Lu Xun: Preface to the Three Idle Collections

The publication of my fourth miscellaneous book, The Collected Works, was four years ago. Last spring, a friend urged me to compile my miscellaneous feelings after that. Looking at the publishing industry in recent years, the creation and translation, or the long papers on big topics, can not be said to be sparse, but short criticism, indulgence, that is, the so-called "miscellaneous feelings", is indeed rare. I can't say for a moment why this is so.

But if you think about it roughly, I am afraid that these two words of "miscellaneous feelings" will disgust the highly interested authors and avoid them. Some people, whenever they intend to taunt me, often refer to me as a "miscellaneous sensationer", as evidenced by the contempt in the eyes of the high literati. Also, I think that although famous writers may not change their names and write this kind of text, they either do not want to report personal grievances, mention fear or defile their names, or have no deep hearts, and exposing them is hindering the battle, so they are largely allowed to be eliminated.

As for me, some people certainly regard it as a "death disease", and I myself have suffered a little because of it, but I still want to compile collections. Just because flipping through the publications and cutting them into books is also a troublesome thing, it has been delayed for more than half a year, and finally it has not been touched. On the night of January 28, when a war broke out in Shanghai, the more fierce the fighting became, and finally we had to run away alone,[1] and the newspaper remained under the line of fire, and once it burned to the core, I could also rely on the spirit of this "baptism of fire" to wash away the evil of "miscellaneous feelings" who were "dissatisfied with the status quo" [2]. Unexpectedly, at the end of March, I returned to the old apartment, but the books and newspapers were not damaged in the slightest, so I turned east and west, and began to edit it, as if the newly cured people with serious illnesses should take care of their thin faces and wrinkled skin more than usual.

I first compiled a collection of texts from 1928 to 29, and the number of articles was very small, but apart from the five or six lectures in Beiping and Shanghai[3], there were no records, and nothing else seemed to have been lost. I remember, these two years were the period when I rarely wrote and had nowhere to submit. I was stunned by the blood in 27 years and left Guangdong,[4] and those words that I swallowed and vomited and did not have the courage to say directly were all recorded in the "Only Collection". But when I arrived in Shanghai, I encountered the encirclement and suppression of the pens of the literary heroes, and the creation society [5], the Sun society [6], and the "righteous gentlemen" of the Crescent Society [7] said that I was not good, and even the gentlemen who did not flaunt the literary school were now mostly promoted to writers or professors, and at that time, in the texts at that time, they had to secretly taunt me a few words to show their cleverness. At first, I was just "idle is rich", "feudal remnant" or "fallen", and later I was sentenced to be a stick drinker who advocated killing young people. [8] At this time, a Liao Jun, who had escaped from Guangdong from Ziyun and was living in my apartment[9], finally said to me indignantly: "My friends all look down on me and do not associate with me, saying that I live with such a person." ”

At that time, I became "such a person". The "Yu Silk" [10] that I have compiled by myself really have no right, not only do I have some scruples (see "I and the "Yu Silk" at the end of the volume), as for other places, my articles have always been "squeezed" to have, and now they are "suppressing", what do I throw into it? So I wrote only a few things.

Now I have included in this book the mistakes of the words I made then and what is still desirable. As for the opponent's text, although there are some in the "Treatise on Lu Xun" and the "Controversy on Chinese Literature and Art" [11], they are all large texts on the yang side of the auditorium of the Eguan Bo Belt, which is not enough to glimpse the whole, and I think that the other collection is also a first-class work of "miscellaneous feelings" and compile it into a book, called "Encirclement and Suppression Collection". If you compare it with my book, it will not only increase the reader's interest, but also better understand the other side, that is, the variety of dark tactics. I am afraid that these methods will not be lost for a while, and last year's "left-wing writers are all for rubles" [12] said, which is one of the old books. Young people who ask themselves about some relationship with literature and art may not have to imitate it, but they may as well know what they know.

In fact, I myself have examined that in the novel or in the short commentary, there is no trace of advocating that young people be "killed, killed, killed" [13], nor do they have such a mind. I have always believed in the theory of evolution, always thinking that the future will be better than the past, the youth will be better than the old, for the youth, I have no time to respect, often give me ten knives, I only return him an arrow. But then I realized that I was wrong. This is not the theory of the materialist view of history or the works of revolutionary literature and art that deceive me; in Guangdong, I witnessed the fact that the same youth were divided into two camps, or they submitted letters to inform, or they helped officials arrest people! My train of thought was thus destroyed, and later I often looked at the youth with a skeptical eye, no longer in unconditional awe. However, after that, he also shouted a few cheers for the young people who were just starting out, but it did not help much.

All that is in this collection, probably all done in two years, only the preface to the book, but only a few sentences will be felt to be used as references, and a few articles will be selected. When I was looking through the books and newspapers, what had been written in 1927 but not compiled in the Collected Works suddenly revealed a little, and I thought that the Night's Notebook was probably because it was originally intended to be another book, and the lectures and correspondence were shallow or irrelevant, so they were not included at that time.

But now this is again in front of it as an addendum to the "Only Collection". I thought that just by reading an article cited in a speech and correspondence, it would be enough to understand the face of Hong Kong at that time. I went to give a lecture twice, the first day was "The Old Tune Has Been Sung" [14], and now I can't find the final draft, and the next day it was "Silent China", which was so shallow and mediocre that it was so shocking that it was "heresy" and forbidden to be published in the newspaper. It's hong kong like this. But now it's like this Hong Kong almost all over China.

One thing I have to thank the Creation Society is that they "squeezed" me to read several scientific literary and artistic theories, and understood that the previous literary historians said a lot of questions, or were they entangled. And thus translated a copy of Pulikhanov's Treatise on Art,[15] in order to correct the bias of believing only in evolution in me, and because of me and to others. However, I printed the material collected when I compiled the "Outline of the History of the Chinese Novel" as "Old Notes on Novels", and with the power of the inspection of the provincial youth, I have imitated the name of the proletariat and referred to it as "leisure", and there are still three "idle",[16] but it is still impossible to completely forget. I don't think that the proletariat would have exercised the Zhou Na [17] method in this way, and they had not studied the "sword and pen" [18]. Compiled and named "Three Idle Collections", it is still imitated by shooting.

On the night of April 24, 1932, he made up and recorded it.

【Notes】

[1] During the 128Th war, the author lived at the bottom of the North Sichuan Road near the war zone, and after the war, he took refuge in the Neishan Bookstore branch of the British Concession, and moved back to his original apartment on March 19.

[2] Liang Shiqiu, a "miscellaneous sensationist" who was "dissatisfied with the status quo", published "Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo" in the new moon monthly magazine Volume II, No. 8 (October 1929), what about it? The article, which said: "There is a kind of person, just blindly 'dissatisfied with the status quo', today said that there is a problem here, tomorrow said that there is a problem there, there are countless problems, so there are endless miscellaneous feelings, wait until some individual prescribes medicine, he is particularly dissatisfied ... It was as if he was afraid that once the status quo satisfied him, he would have no miscellaneous feelings to do. ”

[3] After arriving in Shanghai from Guangzhou in October 1927, the author was invited to give lectures at some schools. On October 25, he gave a lecture entitled "On the Intellectual Class" at the Labor University, which is now included in the "Supplement to the Collection of Collected Works". On October 28, he gave a lecture entitled "Fossils of Great Men" at Rieter Academy, the text of which is unknown. On November 2, he gave a lecture entitled "Revolutionary Literature" at Fudan University, with a transcript by Xiao Li, which was published in the Shanghai "News Daily Xuehai" on May 9, 1928. On the sixteenth day, he gave a lecture at Guanghua University, with a transcript of Hong Shaotong and Guo Zixiong, published in the seventh issue of the second volume of Guanghua Weekly (November 28, 1927), and was titled "Literature and Society" by the editor. On the seventeenth day, he gave a lecture at Daxia University, and the title and transcript of the speech are unknown. On December 21, he gave a lecture entitled "The Wrong Path of Literature, Art and Politics" at Jinan University, which was later included in "Collections outside the collection". After that, on May 15, 1928, he gave a lecture entitled "The Theory of Old Age and Immortality" at Jiangwan Fudan Experimental Middle School, the text of which is not detailed. On November 10, he gave a lecture at the Mainland University, with an unspecified title and text. On December 4, 1929, he gave a lecture entitled "Leaving the Riot and Opposing the Riot" at Jinan University, with a transcript by Guo Boru, which was published in the joint issue of the 28th-32nd issue of Jinan University Journal (January 18, 1930). In May 1929, the author went to Peiping Province to give a lecture entitled "An Overview of Today's New Literature" at Yenching University on May 22, which was later included in this book. On May 29, he gave lectures at the Second Academy of Peking University, at the Second Normal College on the morning of June 2, and at the First Normal College on the evening of the same day, with no detailed titles or speeches.

[4] When the "April 15" counter-revolutionary incident occurred in Guangzhou, the author was working as a teacher at Sun Yat-sen University, but because the rescue of the arrested students was ineffective, he resigned from all his posts and left Guangzhou for Shanghai in September.

[5] The famous literary group in the New Literary Movement of the Creation Society was established between 1920 and 1921, and its main members were Guo Moruo, Yu Dafu, and Cheng Fangwu. Its initial literary tendency was romanticism, with anti-imperialist and anti-feudal overtones. During the First Civil Revolutionary War, Guo Moruo and Cheng Fangwu successively participated in the actual work of the revolution. In 1927, the society advocated the proletarian revolutionary literary movement, and at the same time added new members such as Feng Naichao, Peng Kang, and Li Chuli who had returned from abroad. In 1928, the criticism of Lu Xun by the Creation Society and another Sun Society, which advocated proletarian literature, and Lu Xun's rebuttal to them formed a controversy centered on the question of revolutionary literature. In February 1929, the society was closed by the Kuomintang reactionaries. It has edited and published "Creation" (quarterly), "Creation Weekly", "Creation Day", "Flood", "Creation Monthly", "Cultural Criticism" and other publications, as well as "Creation Series".

[6] The Sun Society established a literary group in Shanghai in the second half of 1927, with the main members jiang guangci, Qian Xingxin, Meng Chao and so on. In January 1928, the Sun Monthly was published, advocating revolutionary literature. After the establishment of the Chinese Left-Wing Writers' Union in 1930, the society dissolved itself.

[7] The Crescent Society, a literary and political group with some bourgeois intellectuals as the core, was established in Beijing around 1923, with the main members being Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo, Chen Yuan, Liang Shiqiu, and Luo Longji. In the name of the poetry club, the company published the Poetry Journal (Weekly) in the Morning Post Supplement in Beijing in the summer of 1926, founded the Crescent Bookstore in Shanghai in 1927, and published the comprehensive monthly magazine "New Moon" in March 1928. The main members of the Crescent Society were once known as the "Modern Critics" because they ran the magazine "Modern Review". After Chiang Kai-shek's rebellion against the revolution in 1927, they turned to the Kuomintang, while advocating "British-style democracy", reviving the idea of "good governmentism", and vigorously attacking the revolutionary literary movement in literature. "Upright Gentleman", at the time of the Beijing Women's Normal University incident in 1925, supported Zhang Shizhao's Datong Evening News, calling Chen Yuan and others of the Modern Critics (later the Crescent School) "upright gentlemen of the East Auspicious School".

[8] "Idleness means wealth" see Li Chuli's "How to Build Revolutionary Literature" by Li Chuli, No. 2 (February 1928), Criticism of Culture. The article quotes Cheng Fangwu as saying that Lu Xun and others are "idle classes": "We know that in the current capitalist society, the idle class is the rich class. "The Fallen", see Creation Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 11 (May 1928), Shi Housheng (Cheng Fangwu) "After all, it is just "drunken-eyed": "It is rumored that he (according to Lu Xun) has recently purchased and read social science books, 'but there is a little problem at the moment': Is he really going to be a loyal apprentice in the social sciences? Or do you just paint colors and whitewash your own decline? This latter path is an act of covering the ears and stealing bells, a deeper and more incurable decline. "Feudal Remnants" and Stick Drinkers, see "Feudal Remnants on the Literary and Art Front" by Du Quan (Guo Moruo) in the first issue of the second volume of the Creation Monthly (August 1928): "He was a feudal remnant before capitalism. Capitalism is counter-revolutionary for socialism, and the feudal remnants are dual counter-revolutionaries for socialism. Lu Xun was a dual counter-revolutionary figure. In the past, it was completely wrong to say that Lu Xun was a wanderer in the transition period between the old and the new, and that he was a humanitarian. He was an unambitious Fascist! "According to Fascist Ti, someone at that time translated it as stick drinking.

[9] Liao Jun is Liao Li'e, a native of Xingning, Guangdong. Originally a student of Xiamen University, he transferred to Sun Yat-sen University with Lu Xun in January 1927.

[10] The literary and artistic weekly magazine "Yusi", originally edited by Sun Fuyuan and others, was founded in Beijing on November 17, 1924, and banned by the warlord Zhang Zuolin in October 1927, and then moved to Shanghai to continue the publication. From March 10, 1930, it ceased publication in Volume V, No. 52. Lu Xun was one of its main contributors and supporters, and for a time served as editor of the journal after its publication in Shanghai.

[11] "On Lu Xun" and "Controversy on Chinese Literature and Art" were both edited by Li Helin, and were published by Shanghai Beixin Bookstore in March 1930 and October 1929 respectively. The former included twenty-four critical articles on Lu Xun and his works between 1923 and 1929, while the latter included forty-six polemic articles of various schools in the revolutionary literary movement of 1928.

[12] "Left-wing writers are all for rubles" This was a frame-up of progressive writers by the reactionaries of the time. For example, in the "Liberation of Chinese Literature Circles" published in the Shanghai "Republic of China Daily and Enlightenment" on May 14, 1930, it was said that progressive writers were "bribed by red imperialism and subsidized by the Russian rubles"; in "Lu Xun's Motives for Joining the Left League" published in the Shanghai tabloid "Jingang Diamond Daily" on February 6, 1931, it was said that "the Communist Party initially charged literary and artistic propaganda fees in Shanghai with 800,000 rubles per month, resulting in the so-called universal literature and art" and so on.

[13] "Kill, kill, kill" This is what Du Quan said in the article "Feudal Remnants on the Literary and Art Front": "Kill! Kill Yo! Kill Yo! Kill some terrible youth! And hurry up! This is the philosophy of this 'old man' (according to Lu Xun), so the 'old man' does not die. ”

[14] According to "The Old Tune Has Been Sung", it was published in the "National News , New Era" in Guangzhou in March 1927, and later compiled by Xu Guangping into the "Collection of Collected Remains"; according to "Lu Xun's Diary", this lecture was written on February 19, 1927, the day after the author went to Hong Kong, and the first day of the lecture was "Silent China".

[15] Pulihanov (CAD 艶 GHIJKL, 1856-1918) later became one of the opportunist leaders of the Mensheviks and the Second International.

[16] Cheng Fangwu pen name Shi Housheng, Hunan Xinhua, literary critic, main member of the Creation Society. In his article "Completing Our Literary Revolution", in the twenty-fifth issue of the third volume of the Flood (January 1927), he said that "Mr. Lu Xun is sitting under the canopy and copying his novels and old news", which is a kind of "fun-centered literature and art" and "there must be a fun-centered tone of life"; and said: "This fun-centered tone of life implies a kind of self-sufficiency that deceives itself in a small world, and what it holds is leisure, leisure, and the third leisure." ”

[17] Exercising Zhou Na means fabricating accusations and trapping people in the law. Quote from the "Hanshu Lu Wenshu Biography": "If you are afraid of playing, you will exercise and within the week."

[18] "Knife and pen" here refers to the method of the knife and pen official (litigator) weaving the sin of the person. In Kexing's "Pulling Miscellaneous Articles" of the Second Issue of the Second Volume of the Creation Monthly (September 1928), it is said that Lu Xun "took out his original sword and pen and scolded him bitterly and harshly." The author's reference here is to give a counter-stabbing.