Selected Essays of Lu Xun - High School Edition (Revised Version)

Author: Lu Xun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-05-01
Features: The essay (also referred to by Lu Xun as "miscellaneous thoughts" or "short comments") has a long history in China, but 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 free form of 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. With profound ideological depth and unique artistic perfection, it has reached the pinnacle of Chinese literature and entered the "high platform of fashionable literature" (from the preface to Lu Maozhong's A Collection of Random Notes in The Two Collections of Ji Jie).
Regarding essay writing, Lu Xun possessed a clear and purposeful sense of consciousness, embodying his serious, lofty, and persistent pursuit of thought and spirit. He once said, "I have long hoped that Chinese youth would stand up to criticize Chinese society and civilization without hesitation." (The Cover of A Collection of Random Notes) Lu Xun's essays were exactly such social and cultural critiques. 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" (The Preface to The Two Collections of Ji Jie), and it is "a dagger and a throwing spear" (The Crisis of Short Essays in North and South Voices).