day. See Abrams 1953,
Thorburn/Hartman 1973, and Josipovici
spiritual power that Kuriyagawa glorifies as the essence of human existence
1994.
and the source of literary creation. For him, the notion of "symbol of angst"
is not about any specific set of literary devices and techniques. Rather, it
points toward literature's creative potential in using sensuous forms to
express "the pain and agony engendered by the repression of life-force"
and to explore the areas of human life and the mind that lie beyond the
confines of material, moral, and conventional concerns.
The comments Lu Xun made on Kuriyagawa's book are terse yet

incisive. It is apparent that he appreciates Kuriyagawa's rather broad notion
of symbolism; in fact, he emphasizes this point by quoting Kuriyagawa in

the preface: "so-called symbolism is not limited to the trend of symbolism
that was propagated by the French poetic school of the fin de siecle, but

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rather applies to all literature and art from ancient times to the present"
(Lu Xun 2005: 10: 257). Meanwhile, he also shows an admiration for the
way Kuriyagawa interprets literature in terms of "the flux of life-force,"
and specifically points out the originality of this concept in comparison with
the ideas of Bergson and Freud that informed it. Lu Xun, of course, is not
making any convoluted theoretical speculation; what is essential for him
is the kind of vitality embodied in Kuriyagawa's concept. Such significance

is made even clearer in the line immediately following this short critique:
"Without free-running great spirit (jingshen)•“ Lu Xun (2005: 10: 257)

writes, "there can be no great art. Yet how despondent and parochial is
the spirit in China now?" Apparently, what he sees in Kuriyagawa's literary
vision resonates strongly with his own romantic ideal: the poet as the
"warrior in the spiritual realm" was Lu Xun's (2005: 1: 102) literary vision
in his earlier writings in classical Chinese. The Mara poet, the epitome of
such an ideal, is precisely the one who disdains any earthly or divine order,
asserting the absolute freedom of spirit.

As the most positive affirmation of symbolism Lu Xun has ever given,
the notion of the "symbol of angst" has naturally received much attention.
Yet despite the very broad link he emphatically establishes between
symbolism and Hfe-force, current scholarship generally confines the scope
of the "symbol of angst" to a more conventionally defined symbolism. What
is stressed is usually the psychological depth of the subjective inner world

and certain characteristically symbolist formal techniques. In claiming the
significance of the notion for Lu Xun, for instance, Leo Ou-fan Lee (1987:
92) writes that the kind of art this notion upholds is one that "does not aim
at direct reflection but at imagistic distortion as an artistic way to project

the suppressed traumas of the inner psyche. Accordingly, it calls for the
technique of symbolism." In her recent discussion of the topic, Zhang Jieyu
(2013: 8) also notes that "among the various.. • influences" that Lu Xun
received from Kuriyagawa's book, "the most distinctive •.. are no doubt

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his identification with and adoption of symbolist expressive techniques, as
17 Similar discussions can be also found in
well as his special emphasis on and depiction of 'dream.'"17
Maruo 1999, Chen 2008, and He Changsh
To be sure, the discussion of Lu Xun's symbolism from this conventional eng 2002.
perspective is certainly valid: Lu Xun himself also often uses the term 18 For instance: "Preface to The Literary
"symbolism" in the narrow sense.18 However, although such discussions Debate in Soviet Russia" (Su'e de wenyi
lunzhan qianji) (Lu Xun 2005: 7: 277-278);
have enriched our understanding of his writings by bringing into view the "Postscript to The Twelve" {Shi'er ge
houji) (7: 310-314); "Who Is Declining"
subjective inner world that Lu Xun depicts and the symbolist devices he
(Shei zai moluo) (5: 514-515).
employs,19 they cannot account for the broad meaning that the notion of
19 Notable works include Kaldis 2014, Sun
the "symbol of angst" carries for him. More crucially, the kind of subjective
2010, and Zhang Jieyu 2013.
inner life that stands in opposition to objective external reality is of a
20 In other words, the subjective inner life
psychological nature;20 as such, it pertains mostly to the content of Lu
is taken as the object (subject matter) of
Xun's works. In addition, the symbolic mode of representation is treated representation, rather than the creative
subject. As such, it is essentially situated
in this line of discussion as primarily a matter of literary technique. What on the same plane as objective external
remains to be examined, however, is a more essential element of Lu Xun's reality.
literary vision—the subjective spirit as the source of literary creation. 21 Here I am disregarding the issue of
Adding to the important contribution the existing scholarship has made whether certain "Japanese" character
istics play a part in Lu Xun's reception
in revealing the conventionally conceived symbolist dimension of Lu Xun's of Kuriyagawa. I think such an element,
even if it does exist, is not so important
literary view, I shed some more light on Lu Xun's "symbolism" by looking
for Lu Xun and certainly would not affect
into the epistemological structure of the "spirit" that he has assimilated our discussion of Lu Xun's relationship
from modern Western culture.21 with Western thought. That being said,
of course, I do not deny the validity of
An essential clue for grasping the epistemological meaning Lu Xun examining Lu Xun's relationship with
Japanese culture itself.
grants to the subjective freedom of the spirit can be found in his 1907
essay "On the Aberrant Development of Culture" (Wenhua pianzhi lun), 22 Lu Xun coined this term to refer to
a new variation of the idealism that
where he provides a succinct and perceptive account of what he calls the emerged in early nineteenth-century
neo-idealist trend (xin shensi zong)22 of Europe in the second half of the Europe. From his description and the
representative figures he chose, one
nineteenth century. According to Lu Xun's depiction, neo-idealism emerged can see that it is rather close to what is
commonly known as existentialism, the
as a reaction to the materialist tendency of the modern age, the excessive
defining feature of which is the primacy
development of which had led to the spiritual degeneration of Europe. it grants to the human subject, not
merely the thinking subject, but the act
Against the mechanistic determinism of the materialist view of the world,
ing, feeling, and living human individual.
it advocated the power of the subjective, taking it "as the criterion to See Macquarrie 1972.

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measure all things" or "regarding the subjective spiritual world as superior
to the objective material world" (Lu Xun 2005: 1: 54).
What Lu Xun takes as the defining feature of the spiritualistic tide of
nineteenth-century Europe is its antimaterialist subjectivism. Its significance
for him lies beyond the simple issue of the historical understanding of
European culture: the opposition between the spiritual and the material,
between the subjective inner world and the objective external world, is
a familiar and essential theme in Lu Xun's own thinking. Here is not the
23 For relevant discussions, see Qian place to do full justice to this theme,23 but I would like to highlight the
2000, Wang Hui 2000, Ban Wang 1997,
Larson 2009, Button 2009.
epistemic foundation of the spiritualistic tide of modern Western culture,
which I believe is crucial for comprehending Lu Xun's assimilation of the
representational notion of literature.
In the European context, the antimaterialist subjectivism of the

romantic spirit can be traced to the Copernican revolution Kant initiated
in the realm of philosophy一namely, the localization of truth and meaning
in the a priori structure of consciousness. With Kant, the human mind
is granted an autonomous status and is taken as the ultimate source of
scientific knowledge and morality. An important consequence of this
subjective turn, as is commonly recognized, is that it enabled Kant to
make room for human freedom beyond the mechanistic determinism that
defines the scientific view of the world. Building on Kant, the idealist and
romantic trends that developed after 1800 granted a greater freedom to
the subjective spirit. Rather than relegating scientific knowledge and moral
freedom to their respective realms of the sensible and intelligible worlds,
as Kant did, they attempted to accord human freedom an absolute status
that bridges the gap between subject and object (Gardner/Franks 2002;
Lakshmipathy 2009). The so-called neo-idealist trend that Lu Xun describes
further advanced the subjectivist line of thinking in an existentialist
direction. Whereas the earlier understanding of human freedom centered
on rationality, the existentialist line of thinking stressed affectivity

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(Macquarrie 1972). Taking these different stages and branches of modern
Western thought together, one can clearly see that they all grant the human
subject an ontological priority over the objective world and oppose spiritual
freedom to the mechanical determinism of the materialist worldview. It
is this antimaterialist subjectivism, indeed, that fundamentally defines an

essential aspect of nineteenth-century European thought.
In recognizing the ontological meaning of subjectivism that Lu Xun

saw in Western culture, it becomes apparent why he would endorse
Kuriyagawa's definition of "symbolism" as the general mode of
representation of all literary and art forms. For the idealist and romantic
traditions, which developed from the subjective turn Kant initiated, human
knowledge is understood as the symbolic externalization of the mind.

Indeed, advancing the Kantian insight into a general interpretation of
culture, Ernst Cassirer (1953) elaborated his whole philosophy of language,
myth, art, and science with the concept of "symbolic form." As the branch of
human activity that exalts the freedom and creativity of the subjective mind,
aesthetic production is naturally understood by this tradition as grounded

in the symbolic mode of representation. The symbol was a central notion
of early nineteenth-century romanticism (Abrams 1953; Wellek 1949),
and Nietzsche's (1999) model of art—namely, the Apollonian-Dionysian
duality—is essentially one of symbolism. The Nietzschean conception of
the perpetual antagonism between the primordial creativity of Dionysian
force and the symbolic power of the Apollonian principle as the root of
artistic creation set an important foundation for modern aesthetics in
general. Russian symbolism, which Lu Xun was rather familiar with, explicitly 24 See, for instance, Bely 1985; Ivanov
2001. It should be noted that I do not
advocated the Dionysian and Apollonian principles as core tenets.24 suggest that Lu Xun was familiar with
A designation of the essence of artistic creation in general, the "symbol or even aware of all these "symbolist"
theories. What is crucial for my argu
of angst" not only refers to subjective works of art but also encompasses ment rather, is that symbolism in this
specific sense is necessarily implied in
more objective works that depict social reality. Kuriyagawa explicitly
the subjectivist spirit of modern Western
dismisses narrow definitions of the term; instead, he claims that the life romanticism.

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force of the writer necessarily shines through any objective depiction o干
reality. If we recall that for Lu Xun, the "truth" of reality is ultimately found
in the subjective creation of literature, it would certainly be valid to say

that a fundamental unity also underlies his understanding of the subjective
and the objective. In the sense that its seemingly objective depiction of
social and psychological reality is undercut by a distance from the objects
of experience, literature can be rightly regarded as a world of symbols.
Conversely, because the symbolic representation of the world creates its
own reality, or rather the only reality that we can perceive, there is no
reason why we cannot call it the "truth" of reality. In granting ontological

priority to the subjective, Lu Xun has clearly overcome the narrowly defined
opposition between the subjective and the objective, which underlies the
conventional division between symbolism/romanticism and realism. It is
precisely in his affirmation of literature as the symbolic externalization of
the spirit that we might say he has approached the core of the Western
representational tradition.
The Correlative Structure: Xinsheng and Shensi
There is ambiguity, however, in the way Lu Xun appropriated the idea of

the "symbol of angst." Setting aside the ontological impulse discussed in
the previous section, the "life-force" or "spirit" he glorifies might be seen
to resemble the notion of breath-energy (qi) central to traditional Chinese
thought. The understanding of literature as rooted in the repression of

life-force, furthermore, might also seem to be an echo of, for instance,
Sima Qian's famous claim that great works are created by those who are
in a state of suffering (Guo 1979: 1: 77-79), or Han Yu's understanding of
wen (the essay) as the outcry of things (of which human beings are a part)
in a state of oppression (buping er ming) (Guo 1979: 2: 125-126). In fact,
in his younger days, Lu Xun himself attempted a kind of fusion between
Western romanticism and traditional aesthetics, introducing "Mara

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poetry" through the notion of xinsheng (the voice of the heart), a term
directly taken from the classical tradition. I have noted here that the Mara
spirit carried over to his interpretation of the "symbol of angst"; thus, to
determine the possible traditional elements underlying this notion, it may
be a good starting point to look into the classical form Lu Xun gave to his
conception of Mara poetry.
Lu Xun borrowed the term xinsheng from the oft-quoted line by Yang
Xiong (1987:160)—〃speech is the voice of the heart; writing is the picture

of the heart"一and used it as a general description of literary creation.
While imprinted on it the Mara spirit by asserting the subjective freedom
of one's voice, the notion of xinsheng also immediately brings to mind the
archetypal idea of traditional Chinese thought that understands poetry as

the expression of the will (shi yan zhi). In fact, just as his interpretation
of the "symbol of angst" is bound up with the idea of "spirit," xinsheng
appears to be closely associated with shensi, another term that is central
to the classical tradition. Indeed, a close examination of the significance
Lu Xun invested in shensi will deepen our understanding of the nature of
xinsheng.
The word shensi, as Lu Xun used it in his early period, can be translated
as "imagination," "ideal," and "idealism," and if we look at the meaning

that is generally attached to shensi in the classical tradition, it is clear why
Lu Xun granted shensi these meanings. In The Literary Mind and the Carving
of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong), which devotes a full chapter to shensi and
is generally regarded as the primary and most influential discussion of the
term, Liu Xie begins his exposition with an extraordinary description of

the spiritual movement that carries the mind across vast stretches of time
and space and brings heterogeneous things together. "Quietly absorbed

in contemplation," Liu Xie writes, "one's thinking reaches back a thousand
years; with only the slightest movement of his countenance, his vision
penetrates ten thousand miles; he creates the music of pearls and jade

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between his poetic lines; he witnesses the rolling of the wind and clouds
25 Liu Xie 1958: 493-503. The English right before his brow and lashes."25 The effect of shensi is summed up in
translation I use is that of Vincent
one line after this passage: "when the mind's course (sili) is marvelous,
Yu-chung Shih (1959), with some major
modifications. the spirit (shen) roams with things" (Liu Xie 1958: 493). From this brief
account, it is certainly not difficult to find an essential resemblance to the
Western idea of "imagination"—that is, the faculty of the mind to form

mental images of what is not present to the senses. Shensi, which seeks the
unattainable and the ungraspable, can also be easily reshaped to designate

the "ideal" and "idealism."
Rather than forming mental images of objects, however, shensi is

26 The view that the classical Chinese
immersed in the movement of things: "the spirit roams with things."
conception of literary creation does
not make an ontological distinction While striving for the unattainable and the ungraspable, shensi does not
between the subject and the object,
or between the empirical world and
thereby create a transcendental realm of the ideal; instead, it indicates an
the transcendental world, but rather immanent communication between the mind and things, a relationship that
presupposes an immanent communica
tion between the mind and the world is opposite to the subject-object structure or the forming of mental images
is shared by quite a few scholars of of objects. All the essential features that separate the Chinese tradition
classical Chinese literature and literary
criticism (Owen 1985; Plaks 1976; Yu from the west一the nonseparation of subject and object and the lack o
1987). It should be stressed that this
transcendental plane, or, to put it more positively, the correlative mode
view does not necessarily suggest that
the Chinese conception of literary cre of thinking26—also define Lu Xun's employment of shensi. "The shensi of
ation simply lacks any idea of abstrac
the ancient people," he writes in "On the Power of Mara Poetry," "ha
tion and fictionality, and takes literature
as merely a passive and "uncreative" access to the temple of Nature and tacitly in accord with the myriad things
copy of empirical reality, as some op
communed with them and spoke what they spoke, and that was poetry" (Lu
ponents of this view have claimed (Ren
1998; Zhang Longxi 1993). My emphasis Xun 2005:1: 65). In this simple line, which follows the first appearance of
on the cultural differences between
the two traditions is not grounded on

xinsheng in the essay on Mara poetry, we see no doctrine of representation,
any fundamentalist assumption of the but rather a relationship of correspondence and communication between
superiority of the Western culture. I
think, rather, there are two distinct shensi and things, and the notion that shensi speaks what things speak
modes of abstraction, or two equally
Recounting Shelly's empathy with nature, Lu Xun (2005: 1: 88) writes in
sophisticated understandings of the
world. For an insightful, even-balanced the same essay: "Because the purity of his shensi is exceedingly unusual, h
comparison of these different modes of
beholds nature in a broad vision, feels its mystery; and of the myriad things
abstraction or "strategies of meaning,"
see Jullien 2000. that surge toward him, all seem to have feelings and call for remembrance."

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This appears to be less a romantic personification of the landscape as the
metaphorical projection of the subjective spirit than a kind of complicity

and partnership between shensi and nature, or, in Lu Xun's own words,
"the vibration of the heart's strings, spontaneously harmonizing with the
sound of nature."27 27 Lu Xun 2005:1: 88. It brings to mind,
indeed, the famous line in Liu Xie (1958:
One might say that a kind of de-ontologizing process is at play with 494): "when he ascends the mountain,
Lu Xun's notion of shensi. As far as the aesthetic realm is concerned, the mountain becomes suffused with
feeling; when he beholds the sea, the sea
instead of the ontologically informed concept of imagination that becomes saturated with intentionality."
presupposes the radical separation between the subject and the object,
as in the romantic tradition, we are instead presented with an idea of
the immanent correspondence between the mind and the world. To be
sure, in his exaltation of shensi, Lu Xun attempts to inculcate a sense of
subjective freedom into the tradition by turning to new "voices" from

foreign lands. In fact, he emphatically denounces the Confucian appraisal
of The Book of Songs as "never deviating from the path" (si wu xie) as
an imposition of external constraint on the expression of the will. Such
an assertion of the freedom of subjectivity, however, is clearly envisioned
within the tradition of correlative thinking. It should be noted that Lu
Xun never repudiates the traditional understanding of poetry as the
expression of the will, a concept that is central to the notion of xinsheng.
Rather, he criticizes the restriction imposed through the Confucian concept
as a particular kind of degeneration, while glorifying Qu Yuan for the 28 Kiyama 2004: 227. Voice originally
audacity of his poetic creation. Indeed, as Kiyama Hideo points out, both referred to music, but later also extended
to literature in general and basically any
the Confucian tradition of the moral-political reading of music and the sound that is made. It is taken as the
Daoist conception of "sound" as embodying the cosmic order of vitality embodiment of the spirit of an era in
Confucian thought, and the expression
can be discerned in the very way in which Lu Xun reads the mores of his of the cosmic order of vitality in Daoism.
In Lu Xun's essay, it is the voice in the
age through its "voice" (sheng).28 Lu Xun's reevaluation of tradition, one
•voice of the heart."
might say, constitutes a revitalization of the correlative mode of thinking.29
29 This is the root, I think, of the "lyrical"
In this sense, Lu Xun's claim to the "restoration" of the ancient is far from
character that Pru§ek (1980) discerns in
an anachronism strangely attached to an essentially Westernized outlook; Lu Xun's literary outlook.

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rather, like Nietzsche's return to the Greeks, it is a modernist engagement
with tradition from the lived moment of the historical present.
Can we claim, however, that the same correlative structure underlies
Lu Xun's understanding of "symbol of angst"? After all, Lu Xun appeared

to adopt a completely negative attitude toward tradition after his
participation in the New Culture movement. It might seem that the earlier
attempt to breathe new life into the traditional notions of shensi and
xinsheng had simply given way to a total embrace of the Western "spirit"
and its symbolic mode of literary creation. To address these doubts and
to affirm the correlative nature of Lu Xun's conception of literature in
general, I now turn to the most striking "symbol" he used in reflecting on
his own writing: the grave.
The Grave: Death, Remembrance, and Transitional Existence
Lu Xun (2005:1:3-7; 298-304) explains the meaning of "grave" in both the

preface and the postscript to The Grave (Fen), a 1927 collection of essays.
As he states in the preface, the image of the grave designates burial and
death. The past is past, he says, and that part of life is gone in the process of
building a burial mound; and even this burial mound is soon to be trodden
into the ground. But the grave is also a marker of remembrance一"the
abandoned mound" in which dwells "the dross" of the once living "spirit"
nevertheless bears a longing for the past and an inability to forget. "To
collect these miscellaneous writings and name them 'the grave/" he readily
admits, "is nothing more than a cunning camouflage."

Two things stand out in Lu Xun's interpretation of the image of the
30 As many have noted, the obsession grave. First, the intense gaze Lu Xun casts on death30 does not necessarily
with death constitutes a distinctive
accord with traditional Chinese thought. Both his understanding of writing
aspect of Lu Xun's works. See, for
instance, Takeuchi 2005, David Der-wei as the passing away of his life, a recurrent theme in Lu Xun's oeuvre (2005:
Wang 1992, and Eileen Cheng 2013.
3: 4-5; 10: 283), and his characteristic wish for the death of his works, a
second death, are perhaps too violent for a tradition that perceives the

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world in terms of transition and process, whether in the Confucian or the
Daoist fashion.31 Confucius, as we know, refused to talk about death when 31 This is not to reduce the tradition to
nothing more than Confucianism and

much about life was still unknown. The Daoist tradition treats death as
Daoism, but to allow for a more concrete
indistinguishable from life; Zhuangzi (2008: 54) says, "As it just starts to be discussion. As the most influential
schools of thought in Chinese intellec

born, it starts to die; as it just starts to die, it starts to be born." In fact, Lutual history, they are to be taken as the
Xun has several direct criticisms of these views of death. As Kiyama (2004:visible representatives of a deep cultural
structure.
104-106) convincingly demonstrates in his study, for Lu Xun, what is so

loathsome about Confucius is largely rooted in the ambivalent, lukewarm,
and even artificial stance he takes toward the world, a stance epitomized
in the cowardice he shows in the face of blood and death. As for the Daoist
vision, Lu Xun takes the kind of nondifferentiation that generally underlies
Daoist thought as merely complementary to Confucian escapism: "Although
displaying the sign of Confucian disciples," Lu Xun (2005: 4: 585) writes,

"we are but secret followers of Zhuangzi. . . . Life needs to be hundun
(undifferentiated). What if we start to chisel the seven holes? Zhuangzi
says: 'Hundun died in seven days'" (Kiyama 2004: 101-102).
The resolute determination to look death in the eye, so to speak,
belongs to the absolute spirit that seeks to separate being from nonbeinq一
the very essence of ontological thinking. It brings to mind the Heideggerian
notion of "being-toward-death," which neatly captures one of the most

fundamental ideas of Western thought: death as the revelation of being
and truth. In Lu Xun's obsession with the question of death, we can clearly
discern the ontological insight that he acquired through his readings about32 From The Grave Song" (Nietzsche
2006: 88). Lu Xun was intimately familiar
the Western "spirit." The ontological tension between subjective truth and with Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which
objective reality that underlies his glorification of the subjective spirit, one "The Grave Song" appears. For more
concrete evidence of the importance of
might say, is here transferred to Lu Xun's questioning of the meaning of his
this specific line for Lu Xun, it is worth
noting that Zhou Zuoren cited it as a kind
own existence. It is with the same ontological intensity that Lu Xun is now
of emblem in "On the String of Sorrow"
seeking his own inner truth and being. For this searching self, Nietzsche's (Ai xian pian) that was part of the liter
ary enterprise on which he closely col
line "only where there are graves are there resurrections" must have been laborated with Lu Xun. See Zhou Zuoren
a compelling inspiration.32 2009:1:149.

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The second salient aspect of Lu Xun's interpretation of the grave,
however, is that no revelation of being emerges out of his "running ahead
towards death" (Heidegger); rather, the remembrance that he inscribes into
33 Being is total remembrance, as op the grave grants access to the past only through its loss.33 Lu Xun's works,
posed to forgetting as nonbeing; in con
trast, the remembrance Lu Xun arrives
as he claims, are by no means the disclosure of his innermost self, but are
at is a remembrance that is correlated
marked by concealment and disguise:34
with nonbeing (forgetting).
34 Cheng (2013: 225) interprets Lu Those readers who favor my works sometimes remark that my
Xun's confession here as expressing words speak truth. This is actually excessive praise, and the reason is
his consciousness of "the propensity that they favor [my works]. I certainly do not want to cheat people
of subjects to deny certain truths and
too much, but nor have I ever poured out my heart as such; so
contradictions in order to preserve a
coherent self-image." Harpham (2013)
long as what is written can fulfill the assignment, I would regard
takes concealment, or silence, as a it as finished. It is true that I often dissect others, but I have more
defining element of Lu Xun's works, often and more ruthlessly dissected myself. Even the little I have
which carries crucial aesthetic and politi published is already regarded as cruel by those who love warmth;
cal implications. He specifically analyzes
how it is manifested in Lu Xun's short
if I were to fully expose my blood and flesh, I cannot imagine what
ends would await me. Sometimes I therefore also want to drive
story collection Call to Arms.
others away. Anybody who still does not despise and discard me,
even if he were an owl, a snake, a ghost, or a monster, would be
my friend, and only he would be my true friend. If such a person
does not exist, then I would be fine by myself. But because I am
not yet so brave, right now this is not the case, and the reason is
that I still desire to live in this society. (Lu Xun 2005: 1: 299-300)
To live, as Lu Xun further expounds, means to live with both his enemies and
his friends. It is partly in his aim to remain as a defect in the perfect world
of those so-called righteous gentlemen (zhengren junzi) and cause them

discomfort that he retains some protective armor to keep from exposing
his true self. At the same time, his decision to conceal his innermost being
is also rooted in consideration for his friends: his fear that his own view of
life, uncertain and premature rather than determined and exemplary, might
poison those who love and seek guidance from his works. Because he still
lives in the world, which is composed of relationships with friends as well as
enemies, he has no choice but to conceal his innermost being. In a way, the

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determination to live that Lu Xun gains from his confrontation with death
appears to be in direct opposition to the Heideggerian notion of being

towards-death. Whereas for Heidegger (2010:221-255) the anticipation of
death pulls Dasein away from the inauthenticity of everyday life, where it
exists in relation to others and makes it aware of the freedom it possesses,
the vision Lu Xun presents is that of the withdrawal of the self from the
enclosure of death and its re-joining with the transitional existence of the
social-historical world.35 Death does not constitute transcendence; rather, 35 The contrast Lu Xun poses between the
individuation of death and the social
it is absorbed into the flow of life and communicates with it from within
historical world of life is clearly in accord
it. The song of the grave, as sung by Lu Xun, is not one of resurrection, with Denton's (1998) important claim
that the tension between individualism
but one of transition and flux.
and collectivism constitutes a funda
mental characteristic of modern Chinese
Now may be an appropriate moment to take a look at two historical
thought. Fully addressing this essential
references, both of which have been used as direct expositions of the title, aspect of Lu Xun's thinking, however, is
the task of another work. For a brilliant
that Lu Xun cites in the postscript to The Grave. The first one concerns Liu
analysis of Lu Xun's unique attitude
Ling, a third-century Daoist eccentric who was one of the Seven Sages of toward his "friends" and "enemies, see
Kiyama 2004: 62-64.
the Bamboo Grove (zhulin qixian). Liu Ling liked to drink; when he did,
he would have a man with a spade follow him so that if he passed out
and died, he could be buried on the spot. Lu Xun (2005:1: 299) comments:
"And although he thought of himself as unconventional, in fact this could
only fool those who were completely naive."36 This episode is immediately 36 This translation is by Theodore Huters
for a forthcoming volume of Lu Xun's
preceded by Lu Xun's admission that, as cited here, "to collect these
essays entitled Jottings Under Lamplight,
miscellaneous writings and name them The Grave1 is nothing more than edited by Eileen J. Cheng and Kirk A.
Denton (Harvard University Press).
a cunning camouflage." The second is Lu Ji's poem written in lamentation
of the death of Cao Mengde (Cao Cao), the writer and politician who 丨aid
the groundwork for the establishment of Wei dynasty after the fall of the
Han. The poem speaks of how Cao Cao, while advocating simple rituals and
modest funerals, dictated the arrangement of his clothes and ribbons in his
testament. It expresses the mixed feelings of agitation and sorrow upon

the thought that "even such a great man is not immune from attachment
to life." The postscript ends with the final couplet of Lu Ji's poem: "Deeply

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moved as I read the works he left behind, I offer this piece as token of my
sorrow," lines that seem to express Lu Xun's own sentiments about what
The Grave means to him.
In a famous speech he gave on the Wei-Jin era (roughly ad 220-420)

entitled "The Relationship between Wei-Jin Manner and Wenzhang,
Medicine, and Wine" (Wei-Jin fengdu ji wenzhang yu yao ji jiu zhi guanxi),
Lu Xun (2005: 3: 523-553) mentions another well-known anecdote about
Liu Ling: his refusal to wear clothes during the visit of a guest. When Liu
Ling was chastised for his behavior, he answered: "Heaven and earth are
my house, and my house is my clothes. What business do you have in my
trousers?" Lu Xun relates this story as one of the more negative attitudes
against traditional Confucian morals. We should not ignore, of course, the
other part of Lu Xun's remark一these seemingly unorthodox figures in fact
stubbornly adhered to Confucian values and rebelled against them merely

because they had been usurped by the official ideology. In the same speech,
Lu Xun also devotes considerable space to Cao Cao. The main point he
makes is the cultural milieu Cao Cao helped to form: qingjun (simple and
austere) and tongtuo (unconstrained and unbiased). The testament Cao
Cao wrote before his death reappears here, yet in a somewhat different
sense: an example of his boldness in defying the norms of this genre.
Pulling these references together, we get a rather interesting picture.
Whereas Liu Ling might be taken as a representative of Daoism, Cao Cao,
as a man of the world, can be roughly associated with Confucianism with
a strong Legalist edge. As Lu Xun sees it, beneath the eccentric face of the
Daoist is the moral image of the Confucian. In its correlation, the qingjun
character of the man of the world is balanced with tongtuo, a feature

that is best embodied in Daoism. The distinction between these two
types of existence becomes even less marked on the issue of death

are characterized by a tension between an indifference to death
attachment to life. Clearly, it is this sentiment that Lu Xun gives sub

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to in the image of the grave. Despite his accusation of the escapism shared
by both Confucianism and Daoism in their different perspectives, Lu Xun
is actually consciously "restoring" the very spirit of the tradition—namely,
its correlative understanding of the world.
Indeed, as Kiyama brilliantly demonstrates, Lu Xun's entire thinking is
marked by a kind of "polar structure and a spiritual movement between two 37 Kiyama 2004:109. The dimension
Kiyama stresses is essentially epistemo
poles."37 And it is by way of a constant movement between two poles—past
logical, although he doesn't use such
and future, friends and enemies, the love for others and self-love, all and a term. What I benefit most from in
Kiyama's discussion is precisely his epis

nothing, hope and despair, life and death, and so on一that his perception
temological insight. It should be noted
of the world is articulated.38 The structure of correlation also defines the that, in highlighting the epistemological
significance of the polar structure of Lu
most significant remarks he makes regarding his own thought, such as his
Xun's thinking, I do not deny the validity
admission of the "poison" that he has inherited from tradition—"the poison of other approaches, whether psycho
logical, existential, or aesthetic. Focusing
of Zhuangzi and Hanfei, sometimes indifferent, sometimes unrelenting" (Lu on Lu Xun's "Foreword" to Wild Grass,
Xun 2005:1:301)—and his description of the influence he has received from Ban Wang (1997: 87) demonstrates how
the paradoxical "symmetry" of the poem
Western ideas as "the undulation between individualism and humanism."39
embodies "the aesthetic ideal of organic
unity and order, and Kaldis (2014:156)
The essence of this unique structure of Lu Xun's thinking, as Kiyama (2004:
provides a sophisticated analysis of how
110) incisively remarks, is that it "does not break a determinate one into the poem's "binary pairings reveal the
effort to attune the self to an existential
two to analyze and synthesize, but rather provisionally separates an
Nietzschean awareness. Other notable
indeterminate one into two in order to give the one a certain face and discussions include Alber 1976, and
Harpham 2013.
shape. In this sense, it is closer to the correlative nature of the old Chinese
thinking, which does not know the absoluteness of the self or 'spirit.'" 38 Lu Xun's (2005: 2:163). The "Foreword"
to Wild Grass contains a whole series
Although Kiyama does not provide much elaboration on this point, his of correlative terms: "At the juncture of
observation truly captures the epistemological core of Lu Xun's thinking. light and darkness, life and death, past
and future, I offer this tussock of wild
In the case of Lu Xun's engagement with death, at least, we find a concrete grass before friend and foe, man and
support for the epistemological insight Kiyama establishes. For Lu Xun, the beast, the loving and the unloving as my
pledge."
image of the grave is not the representation of a determinate being or
39 See Letters between Two Places, 24
truth, which receives its absolute form in an ontological distinction between
(Liangdi shu) (Lu Xun 2005:11: 81). In
life and death. Rather, it is an acute expression of the indeterminate state of the original letter to Xu Guangping
(1925.5.30.), he used the term "individu
transitional existence, which assumes a certain provisional form through the
alist anarchism" instead of "individual
correlative interplay between life and death. As an emblematic "symbol" ism" (Lu Xun 2009: 6: 241).

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Lu Xun has created in reflecting on his writings, the image of the grave
bespeaks his conscious intention to revitalize the correlative mode of
thinking that defines Chinese tradition.
Regarding Lu Xun's relationship to Chinese tradition, Yu-sheng

Lin (1979: 116-121) once made the influential critique that Lu Xun's
"totalistic iconoclasm" prevented him from embarking on a transformative
reinterpretation of Chinese tradition. Yet if the foregoing interpretation

of the image of the grave bears any value, it certainly proves that the
kind of opposition Lin conceives between Lu Xun's iconoclasm and the
transformation of Chinese tradition is simply untenable. As we have seen,
Lu Xun's radical critique of Chinese culture is not a hindrance to but rather
the very condition of a modernist transformation of tradition. In assuming
a traditionalist position, which sees tradition only as an unbroken chain of

continuity, Lin misses the dialectic relationship Lu Xun envisions between
the destruction and construction of tradition, and the discontinuity and
continuity of history.
Although Yu-sheng Lin sets forth a traditionalist indictment of Lu Xun's
radical critique of tradition, Eileen Cheng's (2013: 5) recently published

monograph presents a positive evaluation of Lu Xun's "ties to traditional
culture" from the perspective of a rethinking of modernity. According

40 Cheng 2013:1. Cheng's "celebration"
of the dark side of Lu Xun and her
to Cheng, "the scholarly propensity to reify the notions of 'tradition'
general evaluation of Lu Xun's ties to
traditional culture show an apparent and 'modernity' and to compartmentalize Lu Xun's interest in tradition
influence of Leo Ou-fan Lee's 1987
have, in part, contributed to the obscuring of his radically transformative
monograph on Lu Xun. In her introduc
tion to the book (6)t Cheng explicitly engagement with traditional literature in his creative fiction and essays"
acknowledges her debt to Lee. Besides a
(5). In opposition to such "a teleological narrative of history," Cheng sets
more extensive and concrete analysis of
"the ways in which Lu Xun engaged the as her task the examination of "how Lu Xun's literary encounter with the
form and content of traditional litera
modern involved a sustained engagement with the past" (6). In particular,
ture in his creative oeuvre" (6), Cheng's
book also advances Lee's interpretation she finds Lu Xun's "affinity for darkness and images of death" to be
in employing the perspective of recent
illustrative of his ambivalent relationship to the tradition he has turned
theoretical critiques of the teleological
narrative of modernity. against.40 Employing a Benjaminian critique of the teleological narrative

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of history, Cheng's interpretation of Lu Xun ultimately points to a mode of
remembrance that, against the linear progression of time, bears "testimony
to a vanished past and a disappearing present" (233) and harbors a radical

hope for the future in illuminating the specters of the past.
Cheng's book enriches our understanding of Lu Xun's "experimental

use of traditional conventions" (10) and brings into view "the dialogical
interplay between the past and the present in Lu Xun's writings" (6).
Although I agree with Cheng's claim regarding the antiteleological nature
of Lu Xun's remembrance, I wonder whether she has not conflated the
teleological narrative of history with the discourse of modernity as such. As
my comparison between Lu Xun and Benjamin in the next section makes
especially dear, I think that an assertion of the break between tradition

and modernity is not necessarily teleological, nor that such a break should
be understated. As Cheng recognizes, Lu Xun's relationship with tradition

is not total negation, but rather transformative engagement. Yet I believe
that Cheng overemphasizes the notion of continuity or transmission, at
the expense of the discontinuity and break that is indispensable for such
a transformation. Moreover, although Cheng sets out to demonstrate Lu
Xun's inheritance of Chinese tradition, she perhaps lacks critical reflection
about the various ontologically charged theoretical concepts she applies
to Lu Xun's writing. Ultimately, the remembrance of transitional existence
she identifies in Lu Xun does not move beyond the Eurocentric narrative of
modernity and misses what I think is the most crucial link between Lu Xun's
remembrance and the classical Chinese tradition——namely, the correlative

depiction of transitional existence.
The Poetics of Remembrance
Looking at his writings as unified under the image of the grave, one
might say that Lu Xun imparts a distinct understanding of literature.
Rather than representing essence and being, he uses writing as a form

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41 Here we should be reminded of the of remembrance that depicts the world in a state of flux.41 He makes no
comparison Stephen Owen (1986:1-15)
makes between representation in the
attempt to bring life back from death or make it shine bright against the
Western tradition and remembrance in shadow of death; instead, Lu Xun's remembrance operates on the same
the Chinese tradition. In one, literature
is "the figure of Truth wearing a veil/'
plane as death, "camouflaging" itself in the form of death, while also
the imitation of the truth that is sepa concealing the "truth" of death. The poetics of remembrance embodied
rated "from the matter of history"; in
the other, literature is the remembrance in the image of the grave, as we have seen, is marked by an extraordinary
that engages with a lost totality on
attempt to differentiate life and death, presence and absence, and being
the same level as what is remembered,
that "struggles to extend itself and and nonbeing. In this regard, it is in accord with the ontological spirit of
encompass those absences surround
Lu Xun's translation of the notion of the "symbol of angst." Although
ing what survives." Such a comparison,
while containing fundamental insight, Lu Xun's assimilation of the ontological spirit of modern Western culture
seems problematic to me in that it
plays a crucial role in his engagement with the lived experience of the
presupposes the idea of totality, which
essentially belongs to Western thought. historical present, writing for him is clearly a revitalization of the correlative
Despite its many stimulating analyses,
articulation of the world that defines the Chinese aesthetic tradition. In
the book does not seem to carry out the
comparison between representation and the poetics of remembrance that Lu Xun establishes, what we find is truly
remembrance in a thorough manner. At
its very base, Owen switches from the a creative translation of the notion of the "symbol of angst," which is at
aesthetic model of remembrance as a the same time a modernist transformation of the Chinese tradition. In the
kind of equivalence to representation,
to a much narrower topic of remem final section of this essay, I demonstrate how this poetics of remembrance
brance as a predominant theme in the
is fundamental to Lu Xun's understanding of literature in general.
Chinese literary tradition. Although I
am not suggesting that such a specific One of the images closest to that of the grave is found in the phrase
choice is invalid, Owen does tend to
"dawn blossoms plucked at dusk" (zhao hua xi shi), which Lu Xun used as
ward an empirical track that employs
many unexamined literary categories. the title for a collection of lyrical reminiscences about his childhood and
youth. In the foreword to the collection, he explains what he means by

the phrase:
Flowers plucked with dew on them are surely much fresher in color
and scent, but I was unable to [gather them in this manner]. I still
cannot transpose instantly even the grotesque and the desolate in
my present mind into grotesque and desolate writings. Perhaps,
some other day when I look up at the fleeting clouds, they may
flash before my eyes. (Lu Xun 2005: 2: 235)
Just as the grave is both the burial and the remembrance of life, here

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memory and writing are at once the negation of the immediate "presence,"
embodied in the "flowers with dew" and "the mind of the present," and
its trace. As the following passage shows, the role of writing is not to lend
permanence to the transitory status of things as evoked in the image of
the "fleeting clouds," but to grant access to the past in participating in

the process of transition:
There was a time when I often remembered the fruits and veg
etables I ate during my childhood years in my hometown: caltrops,
horse-beans, water bamboo shoots, and musk-melons. These were
all extremely succulent and delicious, and they once beguiled me
into longing for my old home. Later, tasting them after a long
parting, I found them nothing special; only in memory, the flavor
from the past still retained. They might keep on deceiving me
my whole life, making me constantly turn back to the past. (236)
Here we find almost the exact opposite of the well-known episode of

Proust's madeleine, which represents a mode of memory that has become
archetypal in modern Western culture.42 In this episode, Proust describes 42 See Proust 2003: 48-51. For a classical
interpretation of the meaning of memory

how the taste of the madeleine conjures up things of a long-distant past in
for Proust, see Benjamin 1968: 201-215.
their full shape and solidity and fills the narrator with a sense of precious
essence or existence, rendering him indifferent to the vicissitudes of life.
For Proust, memory is marked by its endurance against the passing of time.
As such, he exalts remembrance as the revelation of being and the arrest

of the flux of time. For Lu Xun, by contrast, memory works within time: 43 Lu Xun's accentuation of the loss and
instead of disclosing the essence of things that transcends the progression concealment of memory is also high
lighted by Cheng. Focusing on his "home
of time, memory endows continuity and identity to things by concealing the town fiction," Cheng (2013:166) claims
that Lu Xun's "dwelling on loss was a
change that has happened in time. By resigning himself to the deception
means of recovering meaning from the
of memory, which grants meaning to the past only in its loss, Lu Xun is violence that is history." For her, what is
significant about Lu Xun's dealing with
trying not to guard himself against the vicissitudes of time, but rather to
the theme of nostalgia is that rather than
participate in its great flow.43 In this determination, one clearly discerns the depict an idyllic native place, he presents
a "veritable dystopia" and "highlights
same logic by which he has submitted to the necessity of the concealment
the plight of his intellectual wanderer: of
of truth in life. being without a home in the world" (13).

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The same spirit also suffuses another extraordinary essay, “ Remembrance
for the Sake of Forgetting" (Weile wangque de jinian), which Lu Xun

44 Lu Xun 2005: 4: 493-504. For the dedicates to the memory of several young writers.44 As the title itself
historical context, personal bearings,
indicates, the essay is not meant to build a monument for eternity; rather,
and cultural references of this piece, see
Chou 2012: ch. 4. it is for the sake of forgetting that he brings forth these memories of the
past. Although "the blood of the youth" that has accumulated in the past
thirty years has already reached the point of suffocating the living, Lu Xun
writes, by turning to "pen and ink" he is just trying to "dig a small hole"
to "draw a few more wretched breaths." The opposition between blood
and pen/ink, although resembling the pairing of the two discussed earlier
in this essay, is bereft of the ontological obsession with truth and is instead
geared toward the living. Rather than the preservation of truth vis-a-vis
the flow of time, writing is posed as the very oblivion of truth through
which life becomes possible.
Although the unique structure of remembrance is most visible in those
works of Lu Xun that explicitly take up the theme of reminiscence, it is
by no means confined to them. To begin with, the works collected in The
Grave are truly "miscellaneous," ranging from long works on the history
of science, literary criticism, and literary history, to various cultural and
social critiques. For Lu Xun, the logic of remembrance clearly underlies
his understanding of the world and the nature of writing in general.
That Lu Xun uses the image of the grave to designate different kinds of
(miscellaneous) writings collected in the The Grave suggests that the notion
of remembrance has broad meaning for him.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Lu Xun would explain the origins

45 "Preface" (Zixu) to Call to Arms, Lu
Xun 2005: 2: 437-443. Many scholars of Call to Arms (Nahan, 1923), his first collection of fiction, in terms of
have analyzed the content of the pref
the remembrance of the unforgettable dreams of his youthful past.45
ace; what I stress here concerns only its
temporal vision. For a detailed analysis Although this account, which appears in the preface to the collection,
of the ethico-political and aesthetic sig
itself largely relates to his personal experience, the temporal dimension
nificance of this preface, see Lee 1987,
Cheng 2013, and Kaldis 2014. has clearly shaped the stories at a fundamental level. Instead of letting

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his imagination run wild, his dreams are immersed and distilled in the 46 Many scholars have noted this unique
feature of Lu Xun's short stories. For
flow of time. Although this is not to deny the specificity of his narrowly notable discussions of the narrative,
defined imaginative mode of writing, or his fiction, I see the couching of moral, and political implications of this
structure, see Hanan 1974, Huters 1984,
imagination in terms of memory as precisely that which determines the Anderson 1990, Tang 1992, Harpham
2013.
characteristic structure of Lu Xun's fiction—that is, containing the main
narrative line with a distanced perspective. Examples of this include such 47 The field of Lu Xun studies in the
English-speaking world generally limits

major works as "Diary of a Madman" (Kuangren riji), "In the Tavern"
what might be called Lu Xun's literary
(Zai jiulou shang), "The Loner" (Guduzhe), and "New Year's Sacrifice" works to his fiction, prose poems, and
lyrical essays, while dismissing his critical
(Zhufu).46 In the case of "Diary of a Madman," Jameson (1986) interprets
essays as being largely an unfortunate
this unique structure as opening up "a concrete perspective on the real political aberration. In China, the overall
importance of Lu Xun's critical essays is
future," to which one might respond that this futurity is truly embedded
more widely acknowledged. This is not
in the process of transition. only the case with the orthodox Marxist
interpretation in the Maoist era; a signifi
As for the critical essays that constitute the majority of Lu Xun's cant part of the post-Mao reinterpreta
writings,47 their spontaneous and intense engagement with reality is tion of Lu Xun, including some recent
scholarship, still recognizes the intel
also clearly a unique method of remembrance: a remembrance of history lectual and aesthetic value of Lu Xun's
that is constantly being engulfed in the flow of time.48 Nothing seems to critical essays. My own position is that Lu
Xun's devotion to essay writing should
better capture the intensity of this remembrance than the image, from be taken seriously. Rather than a waste
of his literary talent and a mere politi
his prose poem "Amid Pale Bloodstains," of "the rebellious warrior" who
cally motivated choice, it is rooted in his
"sees through all the changed and existent ruins and graves, remembers understanding of the nature of writing
itself. Needless to say, I am unable to
all the broad and deep, old and distant pain, faces all the heaped and
provide a comprehensive evaluation of
agglomerated blood, knows all that is dead, just born, to be born, and not Lu Xun's zawen in this essay. For notable
discussions in English of Lu Xun's zawen,
yet born" (Lu Xun 2005:2:226-227). This image of absolute remembrance一
see Pollard 1985, Davies 2013, and Zhang
the remembrance of the pain and blood that flow through all that has 2014. Recent scholarship on Lu Xun's
zawen in China includes Wang Weidong
past and will come to pass—evokes the well-known figure of the angel 2012, Li Shuying 2012, and Wu 2012.
of history that Walter Benjamin (1968: 253-264) depicts in "Theses on
48 In several places, Lu Xun explicitly ex
the Philosophy of History." Just as the angel of history "sees one single presses the intention to preserve a record
catastrophe" "where we perceive a chain of events," the rebellious warrior of history through his essay writing. To
give a few examples: "September 18" (Jiu
discerns pain and blood in all that is being destroyed and all that is built up yiba) (Lu Xun 2005:4: 597); inscription
to Southern Tunes in a Northern Tone
with time. Against the storm of progress that propels him into the future,
(Nanqiang beidiao ji) (4:428); postscript
the angel of history turns his face toward the past, desiring to "make to False Liberty (Wei ziyou shu) (5:191);

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postscript to Quasi Discourses on the whole what has been smashed." Similarly, against the ruse of the Creato
Wind and the Moon (Zhun fengyue tan)
(5: 430-431); preface to Essays from the
who lures one to live on by attenuating the pain and blood of the pa
Semi-Concessions (Qiejie ting zawen) the rebellious warrior is determined to hold in fullness all that has been
(6: 3-4).
and will be destroyed. What Benjamin expresses through the figure of
the angel of history is an attempt to restore the revolutionary singularity
of the present by blasting open "a Messianic cessation of happening"
against the current of progress that projects history onto the continuum
of homogeneous, empty time. What Lu Xun imparts through the figure

of the rebellious warrior is a determination to intervene in the lethargic
progression of history by turning the present moment into a battlefield
between remembering and forgetting. For Benjamin, as for Lu Xun, it is
the disintegration of experience or the loss of plenitude that ultimately
comprises the historical condition of their thinking. For both, remembrance
is an attempt to restore fullness to what has become a fragmented and

scattered experience from the lived moment of the historical now.
The plenitude that the remembrance of the rebellious warrior drives
at, however, is by no means eschatological and transcendental, as in the
49 The rebellious warrior, as Lu Xun
case of Benjamin's angel of history. Instead of a messianic cessation of
writes in the poem, will rise to "bring
mankind back to life, or let them be time that awakens and resurrects the dead, the rebellious warrior brings
eliminated. Such correlation between
forth an immanent intensification of the battle between life and death.
life and death contrasts sharply with
the apocalyptic vision of the end of Rather than an end of history that redeems all the worldly happenings in
history when all the dead will be raised
and life proper is turned into an eternal
a transcendental totality, the rebellious warrior strives toward a vitalized
life. At the rise of the rebellious warrior, progression of time.49 Furthermore, in Lu Xun's thinking, the absolute
moreover, the Creator hides, rather than
being destroyed as such. Kaldis (2014: remembrance that is embodied in the figure of the rebellious warrior is
260) notes the ambiguity of the "image correlated with the desire and determination to forget. The image of the
of salvation" the poem contains: "the
warrior may choose to emancipate or rebellious warrior itself was created amid the "pale bloodstains" of the
destroy mankind. He endorses Lee's
March 18th Massacre. It was erected, one might say, as the mirror image
(1987) view that here "a Nietzschean
reading of the warrior is warranted of his acute awareness of writing's inability to preserve the freshness of
because he resembles the superman
actual experience. As such, it constituted only one pole of the relationship
who wills himself into action, taking all
responsibility of his own fate" (260). Lu Xun strived to establish with reality. At the same time, we find Lu Xun's

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affirmation of writing as the necessary forgetting and concealment of the
truth of reality.
Aesthetically speaking, Benjamin's exaltation of remembrance might

be regarded as an allegorical longing for the symbolic unity of history
(Jameson 1974: 61), and, in this sense, a modern simulation of the lost
ideal of storytelling that weaves together human experience into a totality 50 Wen originally meant the pattern of
things; it thus encompasses everything
(Benjamin 1968: 83-110). By contrast, the poetics of remembrance Lu Xun
from the stars in the sky to the plants on
establishes should be understood as a radicalization of the correlative mode the earth, from rocks and mountains to
the human world. With the development
of expression that characterizes the classical Chinese notion of wen (the
of culture, wen gradually acquired the
essay).50 Although the symbolic and narrative mode of representation that more narrow and specific meanings of
written language and literary composi
Benjamin values presupposes a transcendental unity between subject and tion. All of these meanings can be found,
object, the correlative mode of expression of wen is marked by an immanent for instance, in the first chapter of Liu
Xie's Literary Mind and the Carving of
correspondence between the mind and the world. Adding to Kiyama's claim Dragons. Later on, as various writing
forms became more differentiated from
that the literary potency of wen is rooted simultaneously in its openness to
each other, wen was taken as a general
the external world and its unfettered ordering of language,51 we might say category that encompassed a variety of
genres, such as the philosophical and
that this double openness is enabled and bound together by the correlative
political treatise, the preface, and the
relationship between the world and the mind. Keeping this distinctive epitaph, and was distinguished mainly
from another general category一poetry.
nature of wen in view, it is not difficult to understand why Lu Xun would
ultimately choose zawen (the miscellaneous essay) as his primary form of 51 Grounded on this insight, Kiyama
(2004: 70-83) develops an impressive
writing: because it was less confined to strict formal demands and could
interpretation of Lu Xun's (and Zhou
be written quickly in response to events, this literary form, more than any Zuoren's) essays.
other, allowed him both to take in the external world and to endow it
52 After Wild Grass, Lu Xun devoted
with a shape through the creative ordering of language.52 In other words, himself almost exclusively to the zawen,
with the sole exception of the stories in
it is the zawen form that grants remembrance its uttermost possibility. Old Tales Retold. Cheng (2013:13) sug
For Lu Xun, to be sure, the essay is no longer the expression of the gests that Lu Xun's •turn to the polemical
essay as a main forum for his writings ...
harmonious correspondence between the human mind and the world, or may have arisen in part from his concern
over the possibly 'conciliatory' and 'har
the remembrance of the tranquil transition of existence; rather, it has now
monious' misreading elicited by his cre
become a modernist engagement with the lived moment of the historical ative writings. Curiously, though, Cheng
still limits her study to Lu Xun's so-called
now. As Xudong Zhang (2014) has noted, in Lu Xun's eventual choice of
"creative" works, without offering any
the zawen form, one can discern a distinct consciousness of both living and substantial analysis of his zawen.

128.252.67.66 on Tue, 08 Nov 2022 09:12:29 UTC
writing. This consciousness is marked by an extraordinary tension between
a modernist captivation with the trivial happenings of the eternal present
and a formative impulse that seeks to arrest this experience through a
radicalized structuring of language. In thus embracing a new experience
of the world and in radicalizing its very mode of articulation, however, Lu
Xun's modernist attitude demonstrates precisely the vitality of the tradition
he has turned against: the life of a culture lies not in the slavish repetition
of any essence, but in its capacity to incorporate foreign influences and its
power to renew and re-create itself under changed historical conditions.

In Lu Xun's assimilation of the ontological spirit of the West, crystallized in
the notion of the "symbol of angst," and his establishment of the poetics
of remembrance on the radicalized ground of correlative thinking, we find
an extraordinary instance of such cultural regeneration.

128.252.67.66 on Tue, 08 Nov 2022 09:12:29 UTC
Glossary
"Ai xian pian" 哀弦篇

buping er ming 不平而鸣
Cao Mengde (Cao Cao) 曹孟德（曹操）
"Da Youheng xiansheng" 答有恒先生
"Dandan de xuehen zhong" 淡淡的血痕中
Fen 坟
"Guduzhe" 孤独者
Han Yu 韩愈
jingshen 精神
kongbu 恐怖
"Kuangren riji" 狂人日记
kumen de xiangzheng 苦闷的象征
Liu Ling 刘伶
Lu Shiheng 陆士衡
"Moluo shili shuo" 摩罗诗カ说
Nahan 呐喊
qi
qingjun 清峻
shen 神
shensi 神思
sheng 戶
shengming li 生命力
shi yan zhi 诗言志
si wu xie 思无邪
sili 思理
Sima Qian 司马迁
tongtuo 通脱
"Wei-Jin fengdu ji wenzhang 魏晋风度及文章
yu yao ji jiu zhi guanxi" 与药及酒之关系
"Weile wangque de jinian" 为了忘却的纪念
wen 文
"Wenhua pianzhi lun" 文化偏至论
Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龙
wu 无
xiandai pinglun pai 现代评论派
xie shenme 写什么
xin shensi zong 新神思宗
xinsheng 心声
Yecao 野草
you

128.252.67.66 on Tue, 08 Nov 2022 09:12:29 UTC
zawen
"Zai jiulou shang"

zhen
zhengren junzi
"Zhufu"
zhulin qixian 杂在真正祝竹文酒人福林
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The Symbol of Angst and The Poetics of Remembrance

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The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance: Lu Xun and Chinese Literary

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moment of the historical present, is essentially an attempt to revitalize the

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 139

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aesthetic tradition. This argument is established in three steps. First, I

"symbol" that Lu Xun has created in reflecting on his own writing—the

140 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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Three clarifications are needed on the theoretical premise that

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 141

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142 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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Meanwhile, for those who highlight the modernist orientation of Lu

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 143

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and so on. It is certainly no surprise then that in reading Lu Xun's "Diary

formalistic, and ethico-political aspects of Lu Xun's literary subjectivism, my

144 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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of foreign ideas are studies that explore his transformative engagement

revitalization of the correlative articulation of the world. In substantiating

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 145

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most fundamental core. Chinese literary modernity, I suggest, is not to be

correlative thinking, for which the assimilation of Western thought plays

An Ontological Gap: The "Truth" of Reality and the "Symbol of

a way that is characteristic of Lu Xun: while indicating the possibility that

146 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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Compared to the almost unrestrained anger and lamentation that permeate

sentiment is given rather dispassionately, without his earlier pathos. At

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 147

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reservation can be seen both in his comparing literature to white bones in

Despite this, however, he has clearly granted literature a more substantial

uses it. Lu Xun is playing on the subtlety

148 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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To elucidate the fundamental link between Lu Xun's literary thought

that Francois Jullien establishes between the Western tradition of

(2009:4-5), European thought is fundamentally defined by the ontological

one is elevated to love through absence, which sharpens and diversifies

is to make the past 'present' by resuscitating it. To imagine is not only to

in the process, presence is mingled with absence and becomes animated

Chinese aesthetic tradition, it is certainly valid to claim that the fundamental

point linking him to Western aesthetics lies in his intense consciousness

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 149

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into the epistemological core of the representational notion of literature,

150 • The "Symbol of Angst" and the Poetics of Remembrance

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criticism, and to the aesthetic and literary theories of Aristotle, Schiller,

with a wide array of literary references and quotations of primarily Western

but also Japanese sources, often accompanied by his rather impressionistic

Despite the highly eclectic and rather loose manner in which

of angst" is conceived essentially in the romantic tradition, if we understand

romanticism in the broadest sense as referring to a general intellectual

The comments Lu Xun made on Kuriyagawa's book are terse yet

of symbolism; in fact, he emphasizes this point by quoting Kuriyagawa in

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 151