Selected Essays of Lu Xun

Author: Lu Xun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: The essay (also referred to by Lu Xun as "miscellaneous thoughts" or "short comments") has a long history in China. However, the rise, development, and flourishing of modern essays are inseparable from the name of Lu Xun. In Lu Xun's works, the essay becomes a freeform medium for depicting the social reality, describing observations, commenting on human affairs, and expressing personal sentiments. Its content is all-encompassing, carrying the mission of enlightening thought and resisting reality. Thus, with its profound ideological depth and unique artistic form, it ascends to the pinnacle of Chinese literature and enters the "high tower of fashionable literature" (from the preface to Xu Mao's A Collection of Random Notes in Second Collection of Essays from the Studio of the Moon and the Hedgehog).
Regarding essay writing, Lu Xun possessed a clear and purposeful sense of self-awareness, embodying his serious, lofty, and persistent ideological and spiritual pursuits. He once said, "I have long hoped that Chinese youth would stand up to criticize Chinese society and civilization without hesitation." (Record of The Red Cap Collection) Lu Xun's essays are precisely such critiques of society and civilization. This critique, as he himself described it, "is an immediate response or resistance to harmful things, the sensory nerves, and the offensive and defensive limbs" (Preface to Essays from the Studio of the Moon and the Hedgehog)—it is "a dagger and a throwing spear" (Crisis of Short Stories from Nan Qiang Bei Diao Ji).