Collected Prose and Poetry of Lu Xun

Author: Lu Xun / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: If Lu Xun's novels and essays were more inclined to be written "for others," then his prose (especially the prose poems in Wild Grass) was more inclined to be written "for oneself." That is to say, he used the more personal genre of prose to relatively truthfully and deeply reveal his personal existence—the existence of the individual life and the existence of literary personal discourse: this is the unique value of Lu Xun's prose. Reading Lu Xun's prose and poetry carries a special meaning of its own: it helps us get closer to Lu Xun's individual life, which will be a meeting of the soul. This book includes Lu Xun's self-edited collection of reminiscence essays When I Was a Child, the prose works from Wild Grass, and essays collected in other works of Lu Xun; at the same time, it also includes over 60 new and old-style poems created throughout Lu Xun's life.
From Baicao Garden to Sanwei Study Room
Behind my house there was a very large garden, known as Baicao Garden. It is said to have been sold to the descendants of Master Zhu, along with the house, long ago. Even the last time I visited it has been seven or eight years. It seems to be certain that only some wild grasses grew there then, but it was my paradise at that time.
Needless to say, the emerald green vegetable beds, the smooth stone railings, the tall soap trees, and the purple-red mulberries. Nor need I mention the cicadas singing in the leaves, the plump wasps resting on the flowers, or the swift sky-lark (albatross) suddenly darting from the grass into the sky. But even just the short stretch of muddy wall roots around it held endless fascination. The oil cricket sang here, and the crickets played their music.
Flipping through the broken bricks, I sometimes encountered centipedes; there were also ladybugs, and if you pressed their backs with your fingers, they would make a puff and spray a cloud of smoke from their rear ends. The dodder and the lotus vine intertwined, the lotus vine had fruits like lotus pods, and the dodder had swollen roots. Some said that the roots of the dodder resembled a human shape, and that eating them could grant immortality. So I often pulled them up, pulling them up endlessly, and even damaged the mud wall in the process, but I never once saw a root that resembled a human.
If you are not afraid of thorns, you could also pick hawthorns, small spheres of coral-like pearls, sour and sweet, far better in taste and flavor than mulberries. I never went into the tall grass, because it was said that there was a very large red snake in the garden.
An old woman named Grandma told me a story: Once, a scholar lived in an ancient temple and studied hard. One evening, while cooling off in the courtyard, he suddenly heard someone calling his name. He answered, looked around, and saw a beautiful woman’s face peeking over the wall, smiling at him, then disappearing. He was very happy, but he was soon recognized by the old monk who came to visit at night. The monk said he sensed some evil aura on his face and believed he had encountered a "beautiful snake." This was a monster with a human head and a snake’s body, capable of calling people by name. If you answered, it would come at night to eat your flesh. He was terrified, but the old monk said it was no harm, giving him a small box and saying that as long as he placed it by his pillow, he could sleep soundly.
Although he did as instructed, he could not sleep—of course, he couldn’t. At midnight, indeed, it came. Scritch-scratch! It sounded like the wind and rain outside. As he trembled, he heard a sparkle! of golden light fly from his pillow, and then there was no sound outside. The golden light returned and gathered back into the box.
What happened next? The old monk said it was a flying centipede, capable of sucking the snake’s brain, and that the beautiful snake was killed by it. The moral of the story was: if a stranger calls your name, never answer. This story made me feel that life was full of dangers, and on summer nights while cooling off, I often worried, dared not look at the wall, and longed for a box of flying centipedes like the old monk’s.
Whenever I walked past the grassy area of Baicao Garden, I often thought the same way. But until now, I had neither obtained one nor encountered a red snake or a beautiful snake. Strangers calling my name were common, but none of them were beautiful snakes.
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